Teachers: Be on the alert for this anti-science mailing!

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A well known anti-science “think” tank has sent around, to teachers, a mailing including an antiscience book, a movie, and nice letter and, oddly, a pamphlet exposing the fact that the mailing is entirely politically motivated.

Most science teachers will ignore this. A few science teachers are science deniers, and they already had the material in the mailings. So, I think this was a huge waste of money and effort. But it happened and you should know about it, and you should warn anyone you know that is a teacher.

The real concern, in my opinion, is not this falling into the hands of science teachers. The science teachers will recognize this for what it is. The concern is this mailing in the hands of non-science teachers who are not inoculated against it, who may then wonder why their colleagues down the hall are not “teaching the controversy,” as it were.

The Heartland Institute, famous for supporting research to prove that smoking is not bad for people, and more recently for promoting research that climate change is not real, has sent this mailing to many thousands of teachers. I’ve heard the number 300,000, but that number is probably from Heartland, and they lie all the time, so I don’t believe it.

The Heartland Institute

…is a Chicago-based free market think tank … that has been at the forefront of denying the scientific evidence for man-made climate change. The Heartland Institute has received at least $676,500 from ExxonMobil since 1998 but no longer discloses its funding sources. The Union of Concerned Scientists found that “Nearly 40% of the total funds that the Heartland Institute has received from ExxonMobil since 1998 were specifically designated for climate change projects.”

David Padden founded The Heartland Institute in 1984 and served as its Chairman between 1984 and 1995, co-chairing with Joseph Bast. Padden was also one of the original members of the Board of Directors of the Cato Institute…

In the 1990s, the Heartland Institute worked with the tobacco company Philip Morris to question the science linking second-hand smoke to health risks, and lobbied against government public health reforms. Heartland continues to maintain a “Smoker’s Lounge” section of their website which brings together their policy studies, Op-Eds, essays, and other documents that purport to “[cut] through the propaganda and exaggeration of anti-smoking groups.”

In a 1998 op-ed, Heartland President Joe Bast claimed that “moderate” smoking doesn’t raise lung cancer risks, and that there were “few, if any, adverse health effects” associated with smoking.

The mailer includes the book “Why Scientists Disagree about Global Warming, with three authors including Craig Idso, Robert Carter, and Fred Singer, with a forward by conservative columnist Marita Noon.

Idso is the head of an organization who’s stated purpose is to “separate reality from rhetoric in the emotionally-charged debate that swirls around the subject of carbon dioxide and global change,” which means, in this case, to deny the basics of atmospheric physics. He has numerous ties with the oil industry. Carter died in 2016. He advised several climate change denying organizations and filled the print media with many anti-science op eds and editorials. He has openly admitted that he is a paid shill of the petroleum industry. Singer is an actual former scientist but recognized by his colleagues as an anti-climate science spokesperson. Singer has been on the Heartland Institute payroll for quite some time.

The book is full of lies and misdirections. It is mainly an attack on the “scientific consensus” on climate change.

You have probably heard a lot about the “climate consensus.” Since the attacking the consensus is the main objective of this mailing, I’d like to spend a moment on that topic. Feel free to skip down to the bottom of the post for suggestions on what books would be good for your favorite science teacher to have in his or her room, in case you want to participate in a sort of grass-roots counter mailing!

In most scientific endeavors, where new discovery is being made, a period of uncertainty, perhaps confusion, perhaps vigorous competition among ideas, is usually followed by a period of growing consensus around a particular scientific idea (a model, a theory, a set of methods and interpretations of findings, etc., depending on the science).

The growth and establishment of consensus is one of the key objectives of science. Scientists know that consensus is powerful and even limiting; an incorrect consensus can mislead researchers and be very counter productive. For this reason, scientists take consensus pretty seriously. Like a jury deciding on innocence or guilt of a person accused of a very serious crime, scientists don’t want to make a mistake. However, scientists are more like a civil case jury than a criminal case jury. We are not required to reject an otherwise well developed case because someone has raised doubt about one tiny aspect of it. Rather, we arrive at consensus using the preponderance of evidence, like in American civil law.

