D-Day was today in 1944. My father was involved. Wikipedia is silly. Kids these days have no idea. There is, of course, a classic movie on the topic. Continue reading This Day was D-Day
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Ice on the Mississippi on June 5th
Dr. Donald R. Prothero has been awarded the 2013 James Shea Award by the National Association of Geoscience Teachers
Hey, check this out:
Dr. Donald R. Prothero recently retired from his professorship at Occidental College in Los Angeles, CA after 27 years of teaching in order to concentrate on his writing and consulting. Dr. Prothero is an indefatigable advocate for geology and paleontology, which he combines with a passion for communicating science to the public. Notably, he has served as a consultant for Discovery Channel, History Channel and National Geographic specials. He frequently gives public talks and presentations to groups interested in Earth science, including presentations to the NYC Skeptics, The Bone Room in Berkeley, CA, Bay Area Skeptics, and the Natural History Museum of L.A. County. Dr. Prothero is a prolific writer; he posts a weekly blog at “Skepticblog” and has published over 30 books. His talks and blogs focus on debunking pseudoscience and defending the science of evolution and climate change. He has made numerous contributions to advancing his fields of expertise by publishing in technical journals. He has authored and co-authored 259 papers, including papers in the following peer-reviewed journals: Nature, Paleobiology, Geology, Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, Journal of Paleontology, Journal of Geology, Science, Journal of Geological Education, Palaios, Paleoceanography, and Geotimes to name a few. Prothero has served as a reviewer and editor throughout his career. He served as adjunct editor for Paleobiology and he has also served on the editorial boards of Skeptic magazine and for Geology. In addition, he has served as technical editor for Journal of Paleontology and as a consulting editor for the McGraw-Hill Yearbook of Science and Technology. In recognition of Dr. Prothero’s exceptional contributions in the form of writing and editing of Earth science materials, NAGT is proud to award him with the 2013 James Shea Award.
See also: Greenhouse of the Dinosaurs and Donald Prothero Radio Interview.
And, some of Donald Prothero’s other books:
Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters
Rhinoceros Giants: The Paleobiology of Indricotheres (Life of the Past)
Abominable Science!: Origins of the Yeti, Nessie, and Other Famous Cryptids
Reality Check: How Science Deniers Threaten Our Future
After the Dinosaurs: The Age of Mammals (Life of the Past)
Catastrophes!: Earthquakes, Tsunamis, Tornadoes, and Other Earth-Shattering Disasters
Bringing Fossils To Life: An Introduction To Paleobiology
The Terrestrial Eocene-Oligocene Transition in North America
The 1970s Ice Age Myth and Time Magazine Covers – by David Kirtley
This is a guest post by David Kirtley. David originally posted this as a Google Doc, and I’m reproducing his work here with his permission. Just the other day I was speaking to a climate change skeptic who made mention of an old Time or Newsweek (he was not sure) article that talked about fears of a coming ice age. There were in fact a number of articles back in the 1970s that discussed the whole Ice Age problem, and I’m not sure what my friend was referring to. But here, David Kirtley places a recent meme that seems to be an attempt to diffuse concern about global warming because we used to be worried about global cooling. The meme, however, is not what it seems to be. And, David places the argument that Ice Age Fears were important and somehow obviate the science in context.
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h3>The 1970s Ice Age Myth and Time Magazine Covers
– by David Kirtley
A few days ago a facebook friend of mine posted the following image:
From the 1977 cover we can see that apparently a new ice age was supposed to arrive. Only 30 years later, according to the 2006 cover, global warming is supposed to be the problem. But the cover on the left isn’t from 1977. It actually is this Time cover from April 9, 2007:
As you can see, the cover title has nothing to do with an imminent ice age, it’s about global warming, as we might expect from a 2007 Time magazine.
The faked image illustrates one of the fake-skeptics’ favorite myths: The 1970s Ice Age Scare. It goes something like this:
- In the 1970s the scientists were all predicting global cooling and a future ice age.
- The media served as the scientists’ lapdog parroting the alarming news.
- The ice age never came—the scientists were dead wrong.
- Now those same scientists are predicting global warming (or is it “climate change” now?)
