Several items in the news of relevance to Climate Change. Over at The Scientist, there's an opinion piece by Michael E. Mann, Director of the Penn State Earth System Science Center detailing how his climate research has made him a target for the Climate Change Denial Industry, AKA the fossil fuels industry and their wholly - owned politicians. Here's the lead paragraph; read the whole thing.
As a climate scientist, I have seen my integrity perniciously attacked. Politicians have demanded I be fired from my job because of my work demonstrating the reality and threat of human-caused climate change. I’ve been subjected to congressional investigations by congressman in the pay of the fossil fuel industry and was the target of what The Washington Post referred to as a “witch hunt” by Virginia’s reactionary Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli. I have even received a number of anonymous death threats. My plight is dramatic, but unfortunately, it is not unique; climate scientists are regularly the subject of such attacks. This cynicism is part of a destructive public-relations campaign being waged by fossil fuel companies, front groups, and individuals aligned with them in an effort to discredit the science linking the burning of fossil fuels with potentially dangerous climate change.
Morning Edition on NPR reported that
Climate Change Education is going to get into the classrooms, that is if
new science standards are adopted. The usual anti-science suspects are already lining up to
block or cancel out this.
On top of this, there's the political battle over how climate change is taught. Last month, Colorado became the 18th state in recent years — including seven this year — to consider an "Academic Freedom Act."
"The bill will go toward creating an atmosphere of open inquiry," Joshua Youngkin of the Discovery Institute told state lawmakers. The institute is the same group that's long questioned evolution and the way it's taught. Now it has crafted suggested legislation that also targets global warming, although Youngkin testified that the aim is not to ban teaching about climate change.
"It just gives teachers a simple right," he told lawmakers, "to know that they can teach both sides of a controversy objectively, and in a scientific manner, in order to induce critical thinking in their student body."
But critics point out there is no controversy within science: Climate change is happening, and it's largely driven by humans. So far, only Tennessee and Louisiana have passed legislation meant to protect teachers who question this.
emphasis added
Meanwhile, back at The Scientist, there's an article adding to the myriad of findings that show how changing climate is changing our world - and why it's important students have a good basic grounding in science.
As climate change causes global temperatures to mount, warm-loving Aphaenogaster rudis ants in the Appalachian Mountains have marched skyward into the turf of their cold-adapted cousins Aphaenogaster picea, displacing the latter from its home on the mountain peaks of north Georgia. The findings, published last week (March 21) in Global Change Biology, could spell bad news for the Appalachian plant species that depend on these ant species to disperse their seeds throughout the woodlands.
It may seem a small thing - but it's just one more pebble in the avalanche of changes that are going to wreck this planet if we don't turn things around. Time is running out.