And, once consensus is established, it does not become dogma. Rather, it becomes a dart board, always hanging there in sight, always subject to attack and interrogation. (OK, I know that nobody interrogates their dart board. Maybe it is more like an Elf on the Shelf. But I digress.)

Consider “continental drift” (aka plate tectonics). When Alfred Wegener proposed his theory that continents move around in the early 1900s, he noted that many others had suggested similar ideas. Wegener proposed a comprehensive model of what may have happened in the earth’s past, but he lacked a good mechanism for it. So, the middle of the 20th century involved a period of criticism of his theory, with the idea eventually being more or less thrown out. One of the key features of plate tectonics is how the two kinds of Earth’s crust interact, but geologists did not yet know that the Earth has these two kinds of crust. “Deep sea” exploration had found submerged continental crust, and that looked like regular crust, so it was assumed that the land under the sea was the same as the land on the land.

I note that even though oceanic crust was not understood in the 19th century, Darwin had observed, during the voyage of the Beagle, that a set of islands in the Atlantic, which are actually a bit of ocean crust thrust above the sea surface, was very odd, and that with more study, may cause us to think novel thoughts about rocks.

Even though the theory was eclipsed, some people still thought it was a good idea.

So, we went from nobody getting continental drift, but with a few people mentioning it now and then, to a surge in thinking about it, to a widespread rejection but with a few people thinking it might be valid. I oversimplify, but it is safe to say that by the middle of the 20th century, even though “continental drift” had been a conversation in science since even before science could be said to exist, there was no consensus.

The later part of the middle of the 20th century, however, saw more and more evidence mounting. Rocks were found to be absolutely identical in the evidence of how they formed (that is the main way geologists divide up rocks) across large areas. For example, there are rock formations in South America, South Africa, India, Antartica, and Australia that clearly were once part of a single geological formation all on the same continent. This required that the continents had moved, and in this case, that these particular continents were all attached to each other at one (or more) time.

Also during this period, deep water oceanography was advanced and the actual sea floor was observed and sampled. Mid ocean ridges were discovered and documented. This is where the continents were spreading.

Meanwhile, the dynamic of continental crust subducting under other crust were being figured out, and the significant movement of continents right now (like around the Pacific) became the only way to explain, for example, Japan. The fossil record, which demonstrates a complex biogeography of evolution and movement of species, either restricted by being on different continents, or able to move around large areas that are now on different continents, started to makes sense only in the light of the emerging and increasingly detailed theory of continental movement. Research on how the Earth itself works as a planet, below the surface, eventually allowed for, if not definitively providing, a means for the continents to move.

Plate tectonics (the process) and continental drift (the historical events) eventually became consensus science.

Climate change, the processes by which climate patterns form and change over time, including the role of CO2 and other greenhouse gases, and the potential contribution of human release of fossil Carbon as CO2 or Methane in causing significant change in climate, was consensus science at least a few decades ago. But agents of the petroleum and coal industries preferred citizens (voters and consumers) and governments (regulators) to not act on this already happening climate change. They funded libertarian and conservative front groups and others to manufacture doubt about climate change. For this reason, five years ago, to pick a date, the casual observer could not tell, depending on who they listened to and what they read, whether or not climate scientists were all on the same page.

A group of rather brave and smart scientists decided to do something that had not been done very much before, and that had never been addressed with a fully committed research program: Measure the consensus.

I have a few comments on that, but the best way to learn all about this effort is to check out “The Consensus Project.”

Normally the consensus over a scientific issue forms and all the scientists know about it. That is part of what being a scholar of science is about. You learn to learn about the developing arguments, the fights, the building consensus, the overturning of ideas, all of it, over historical time, recent decades, the present, as you study to become a scientists and you continue to keep track of this information as a working scientists.

Scientists know what consensus means, and they know its limitations and what questions remain. Today in geology nobody is working to disprove the idea that Cambridge Argillite and its sister rock in Norway match up and were once part of the same sea basin prior to the opening of the Atlantic Ocean, because that fact can only be wrong if everything we know about rocks is wrong. But others are working on, and arguing about, important details of the deep layers of the Earth and how they act in moving continents around.