The entire purpose of this myth is to suggest that scientists can’t be trusted, that they will say/claim/predict whatever to get their names in the newspapers, and that the media falls for it all the time. They were wrong about ice ages in the 1970s, they are wrong now about global warming.
But why fake the 1977 cover? Since, according to the fake-skeptics, there was so much news coverage of the imminent ice age why not just use a real 1970s cover?
I searched around on Time’s website and looked through all of the covers from the 1970s. I was shocked (shocked!) to find not a single cover with the promise of an in-depth, special report on the Coming Ice Age. What about this cover from December 1973 with Archie Bunker shivering in his chair entitled “The Big Freeze”? Nope, that’s about the Energy Crisis. Maybe this cover from January 1977, again entitled “The Big Freeze”? Nope, that’s about the weather. How about this one from December 1979, “The Cooling of America”? Again with the Energy Crisis.
Check out: Ubuntu and Linux Books
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Now, there really were news articles in the 1970s about scientists predicting a coming ice age. Time had a piece called “Another Ice Age?” in 1974. Time’s competition, Newsweek, joined in with “The Cooling World” in 1975. People have collected lists and lists of “Coming Ice Age” stories from newspapers, magazines, books, tv shows, etc. throughout the 1970s.
But if it was such a big news story why did it never make the cover of America’s flagship news magazine like the faked image implies? Perhaps there is more to the story.
In the 1970s there were a few developments in climate science:
- Scientists were finding answers to the puzzle of what caused ice ages in the past: variations in earth’s orbit.
- Scientists were gathering data from around the world to come up with global average temperatures, and they found that temperatures had been cooling since about the 1940s.
- Scientists were realizing that some of this cooling was due to increasing air pollution (soot and aerosols, tiny particles suspended in the air) which was decreasing the amount of solar energy entering the atmosphere.
- Scientists were also quantifying the “greenhouse effect” of another part of our increasing pollution: carbon dioxide (CO2), which should cause the climate to warm.
The realization that very long cycles in earth’s orbit could cause the waxing and waning of ice ages, coupled with the fact that our soot and aerosols were already causing cooling, led some scientists to conclude that we may be headed for another ice age. Exactly when was still a little unclear. However, the warming effects of CO2 had been known for over a century, and new research in the 1970s was showing that CO2 warming would more than compensate for the cooling caused by aerosols, resulting in net warming.
Check out: Books on programming, especially for kids
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This, in a very brief nutshell, was the state of climate science in the 1970s. And so the media of the time published many stories about a coming ice age, which made for timely reading during some very cold winters. But many news stories also mentioned that other important detail about CO2: that our climate might soon change due to global warming. In 1976 Time published “The World’s Climate: Unpredictable” which is a very good summary of the then current scientific thinking: some scientists emphasized aerosols and cooling, some scientists emphasized CO2 and warming. There was no consensus either way. Many other 1970s articles which mention a Coming Ice Age also mention the possibility of increased warming due to CO2. For instance, here, here and here.
Fake-skeptics read these stories and only focus on the Coming Ice Age angle, and they enlarge the importance of those scientists who focused on that angle. They totally ignore the rest of the picture of 1970s climate science: that increasing CO2 would cause global warming.
The purpose of the image of the two Time magazine covers, and of the Coming Ice Age Myth, is not to show the real history of climate science, but to obscure that history and to cause confusion. It seems to be working. Because today, when there really is a consensus about climate science and 97% of climatologists agree that adding CO2 to the atmosphere is leading to climate change, only 45% of the public know about that consensus. The other 55% must think we’re still in the 1970s when scientists were still debating the issue. Seems newsworthy to me, maybe Time will run another cover story on it.
To learn more see:
- The Discovery of Global Warming: Revised and Expanded Edition (New Histories of Science, Technology, and Medicine)
, Spencer R. Weart. The author has an online expanded version of this book.
- Ice Ages: Solving the Mystery
, John Imbrie and Katherine Palmer Imbrie.
- “The Myth of the 1970s Global Cooling Scientific Consensus,” Peterson, Thomas C., William M. Connolley, John Fleck, 2008: Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 89, 1325–1337.
