Several DKos articles have been written
here and
here about David Koch’s position on the board of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. A number of people have expressed concern about the presence of Big Money and Big Oil on the board of the most prestigious institution of science in the US. But hey, if David Koch wants to fund our science institutions, I mean, they need the money, right, and what could possibly go wrong??
Well, the folks over at Climate Progress have been observing the evolution of the Smithsonian’s approach to science (pun intended) since Big Money joined the board. Five years ago, the Hall of Human Origins went up at the National Museum of Natural History, made possible by a $15 million grant from David Koch. Climate change and global warming feature prominently in the display. So what’s the problem??
The exhibit displays a graph that shows that the earth’s temperature fluctuations over the past 11,000 years and shows that the past few hundred years have seen some of the coldest temperatures in human history. What global warming?? No big deal, right? Of course the exhibit neglects to mention that the rate of increase over the past 100 years is the highest it has ever been in human history, and is highly correlated with CO2 emissions from human activity.
But what may be most shocking of all is that the Smithsonian hasn’t fixed the misleading evolution exhibit at its National Museum of Natural History, which thoroughly whitewashes the dangers of modern-day climate change. . . It has now been five years since Climate Progress exposed the myriad flaws in the exhibit, a story the New Yorker and others picked up.
So maybe global warming isn’t such a big deal after all? You certainly wouldn’t guess from this exhibit that anyone, let alone the overwhelming majority of the planet’s climate scientists, is too worried.
Perhaps the most outrageous panel in the exhibit explains how humans have evolved to adjust to climate change. By analogy, human evolution can solve the climate crisis that’s about to hit us.
In the Smithsonian exhibit on how past climate change was supposedly beneficial to human evolution, visitors can solve our current climate crisis by deciding how humans will evolve to warming. Seriously.
Smithsonian visitors are asked to “imagine” a time (“Era 3″) that is “far into the future” when “Earth’s temperature has risen and it’s really hot.” Unbelievably, you are then asked “How do you think your body will evolve?” Your choice is “Will you have a tall, narrow body like a giraffe? Or more sweat glands?”
Don’t know about you, but I’m kind of partial to the old humans – some of my best friends, dontcha know – but maybe that’s just me.
OK, there have been solutions to global warming proposed by the IPCC and many climate scientists, but I don’t remember a “human evolution strategy” as being one of them. And what about the many species that we already rely on for food and oxygen, and to support the complex ecosystems of our forests, plains and oceans? Many are on a path to extinction right now. Must they also evolve? Will this newly evolved ecosystem support more than 7 billion humans on the planet? The exhibit doesn’t say.
And where’s the mention of ocean acidification, or "ocean poisoning" as one commenter more alarmingly calls it? Don’t look too hard, you won’t find it. Far worse than rising temperatures, acidification will drive carbonate-shell-based species like corals and foraminifers to extinction, and the ocean ecosystems that they are based on will drastically change or even collapse. What does the future look like for humans under those conditions? What would an evolved human species look like that doesn’t rely on food and oxygen production from the ocean? Might be harder to breathe and eat, but hey, our lungs and digestive systems can evolve, right?
At least we know that David Koch accepts science and scientific explanations of evolution (cue the presses!!). In fact he’s counting on evolution to counter the earth’s coming climate problems. The process that has produced new organisms over time spans of hundreds of thousands to millions of years on earth must now produce new humans in the next few decades.
As long as Big Oil sits on the boards of our top echelon science institutions, continue to expect stories like this.
Meanwhile, we wait . . . and debate . . . and do nothing.