But the scientists studying climate consensus were forced into the position of addressing consensus, as a concept or as a measure of the maturity or stability of a particular scientific construct, because the bought and paid for deniers forced them to do so with their politically motivated anti-science (and anti environmental) yammering.

There were actually two groups, and their work is often confused. The less widespread but excellent analysis that happened first showed that almost 100% of scientists agree on the basics of global warming related science. The more intensive analysis showed that nearly 100% of the literature agreed on the basics of global warming. In both cases, they were a couple percent short of full consensus, but I note the following:

1) The research was conservative, biased a little towards including items or people on the non-consensus side, in order to be unassailable.

2) The research was done with scientists and peer reviewed papers over a period of time, and the work ended (most of it) a couple of years ago. So, a figure like “97%” reflects, perhaps, the state of the field in 2010 better than 2017. The last few years have seen the total wiping out of certain non-consensus generating observations (like the so called “pause” in global warming). In other words, if this work showed a 3% non-consensus, I expect at least half of that to have gone away by now.

3) The deniers and their works, if they are scientists and if the work is peer reviewed, are of course considered in such studies, so that accounts for a half percent of so.

4) In normal society, something like 8% of people believe they were abducted by aliens. About 1% or a bit less probably believe they are aliens. (That works out nicely.) Among scientists, there are always going to be a few oddballs. There is a tenured professor at Harvard who is a UFO-ologist. There was until recently a tenured professor in Washington who thought Bigfoot was real. There are probably one or two geologists who think plate tectonics is fake. Science is lucky that the oddball number is low compared to society in general. But it is not zero.

The Heartland mailing asks teachers, “How do you teach global warming?”

Let me ask you that now, if you are a teacher? I’d love to know how and if, and using what materials and methods, you address climate change and global warming. Let us know in the comments!

Meanwhile, please let any teachers you know about this mailing. Feel free to share this blog post with them. And, if you are not a teacher but know one, or if you are a parent with a kid in school, consider sending the teacher a note, and if you feel up to it, a book! (But not the one Heartland sent!)

I do have some suggestions for you. There are many books on climate change and global warming, and they have tended to differentiate themselves so that there is remarkably little redundancy. Here, I’ll note a handful of recent (all are very current) books that serve a variety of different purposes. I’ve reviewed most of these on this blog (see links below) if you want more info on them.

Dire_Predictions_Mann_KumpDire Predictions, 2nd Edition: Understanding Climate Change by Michael Mann and Lee Kump.

The UN’s IPCC periodically summarizes the state of scientific thinking on climate change. It is a huge report written for an expert audience. This book turns that report into something accessible by the average person, and does so with excellent graphics and other material. This book should be on the shelf in every science classroom.

Explore global warming with graphics, illustrations, and charts that separate climate change fact from fiction, presenting the truth about global warming in a way that’s both accurate and easy to understand. Respected climate scientists Michael E. Mann and Lee R. Kump address important questions about global warming and climate change, diving into the information documented by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and breaking it down into clear graphics that explain complex climate questions in simple illustrations that present the truth of the global warming problem clearly.

My review

Screen Shot 2017-03-31 at 11.10.24 AMA Global Warming Primer: Answering Your Questions About The Science, The Consequences, and The Solutions by Jeffrey Bennett.

This is the book sent around to teachers by the National Center for Science Education. It is an excellent overview of climate change and human impacts, using a unique approach that will work especially well in both high school science and social studies classrooms.

Is human-induced global warming a real threat to our future? Most people will express an opinion on this question, but relatively few can back their opinions with solid evidence. Many times we’ve even heard pundits say “I am not a scientist” to avoid the issue altogether. But the truth is, the basic science is not that difficult. Using a question and answer format, this book will help readers achieve three major goals: To see that anyone can understand the basic science of global warming; To understand the arguments about this issue made by skeptics, so that readers will be able to decide for themselves what to believe; To understand why, despite the “gloom and doom” that often surrounds this topic, the solutions are ones that will not only protect the world for our children and grandchildren, but that will actually lead us to a stronger economy with energy that is cheaper, cleaner, and more abundant than the energy we use today.

Climate Change: What Everyone Needs to Know® by Joe Romm.

This is more for the parents and teachers than the students, but it could be an excellent choice for an environmental science class. Romm discusses many of the pragmatic aspects of global warming, for the average individual, which is not seen as intensively developed in other books.