Linking Weather Extremes to Global Warming
Global Warming is the increase in the Earth’s temperature owing to the greenhouse effects of the release of CO2 and other gasses into the atmosphere, mainly by humans burning fossil fuel, but also by the release of Methane from oil wells and melting of Arctic permafrost, natural gas from leaky pipes, and so on. This increase in temperature occurs in both the atmosphere and the oceans, as well as the land surface itself. During some periods of time most of the increase seems to happen in the atmosphere, while during other times it seems to occur more in the oceans. (As an aside: when you use passive geothermal technology to heat and cool your home, the heat in the ground around your house is actually from the sun warming the Earth’s surface.)
“Weather” as we generally think of it consists partly of storms, perturbations in the atmosphere, and we would expect more of at least some kinds of storms, or more severe ones, if the atmosphere has more energy, which it does because of global warming. But “weather” is also temperature, and we recognize that severe heat waves and cold waves, long periods of heavy flooding rains, and droughts are very important, and it is hard to miss the fact that these phenomena have been occurring with increasing frequency in recent years.
We know that global warming changes the way air currents in the atmosphere work, and we know that atmospheric air currents can determine both the distribution and severity of storms and the occurrence of long periods of extreme heat or cold and wet or dry. One of the ways this seems to happen is what is known as “high amplitude waves” in the jet stream. One of the Northern Hemisphere Jet Streams, which emerges as the boundary between temperate air masses and polar air masses, is a fast moving high altitude stream of air. There is a large difference in temperature of the Troposphere north and south of any Jet Stream, and it can be thought of as the boundary between cooler and warmer conditions. Often, the northern Jet Stream encircles the planet as a more or less circular stream of fast moving air, moving in a straight line around the globe. However, under certain conditions the Jet Stream can be wavy, curving north then south then north and so on around the planet. These waves can themselves be either stationary (not moving around the planet) or they can move from west to east. A “high amplitude” Jet Stream is a wavy jet stream, and the waves can be very dramatic. When the jet stream is wavy and the waves themselves are relatively stationary, the curves are said to be “blocking” … meaning that they are keeping masses of either cold (to the north) or warm (to the south) air in place. Also, the turning points of the waves set up large rotating systems of circulation that can control the formation of storms.
So, a major heat wave in a given region can be caused by the northern Jet Stream being both wavy (high amplitude) with a big wave curving north across the region, bringing very warm air with it, at the same time the Jet Stream’s waves are relatively stationary, causing that lobe of southerly warm air to stay in place for many days. Conversely, a lobe of cool air from the north can be spread across a region and kept in place for a while.
Here is a cross section of the Jet Streams in the Norther Hemisphere showing their relationship with major circulating air masses:
Here is a cartoon of the Earth showing jet streams moving around the planet:
Here is a depiction of the Jet Stream being very curvy. The waves in the Jet Stream are called Rossby waves.
(See also this animation on Wikicommons, which will open in a new window.)
Research published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science last February, in a paper titled “Quasiresonant amplification of planetary waves and recent Northern Hemisphere weather extremes,” links global warming to the setup of high amplitude waves in the Jet Stream, as well as relatively stationary, blocking, waves that cause extreme warm or cold conditions to persist for weeks rather than just a few days. According to lead author Vladimir Petoukhov, “An important part of the global air motion in the mid-latitudes of the Earth normally takes the form of waves wandering around the planet, oscillating between the tropical and the Arctic regions. So when they swing up, these waves suck warm air from the tropics to Europe, Russia, or the US, and when they swing down, they do the same thing with cold air from the Arctic…What we found is that during several recent extreme weather events these planetary waves almost freeze in their tracks for weeks. So instead of bringing in cool air after having brought warm air in before, the heat just stays.”
So how does global warming cause the northern Jet Stream to become wavy, with those waves being relatively stationary? It’s complicated. One way to think about it is to observe waves elsewhere in day to day life. On the highway, if there is enough traffic, waves of cars form, as clusters of several cars moving together with relatively few cars to be found in the gaps between these clusters. Change the number of cars, or the speed limit, or other factors, and you may see the size and distribution of these clusters (waves) of cars change as well. If you run the water from your sink faucet at just the right rate, you can see waves moving up and down on the stream of water. If you adjust the flow of water the size and behavior of these “standing waves” changes. In a baseball or football field, when people do “the wave” their hand motions collectively form a wave of silliness that moves around the park, and the width and speed of that wave is a function of how quickly individuals react to their fellow sports fan’s waving activity. Waves form in a medium (of cars, water molecules, people, etc.) following a number of physical principles that determine the size, shape, speed, and stability of the waves.
