It's bad enough that humans are trashing the Earth, and in the process, making it doubtful that our astonishing Blue-Green Planet will be habitable by large, big-brained, bipedal primates by the year 2100. No, these humans must also deny that they are trashing this singular, precious planet, which strongly indicates that those big brains are malfunctioning in a most distressing way.
This brings up the related question of why those big brains evolved in the first place—no other animal acquired this trait during the 543 million years of the Phanerozoic Eon—but that's not my subject today. Viewed this way, Homo sapiens is an anomaly.
Wired tells us about malfunctioning big brains in The New Science Classroom Battleground: Climate Change.
The National Center for Science Education has been defending the teaching of evolution since before Edwards vs. Aguillard, the 1987 Supreme Court decision that declared the teaching of creationism an unconstitutional promotion of religion. Although its primary focus is on supporting teachers and students by helping them handle public controversies caused by science education, the organization played a critical role in the Dover case, which blocked the teaching of creationism’s descendent, intelligent design.
Although the organization’s title refers to science education generally, evolution has been the primary area of science that has been under attack for reasons that have nothing to do with the latest research. But over the last several years, that’s changed as more and more bills have been introduced that target both evolution and climate change. With times changing, the NCSE is changing with them. Today, it’s announcing that its support of students and educators will be broadened to include climate change. We talked with the NCSE’s executive director, Eugenie Scott, about the decision.
Scott said that the NCSE’s work with teachers on evolution made them aware that teaching climate science was becoming controversial. “It’s been a growing realization of ours that, just as teachers get hammered for teaching evolution, they also are getting hammered for teaching global warming and other climate change topics,” she told Ars. “They’ll start talking about global warming and a student’s hand will shoot up, ‘teacher, my dad says global warming is a hoax.’ We’ve had accounts where students would get up and walk out of the room.”
They're trying teach her baby science!!! The Los Angeles Times reports on the horrors of teaching science to impressionable youngsters in Climate change skepticism seeps into science classrooms.
Reporting from Washington — A flash point has emerged in American science education that echoes the battle over evolution, as scientists and educators report mounting resistance to the study of man-made climate change in middle and high schools.
Although scientific evidence increasingly shows that fossil fuel consumption has caused the climate to change rapidly, the issue has grown so politicized that skepticism of the broad scientific consensus has seeped into classrooms...
Texas and Louisiana have introduced education standards that require educators to teach climate change denial as a valid scientific position. South Dakota and Utah passed resolutions denying climate change. Tennessee and Oklahoma also have introduced legislation to give climate change skeptics a place in the classroom.
In May, a school board in Los Alamitos, Calif., passed a measure, later rescinded, identifying climate science as a controversial topic that required special instructional oversight.
"Any time we have a meeting of 100 teachers, if you ask whether they're running into pushback on teaching climate change, 50 will raise their hands," said Frank Niepold, climate education coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who meets with hundreds of teachers annually. "We ask questions about how sizable it is, and they tell us it is [sizable] and pretty persistent, from many places: your administration, parents, students, even your own family."
Is science being taught in our schools? Should children be exposed to facts? Things like "Darwinian evolution occurred" or "the Earth is warming and the only reasonable, probable cause is human burning of fossil fuels".
These are really profound, really deep questions for a big-brained, super-intelligent species like Homo sapiens. You can read my related post Ignorance Is Bliss if you haven't already done so. Or read it again. It will never grow old.
Do you know what the supreme irony of this deplorable situation is? It was basic scientific research and the technology which followed in its wake like the steam engine or television, combined with a shitload of fossil fuels, that made possible the sometimes extravagant, often comfortable (and wasteful, unsustainable) lifestyle so many ignorant humans enjoy today. Few are willing to give up the comfort science, technology and fossil fuels have provided.
But now with our best science telling the humans they are obviously a bunch of fuck-ups, these same comfortable humans don't want to hear it. And why not? Because that depressing message is totally out of sync with their own view of themselves, with who they want to believe they are.
Bonus Videos — Turbo Encabulator and RCA's The Story Of Television
Well the trouble stems from the way human's brains work, they are designed to solve immediate problems with tools at hand or by using those tools to make new better stronger tools that allow for more effective exploitation of resources.
But eventually one passes the sustainable use of those resources and begins to draw down upon nature's largess in hyper exploitation, which gives immediate advantage to one group of people over others in the short term. But this damages and destroys the land base in the long term.
This is likely how the first civilizations rose, and explains why they all eventually collapse. The civilizations hyper exploit local resources for material advantage and then must expand to conquer and acquire resources beyond their borders thus leading to imperialism.
I wouldn't be surprised if this simply leads to our species overall being un-fixable, despite the warnings being provided by those paying attention, and destined for extinction.
Posted by: Wanooski | 01/19/2012 at 11:39 AM