This book offers the most up-to-date examination of climate change’s foundational science, its implications for our future, and the core clean energy solutions. Alongside detailed but highly accessible descriptions of what is causing climate change, this entry in the What Everyone Needs to Know series answers questions about the practical implications of this growing force on our world:

· How will climate change impact you and your family in the coming decades?
· What are the future implications for owners of coastal property?
· Should you plan on retiring in South Florida or the U.S. Southwest or Southern Europe?
· What occupations and fields of study will be most in demand in a globally warmed world?
· What impact will climate change have on investments and the global economy?

My review.


Climatology versus Pseudoscience: Exposing the Failed Predictions of Global Warming Skeptics by Dana Nuccitelli.

Dana examines climate change by comparing what people, both real scientists and the fake ones, predicted, with what happened. He does other stuff too, but that is my favorite part of this book.

28 Climate Change Elevator Pitches: Short Explanations on the Scientific Basis of Man-made Climate Change by Rob Honeycutt.

This is hot off the presses. Again, this is more for the teacher and parent than the school setting, but since it is new I wanted you to know about it. My review is here.

Have you read the breakthrough novel of the year? When you are done with that, try:

In Search of Sungudogo by Greg Laden, now in Kindle or Paperback
*Please note:
Links to books and other items on this page and elsewhere on Greg Ladens' blog may send you to Amazon, where I am a registered affiliate. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, which helps to fund this site.

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28 thoughts on “Teachers: Be on the alert for this anti-science mailing!

  1. As rational scientifically-inclined folks of good will, we are motivated to address climate change denial on the scientific and political issues. We hope to persuade with facts, truth, ethical pleas.

    But, if the ascendance of Trump can teach us anything, it is that facts, truth and ethics mean nothing compared to power, money, and greed.

    Power, money, and greed are now Constitutionally-protected by the Judicial branch, the Congress, and now, the Executive branch. Exactly what recourse do you think is open to well-meaning, rational folks right now? Another protest march? Seems we had the largest such ever seen a few months ago. Then Trump was elected and completely ignored them. Wait for another election? Did we not just see how corrupt that system is?

    Let me point out what we are talking about here: Wealthy, powerful, greedy men are murdering us for their own personal profit, protected by the political systems they have paid to corrupt.

    And all people seem to want to do about it are the same things we have done about it for the past thirty years – to no avail.

    I would ask you to think about having a conversation about the ethics of using violence in self-defense.

  2. “free market think ”

    Of course, believing in a free market and thinking have nothing in common, there is a huge issue right off the bat.

    I agree that science teachers will see through this crap immediately, but: an important issue is the number of systems that have actual science teachers in the positions of teaching science. The title of the position doesn’t mean the person in it has the relevant background.

    The other issue some teachers will have to deal with relates to your comment

    The concern is this mailing in the hands of non-science teachers who are not innoculated against it, who may then wonder why their colleagues down the hall are not “teaching the controversy,” as it were.

    When those non-science teachers mention this to the administrators, guess what the primary response from those administrators is going to be? To get the other teachers in line, because telling the non-science folks to ignore this crap will easily be spun to be “censorship”.

  3. Greg:

    I think a counter mailing to get more books and literature into the classroom is a good idea.

    But I also have no problem with Heartland trying to get science teachers to teach some of the climate skeptic material as part of their unit on climate change.

    Gingerbaker #1:

    There is nothing unconstitutional about power, money or greed.

    You might want to be careful about advocating for violence under the guise of self-defense.

    Proper self-defense is imminent fear of bodily harm – not that the sea level might rise 39 centimeters by 2100.

    Have you been murdered yet? Clearly not, as you just posted today. So I question the use of the term “murdered” in your post.

  4. Thanks for displaying the link between believing in free market and lack of ability to think rickA.

    The problem with these materials is that the stuff in them is false. The reaction here is the same that would be generated if some group sent large amounts of material denying evolution and supporting creationism (intelligent design, same shit) to biology teachers. People with a decent understanding of the issues see the problem. Those without, like you, don’t.

    We want the honest people to take care of this, not the congenital liars of your ilk.