The authors of this paper use math that is far beyond the scope of a mere blog post to link together all the relevant atmospheric factors and the shape of the northern Jet Stream. They found that when the effects of Global Warming are added in, the Jet Stream becomes less linear, and the deep meanders (sometimes called Rossby waves) that are set up tend to occur with a certain frequency (6, 7, or 8 major waves encircling the planet) and that these waves tend to not move for many days once they get going. They tested their mathematical model using actual weather data over a period of 32 years and found a good fit between atmospheric conditions, predicted wave patterns, and actual observed wave patterns.
The northern Jet Stream originates as a function of the gradient of heat from the Equatorial regions to the Polar regions. If air temperature was very high at the equator and very low at the poles, the Jet Stream would look one way. If air temperatures were (and this is impossible) the same at the Equator and the poles, there would probably be no Jet Stream at all. At various different plausible gradients of temperature from Equator to the poles, various different possible configurations of Jet Streams emerge.
One of the major effects of global warming has been the warming of the Arctic. This happens for at least two reasons. First, the atmosphere and oceans are simply warmer, so everything gets warmer. In addition, these warmer conditions cause the melting of Arctic ice to be much more extreme each summer, so that there is more exposed water in the Arctic Ocean, for a longer period of time. This means that less sunlight is reflected directly back into space (because there is less shiny ice) and the surface of the ice-free northern sea absorbs sunlight and converts it into heat. For these reasons, the Arctic region is warming at a higher rate than other regions farther to the south in the Northern Hemisphere. This, in turn, makes for a reduced gradient in the atmospheric temperature from tropical to temperate to polar regions.
Changing the gradient of the atmospheric temperature in a north-south axis is like adjusting the rate of water flowing from your faucet, or changing the number of cars on the highway, or replacing all the usual sports fans at the stadium with stoned people with arthritis. The nature of the waves changes.
This video shows how Donald Trump and Bill O’Reilly are like global warming.
In the case of the atmosphere of Earth’s Northern Hemisphere, global warming has changed the dynamic of the northern Jet Stream, and this has resulted in changes in weather extremes. This would apply to heat waves, cold snaps, and the distribution of precipitation. The phenomenon that is increasingly being called “Weather Whiplash” … more extremes in all directions, heat vs cold and wet vs. dry, is largely caused by this effect, it would seem.
This study is somewhat limited because it covers only a 32 year period, but the findings of the study are in accord with expectations based on what we know about how the Earth’s climate system works, and the modeling matches empirical reality quite well.
See also: Killer Heat Waves and Floods Linked to Climate Change by Stephen Leahy and Slowing Rossby Waves Leading to Extreme Weather? by Stuart Staniford.
More about Climate Change HERE
Petoukhov, V., Rahmstorf, S., Petri, S., & Schellnhuber, H. (2013). Quasiresonant amplification of planetary waves and recent Northern Hemisphere weather extremes Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110 (14), 5336-5341 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1222000110
Slamming the spam
For the near future, this site will not accept comments on older posts. This is an anti-spam measure. Comments on older posts will be re-allowed in the future at a yet to be determined time. Thank you very much for your cooperation.
Skeptically Speaking About Human Female Breasts and Bras
Breasts are interesting. For starters, people interested in behavioral biology make much of the fact that in many species males have elaborated or exaggerated traits. But they seem to ignore that other than size and a bit of redistribution of muscle mass, males in humans don’t. Maybe facial hair is an elaborated trait, possibly a deeper voice, but both of these could be argued to be non-elaborated in males and, rather, altered in females. Meanwhile, human females have a whole bunch of elaborated traits. Breasts are among these traits.
There is a good explanation for this we may touch on another time. Meanwhile, I just wanted to point you to an new episode of Desiree Schell’s Skeptically Speaking in which Rachel Saunders, guest host, interviews Florence Williams, author of Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History
The episode, #215 Breasts, is here.
Grover Norquist is a Sekret Moslem!
Cathie Adams, leader of the Texas Eagle Forum, of anti-woman Phyllis Schlafly fame, has proof. And, this relates to what is going to happen in certain important upcoming elections including Minnesota’s 6th district. Let me ‘splain.
Jim Graves Suspends Campaign for MN 6th (formerly against Bachmann)
Jim Graves, the candidate who almost beat Michele Bachmann in her bid for re-election to Congress last year, has suspended his campaign.
I do hope he re-enters the race when Bachmann changes her mind and decides to run again!
Here’s the letter from Graves:
This is the most difficult message I’ve ever had to write.
A year ago, we set out on a mission: To restore civility, functionality and honesty to Washington by removing Michele Bachmann from office. Her hateful rhetoric and dangerous policies fueled an extremist movement unlike anything we’d seen in a long time. The tone it created was a poison pill that crippled Congress, preventing government from performing its most basic duties, like passing a budget.
Over this past year, I’ve never been more inspired. Thousands and thousands and thousands of you stepped up to the plate and sacrificed – your time, your money, your energy – to make our country a better place. Your passion will be etched into my memory forever.
This week, we learned that we succeeded. We set out to defeat Rep. Bachmann, and that has been accomplished. You should feel incredibly proud. After all, it was the grassroots movement you built that kept the pressure on and forced Rep. Bachmann from her seat in Congress.
I’ll never be able to thank you enough for being part of this team. But after struggling with this decision – agonizing over it with my friends, supporters and family, I’ve decided to suspend my campaign indefinitely.
As I said, I’ve never faced a more difficult decision. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your support and dedication.
Your friendship means the world to my family and me. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.
Jim
What Will Michele Bachmann Do Next?
As you know, Michele Bachmann, Congressperson for Minnesota’s Sixth District, has announced that she will not seek re-election to her seat in Washington DC.
Bachmann almost lost her re-election to challenger Jim Graves last year. I’m convinced that had the election been held a few weeks later, Graves would have won. Recently, internal polling data from within Bachmann’s campaign became known, and showed that as of a couple of weeks ago Bachmann was actually behind Graves. Bachmann’s response to this polling was an ad buy; the Bachmann campaign started up early with local ads, clearly indicating one thing and strongly suggesting another. For one, Bachmann had decided to run for re-election as of several days ago. She bought campaign ads. That’s pretty clear. Two weeks ago or less, Michele Bachmann was a candidate for re-election to the sixth district and was spending money on that campaign. This is a fact that must be taken into account in figuring out what is going on. The second thing this indicated was that she was nervous about the polling data and felt compelled to start early.
Then, suddenly, she announced that she would not be running. You don’t decide to run for re-election and actually craft campaign ads and buy air time for the ads and put on the air if you are not running. “I’m Michele Bachmann and I approved this message” means, very clearly, that she was in fact running for re-election. Why, then, did she suddenly stop running for re-election? Even with poor polling numbers, this does not make sense. The polling numbers were not abysmal. She was about five points behind, very close to the margin of error. This is not a number that in and of itself would recommend abandoning a campaign. Also, the numbers were known to her campaign before the ad buy.
There are two other possible explanations for her withdraw, I think. One is that something bad is about to happen and she is bugging out before that occurs. The other is that she noticed that there was another office up for election and has decided to run for it. Let’s examine those two possible explanations.
The most likely explanation for her withdraw is probably that her recent attempts to negotiate away a law suit being filed against her failed and she’s about to be dragged into her own little Watergate, or other civil or criminal legal problems loom that her campaign knows more about than we do at present:
Someone from Michele Bachmann’s 2012 presidential campaign team stole an email list off of Barb Heki’s laptop. This list was from the evangelical home school organization for which Heki played a leadership role… She sued.
…
Today, the court scheduled the trial.
… and later that day Bachmann made her video bowing out of the campaign.