  5. Rick, teachers spend 120% of their time getting to 80% of the standards of actual science. They do not have time to add to that the politically motivated yammerings of nefarious anti-science industry goons.

    Dean, in theory, science classes are being taught by teachers certified to teach science. There are of course exceptions, but most students in science classes are probably in a classroom run by a certified science teacher of some kind, almost always licensed in the area being taught in that room.

  6. Not personally, but there are many rural systems around here. Some good, because they have a strong tax base, but many that are just scraping by, short on qualified teachers, books, and equipment.

    Of course, you don’t have to be in a rural area to be in dire straights: the Detroit system is in bad shape, and isn’t helped by the charter schools that have sprung up throughout the city. They get education money for the students they pull away from the public system, shortchanging the public system even more. (And those charter schools still perform no better, typically worse, than the public schools.)

  7. An important addition to your continental drift story is evidence of paleomagnetism. First, it was found that many iron-bearing rocks, both igneous and sedimentary, had magnetic fields that were weak copies of Earth’s magnetic field where the rocks formed. From this, magnetic poles positions and paleolatitude could be determined. By the 1950s it was clear to those in the field that most paleopoles and paleolatitudes did not fit the modern geography well until the last few million years. Second, it was discovered from the mag. fields of lava rocks of known ages in several places worldwide that Earth’s mag. field changes polarity geologically quickly every few tens to hundreds of thousands to millions of years. In the late ’50s to early ’60s, the sea floor was found to have a striped pattern of magnetic normal and reversed magnetic strips parallel to the mod-ocean ridges. Dating of the earliest sea floor sediments in many places by fossils showed an age pattern indicating sea-floor spreading at rates similar to those now measurable from satellites. Once they became widely known, both kinds of paleomagnetic results were important independent evidence for the reality of continental drift that led directly to the plate tectonics.taught today. As a geology student, I went from skeptical to convinced by the convergence of the various lines of evidence for what at first seemed almost ridiculous.

  8. Have you made any changes to your blog layout in the last few weeks? I remember it as clean loading, but now I suspect it has some elements that slow down my browser. This was definitely not the case before.

  9. An urban school anywhere should not have trouble seeing to it that teachers have a license to teach their subject. Unless a state willfully decides to not enforce or have standards, that should almost never be an issue. (In any school system there will be the occasional problem). An exception in science is Earth Science, where that is a required standard. There simply arent’ very many licensed teachers for various bad reasons.

    Rual districts often have the problem simply because a given teacher may be asked to teach a very wide range of subjects because there is only one class in each of them.

  10. Tyvor, absolutely. I think the sea floor spread set in a chronological framework by paleomag may have been the final straw for many.

  11. “Have you been murdered yet? Clearly not, as you just posted today. So I question the use of the term “murdered” in your post.”

    I said they are murdering “us” as in members of humanity. According to DARA, more than 400,000 deaths per year are attributable to climate change already:

    [http://daraint.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/CVM2ndEd-FrontMatter.pdf]

    Under BAU, we can expect to see billions die over the coming millennia. Granted, this is murder in slow motion. But murder need not be an instantaneous act, like a gunshot. If one puts another person in a device that takes a month to kill them, that is murder nevertheless.

    Please remember that the science is clear that what these few powerful amoral people are doing is genocide on the grandest scale in human history.

    Ironic that most people’s reaction to the Jews’ seeming acquiescence to the Holocaust is to question why they never fought back. After all, there were many more prisoners at Dachau than guards.

  12. In 2011 the Australian IPA tried to flog this effort for $ to secondary schools around the country, and also to universities:

    https://archive.is/Fby1h

    I received an offer for a free hardcopy but the necessity for being placed on their contact list was dissuading. It didn’t take them long though for maximum ideolgical outreach to trump any incremental financial advantage.

    At least the archive.org link above will minimise their page hits.

  13. But I also have no problem with Heartland trying to get science teachers to teach some of the climate skeptic material as part of their unit on climate change.