A second explanation is that Bachmann noticed that the Junior Senator from the State of Minnesota, Al Franken, is up for re-election and, at the time she made her plans to announce her withdraw, had no serious challengers. This is the preferred explanation among local Minnesota pundits. Why? Not because it is the best explanation, but because it is the coolest explanation. Al Franken only barely won his seat during the last election, but there are very specific reasons for that, and these reasons simply don’t apply today. Senator Franken went from never having held elected office to being one of the most respected and effective Senators in Washington. How did he do that? He is a) very sincere about his public service and b) very smart. Well, also, his hard work and the excellent support from his family and staff and all that too. Bottom line: The people of Minnesota understand that Al Franken is a great senator and he will be re-elected.
Al Franken isn’t just a great Senator, but he is also one of those guys we watch for the entertainment value, and I’m not referring here to his earlier career as a comedian satirist. Have you seen him in action? Here’s an example. I would not have wanted to have been a grasshopper living in Little Al Franken’s yard when he was a little boy in Ednia, Minnesota.
That was Subtle Al. Here’s another:
Here’s Al with a very smart witness trying to trip him up. Starts at about 1:27:
Not in chambers, about Fox, and reforming our Math education system at the same time:
And here is Al Franken eating a lawyer before lunch:
For comparison, here is Michele Bachmann:
Can you imagine it? A Franken-Bachmann campaign? Pure Political Squeee. Bwahahaha to the Nth power.
So, you can see that no matter how unlikely it may be that Michele Bachmann would actually have quit her seat in the house in order to run against Al Franken, we insist on keeping it on the table as a possibility because, well, it is something to live for.
There is a third possible explanation for Michele Bachmann’s withdraw; A better offer from Fox or some other corporation. This has been suggested by various commenters but I think it unlikely. Yes, expect such a thing to occur at some time in the future, but I believe that Bachmann truly sees herself as a savior of The Constitution and will generally act with that motivation before other considerations. Of course, the first and third explanations can be linked. If she is facing high costs from impending legal battles, bowing out and getting a nice contract with Faux News would be the thing to do.
Finally, I would like to express my great relief that Bachmann is bowing out. It has been a great burden to me … as the person who got her political career started, feeling responsible all these years for having created this particular horror. Now, finally, I’ll be able to sleep nights.
Stay tuned. And, beware of falling boots.
Which army would you join?
Hat tip: Felicia
Linguistic Guide to the Vocalizations of American Teenagers
This guide covers most of the commonly heard vocalizations of American Teenagers. The text accompnaying the audio-video guide is here.
The Need for Health and Biomedical Science Education Programs Aimed at Grades K–12 at the National Institutes of Health (NIH)
Recent reconfiguration of federal funding for STEM education has resulted in important programs at the NIH losing their funding. Below is information on Health and Biomedical Science Education Programs Aimed at
Grades K–12 at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
In the proposed FY 2014 budget, President Obama has set a policy that all STEM education funding be consolidated into three institutions, the NSF for graduate and undergraduate training, the Dept. of Education for K-12 STEM and the Smithsonian for informal education. Justification for this policy was improved efficiency and reduction of duplication of efforts, despite the government’s Committee on STEM Education (CoSTEM) Dec. 2011 report, Federal science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (stem) education portfolio, conclusion that “examination of the inventory data indicates very little overlap and no duplication among Federal STEM education investments.”
This policy is problematic because it dictates that NIH cease all STEM education programs, which includes the Science Educator Partnership Awards (SEPA) that fund BrainU (that is a specific program that is losing its funding). NASA and NOAA have also been prevented from continuing their STEM education efforts. These agencies have already begun policy implementation as Executive branch employees execute presidential policy. All NIH health education programs will disappear officially Oct. 1, 2013 unless we mobilize Congressional action to reinstate funding for SEPA. A full description of this problem can be found at http://nwabr.wordpress.com/2013/05/01/nih-science-education-programs-at-risk/.
This is problematic because a sub-mission of the NIH is to disseminate health information. This policy decision means that NIH will lose the ability to share health science educational materials for K-12 audiences. For scientists like myself who translate health information knowledge directly to teachers and indirectly to their students, this is a major setback. This policy sends the message that my colleagues and I are not supposed to be communicating with you as teachers.