    You will also have no problem then with teachers teaching:

    1) creationism as a scientific explanation for the development of life/species

    2) homeopathy as an alternative to conventional biochemical treatment of disease

    3) flat Earth cosmology as an alternative to heliocentrism

    4) KKK/Nazi xenophobia as justifable eugenics

    5-n) fairies, ESP, alien abduction, [insert one’s own alternative to scientific facts here…]

  14. Bernard, rickA is a long term hard core science denier. I would hate to hear the things he would be ok with putting into science classrooms

  15. I suspect that RickA will happily go along with ‘Expanding Earth’ and ‘Abiotic Oil’ crankery.

  16. Also on the long list of applesauce that makes me obstreperous:
    http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/28/us/first-school-of-astrology-is-accredited.html

    Odd but amusing (at least until it evolves into a giant toxic blob of stupid politics):
    http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-hollow-earth-is-filled-with-giants-germans-and-a-little-sun

    And:
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu_(lost_continent)

    And of course, lest we forget RickA’s sublimated and ectoplasmic emergence from the ultimate source of all cosmic wisdom and wishful insight, there’s The Time Cube:
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Cube

  17. Greg: As usual I’m more than a day late (and always a dollar short). I know at least one MnSTA member, a teacher in St. Cloud who received this mailing a few weeks back. And I know at least one state science specialist who received this mailing from Heartland who wondered, on a ListServe, whether any of his colleagues had received it.

    You can be sure that I will send this link on. Science education has many responsibilities. One of them and one that due to other factors is often pushed aside is helping young learners understand the nature of science. There is only so much time. Standards help but in my opinion we still have too many.

    To adepts, ideas like models, tentativeness and how communities of science come to achieve consensus are clear as a bell. To young learners such ideas are not obvious, can be confusing and I’m appreciative of your discussion of one of these.

    There was (I’m told) a Frontline story on this. In addition, Glenn Branch, NCSE included a short essay with references, primarily about Heartland, in his valued weekly summary of events in evolution and climate change.

    Thanks for the references, too. I will pass this link on.

    Take care.

  18. “One of the key features of plate tectonics is how the two kinds of Earth’s crust interact, but geologists did not yet know that the Earth has these two kinds of crust. “Deep sea” exploration had found submerged continental crust, and that looked like regular crust, so it was assumed that the land under the sea was the same as the land on the land. ”

    I think there is an erratum there, that it should be “submerged oceanic crust”

  19. #22, There are some fragments of continental crust that are now submerged relatively far offshore. I think that one or more of these areas was responsible for misleading geologists for a few decades. I’ll have to do some library research to see for sure.

  20. Rick A opines, “But I also have no problem with Heartland trying to get science teachers to teach some of the climate skeptic material as part of their unit on climate change”.

    Despite the fact that there is absolutely no scientific evidence to support this position. In other words, RickA has no trouble, as Bernard says above, with teachers teaching alechemy, creation, flat Earth and other wacky scientifically incorrect theories to their students.

    Me? As a working scientist I prefer to see teaching is fact-based. I want to see teachers telling their students that AGW is proven, and that almost 100% of climate and other scientists agree as to its causes. I want to see teachers teaching their students what Working Group IV of the IPCC is focusing on: solutions. The science is in. Denial is wrong, and still only exists because of vested interests aiming to eviscerate public constraints in the pursuit of private profit.

  21. The smoking:disease link is no better proved than the human:climate change link.

    (Of course, evidence for both is overpowering, and the latter has things like physics conservation laws to help. The former has had to rely a lot on statistics, and of course, many useful experiments are forbidden by ethics.)

    But if someone wants to reject science, they can feel free to make sure all their descendants start smoking during adolescent brain development, i.e., only time when most people can get addicted to nicotine.

  22. In most cases IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS the science teachers have an education in science, one hopes. But some topics are approached in a simplified fashion in elementary schools, and in small schools the teacher is likely to be someone with a degree in elementary education, not in a field of science. This is the starting point; this is where a child gains (or fails to gain) an interest in science, and unfortunately this is also the probable starting point for the lifelong disdain for science and scientists that seems to produce an automatic distrust of things that a scientist thinks are on a sound footing.

    These teachers are the ones who simply lack the background to distinguish the Heartland “information” from fact. If any attempt is made to inform teachers at the secondary level, might that not be too late to make a change in a mindset that began at a younger age?

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