Here’s what you need to do to raise your voice in support of SEPA
Contact your US Congressional Representatives and Senators. Below is a draft letter being circulated to all SEPA programs and participants, but you may find this letter a good template for making a more generalized show of support even if you are not a SEPA person. It only takes a few minutes to personalize this letter (1- 2 sentences is enough) and paste it into the contact your congress websites (see below). This is especially important for those of you in the south Metro and near SE MN who live in Minnesota’s 2nd District – U.S. Congressman John Kline’s district – as he is chairman of the House Education and Workforce Committee.
Our “ask” in these letters is that the funding for NIH health science K-12 education programs (SEPA) be reinstated.
We view neuroscience as part of health education since our message has been – and continues to be – that teaching learners about how their brains change through learning will improve their prospects and motivation to learn in all formal education settings AND in life as they move forward.
Please go to the websites for your congressional representatives and upload this letter with your personal touches to this campaign to save the NIH Science Education Partnership Award (SEPA) program from which BrainU is funded.
More Information:
Health and biomedical sciences for grades K-12 are critical components of STEM education that help to ensure the nation’s capability to prevent disease and improve health. The proposed 2014 STEM education consolidation plan, however, eliminates K-12 health and biomedical science education from its traditional place in the portfolio of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and, by default, from the national STEM education agenda. No other federal agency supports programs comparable to those that would be lost.
More than 65 NIH-funded, K-12 health and biomedical science education projects currently operate in 40 states. These include “in-person” programs for more than 82,500 K-12 students and 5,750 K-12 teachers each year, and online programs that reach more than 20 million K-12 students and educators annually. NIH-funded exhibitions at some of the nation’s largest museums and science centers reach millions more students, teachers and families. With emphasis on engaging underserved populations, K-12 educational initiatives supported by NIH create thoroughly evaluated, science-rich interactive exhibits, curriculum materials, teacher professional development programs, student and teacher research experiences, and out-of-school learning opportunities.
Ongoing NIH-funded K-12 educational programs benefit the nation in the following ways.
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For more than two decades, NIH has invested in the development of human capital and a unique infrastructure that is meeting our nation’s K-12 health and biomedical science education needs. These investments have produced significant, demonstrable outcomes that would not have been possible otherwise. Current K-12 programs sponsored by NIH, including the Office of Science Education, employ rigorous, results-oriented and cost-effective approaches to tackle major national issues, as listed below.
Jobs: Healthcare and biomedical science are crucial elements of the economy. The US Department of Commerce estimates that healthcare accounts for $1.75 trillion in revenues and employs more than 14 million people (nine percent of the US workforce).
Provider Shortages: The nation faces an acute shortage of healthcare workers in all areas, and the problem is expected to grow. The American Association of Medical Colleges projects that there will be a shortage of more than 90,000 physicians—including 45,000 primary care physicians—by the end of the decade. About 55 million people already lack access to a physician.
Wellness and Disease Prevention: According to the Milken Institute, more than half of all Americans suffer from one or more chronic diseases, many of which are preventable. Healthcare spending is projected to reach almost 20% of the US gross domestic product by 2021. Racial and ethnic minorities suffer disproportionately from diseases such as cancer, diabetes and HIV/AIDS, but participate less frequently in programs that could help to reduce disparities.
Without K-12 health and biomedical science education initiatives, our nation will be unable to solve many of its most pressing workforce, economic and healthcare problems.
Draft Letter
May 22, 2013
The Honorable
Dear
I write to express my deep concern that the President’s proposed “consolidation” of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education programs will eliminate the health-centered, precollege (K-12) education programs of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). For more than two decades, these programs have been the primary method by which NIH translates its basic and clinical discoveries to millions of children, families and teachers in the US.
As your constituent, I urge you to consider the implications of this change and to support retention of funding for K-12 health-related education within NIH, enabling the Institutes to continue this broad, critically important pathway to health literacy and jobs.
The programs slated for elimination have been a tremendous resource for K-12 students and teachers, especially those in minority and disadvantaged schools, for whom biomedical educational resources are very limited. Equally important, they are unique among all federal programs in enhancing health literacy and are crucial to NIH’s mission of promoting the health of our nation’s citizens. “In-person” programs engage more than 82,500 K-12 students and 5,750 K-12 teachers each year and online programs reach more than 20 million annually. Exhibitions at some of the nation’s largest museums and science centers reach millions more children, teachers and families
None of the agencies delegated to assume responsibility for STEM programs – National Science Foundation, Smithsonian Institution, and Department of Education – have a health education priority. The proposed action will result in the loss of critical, high-impact health-focused programs. Consolidation will greatly reduce the number of students entering health and biomedical research careers, threatening our nation’s overall health and health literacy.
NIH precollege programs enable biomedical researchers, health professionals and educators at universities, colleges, science museums and other organizations to connect with teachers, children and their families across the country. This outreach provides our communities with invaluable learning opportunities related to research, health, and wellness. Biomedical and health sciences are important areas of workforce development for the US economy in the 21st Century. Research demonstrates that NIH K-12 education programs are key to attracting students to these fields, thereby driving a robust biomedical economy and enhancing national health and wellness.
As a participant in the NIH SEPA BrainU program at the University of Minnesota,
These essential programs must be retained so that the NIH can meet its unique mission of fostering our nation’s leadership in biomedical discovery and improving the health of its citizens. If this consolidation occurs, these effective programs and expertise will be lost.
Please feel free to contact me about this issue. I would be glad to provide additional insights into how this program has impacted my classroom so we may work together to save these important NIH programs.
Sincerely,
your name
Boy Scouts Do The Right Thing, mostly.
The Boy Scouts have ended their ban on openly gay members. Gay scout leader still have to pretend they are not gay.
Question for my readers.
Don’t make a move until you’ve CLICKED HERE.
Then you can continue on to this post. Thanks.
I think the accusation that I’ve “stalked” fellow blogger Abbie Smith have been made one too many times. But I’m not sure. Is this the point where I lay out the exact sequence of events of what happened between us? What do you think?
OK, here’s the story.
Abbie Smith had created an informal group of people who were to eventually become known as the Slyme Pit, mostly Mens Rights Activists, who had come together to object to feminist writings by various bloggers and others, especially those writings that criticized rape and abuse, stalking and harassment, etc. The Slyme Pitters are mostly techies or self styled skeptics, mostly males, who had been enjoying their sexist cultures and apparently did not like others speaking of alternatives to the basic patriarchic pattern. She created this community on her blog, on two or three blog posts here at scienceblogs, which were removed.
Meanwhile she started up serious on line harassment campaigns against at least one graduate student, IIRC an undergraduate student, and a couple of senior academics. It was pretty nasty.
So, as a member of the academic community I took it upon myself to write a polite letter to the chair of her department, where she was working towards a gradate degree. In this letter I, I informed him of the outline of the situation and suggested he might advice his graduate student to tone it down. This is something that happens now and then. Senior people sometimes have conversations about junior people when the junior people are outrageously out of line and victimizing their peers or those that they may even be senior to (the undergraduate/recent graduate, for example).
I wrote the note to her chair and not her advisor because I did not know what kind of relationship she might have with her advisor. It is quite possible for grad student to have access to the advisor’s email, for example, depending on how they are employed. Also, I was concerned that Abbie might be as manipulative in her academic position as she was on her blog; for all I knew her advisor was one of the slymepitters. So I figured I’d step back one level and write it to her department chair. That is one of the few important jobs department chairs do: deal with problem graduate students. I also cc’d the dean/president’s office (can’t remember, anyway the head of the school Abbie was in).
Within about 48 hours of me emailing this, I received an email from an on line person known as Gunter. Gunter is one of the slymepitters. He offered me a deal. I would apologize to Abbie for sending this note to her advisor (to whom I sent the note was already being gotten wrong) or he would publicize the email. You might wonder how some guy with no association whatsoever with Abbie’s department got a copy of an email I sent to the chair and head of the college.
Wondering about that, I sent a second email, this time just to the head of the college and the council, asking if it was their practice to distribute emails concerning their students to members of the public, or was this something, perhaps, that the chair of Abbie’d department had done.
I got a very contrite note back from the college. Abbie shut up, herself, thereafter. But members of the slyme pit, which has just recruited a new member or two, continue to turn this series of events … what I just described to you … into an accusation that I’ve stalked/harassed/whatever Abbie Smith.
So, that’s what happened.