Filed under: Education, Environment, Global Warming, Junk Science, Science/Technology, The United States | Tags: Climate Controversy, National School Standards, No Consensus
The AP reports on a new study that says “Young people are not so ‘green’ after all.”The study amounts to comparing the current generation of young people — the Millennials — with previous generation going back about 40 years. The excerpted comments from professors who participated in the study, suggests that the professors are enthusiastic greens, and don’t quite understand why the kids are not.
Beth Christiansen who heads the environmental program at Adelphi University on Long Island said when she attended Rutgers in the 1980s, it was unusual to find a fellow student who had not hiked or spent time in the woods. “Now a lot of these students have very little experience with the unpaved world.”
Some of her students also volunteer with a group that cleans up trash in the bays that surround the island — one of many examples of young people who are taking environmental issues seriously.
At Babson College in Massachusetts, for instance, there is student housing called the “Green Tower,” where residents focus on conserving resources. It is a growing housing trend on many college campuses.
At Muhlenberg College in Pennsylvania students are running a biodiesel plant on campus and building “permaculture,” or indefinitely sustainable gardens in their back yards. They’re less likely to write a letter to their member of Congress or to try to change things on a global level, said Richard Niesenbaum, a biology professor at Muhlenberg. They also don’t like to label themselves as “environmentalists.”
By the time they get to college, they have had global warming and environmentalism shoved down their throats for 12 years already. No wonder they aren’t so “green” after all.
Climate change is now the premier battle in our nations’ science education, and several national bodies are set to release a draft of new science standards that include detailed instruction on climate change. “The groups preparing the standards include the National Research Council which is part of the congressionally chartered National Academies. They are working from a document they drew up last year that says climate change is caused in part by manmade events, such as the burning of fossil fuels. The document says rising temperatures could have “large consequences” for the planet. Funny, I just heard a report on the radio that Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education, scoffed at reports that the Obama administration was interested in national school standards.
So you have science teacher Loris Chen, who said teachers should introduce students to “the consensus” on climate change. And a teacher at Corte Madera school in Portola Valley, California last year showed Al Gore’s global warming epic “An Inconvenient Truth” to her sixth grade students, and a father filed a formal complaint accusing Ms. Joi of “brainwashing” the students. The school will require parental permission before students see the movie in the future. It’s time to stop showing that piece of flawed propaganda. And there is no consensus in science. And I don’t have much enthusiasm for national standards, simply because they’re so bad at it.
Filed under: Capitalism, Economy, Election 2012, Energy, Politics | Tags: Barack Obama, Obama's Campaign Video, The Poster
The RNC came up with this satirical and very funny (and accurate) response to Obama’s new, professionally produced, campaign video. Don’t miss all the small type.
Filed under: News of the Weird, Russia, Science/Technology | Tags: Recreating an Extinct Species, Russia and South Korea, Wooly Mammoth
Woolly Mammoth Recreation: Wikimedia Commons
Researchers from Russia and South Korea are planning to resurrect the Ice Age woolly mammoth. The scientists signed a deal on Tuesday to share technology and research that could lead to the birth of a mammoth clone, gestated in a surrogate Indian elephant mother.
Mammoth remains were uncovered in thawed Siberian permafrost, and around the world, scientists have been trying to extract DNA from the remains. Paleobiologists previously were able to reproduce mammoth blood protein, and Japanese researchers want to resurrect the mammoth within five years.
This new project will move forward if the Russian institution, the North-Eastern Federal University of the Sakha Republic can ship the mammoth remains to the Koreans.
The project would work like earlier cloning studies that successfully reproduced dogs, a cow, a cat, a pig, a wolf and coyotes. The nuclei of mammoth somatic cells would be implanted into the nuclei of donor elephant eggs, to produce elephant embryos with mammoth DNA. The embryos would be implanted then in elephant wombs, where they would gestate for 22 months.
The earlier protein study showed that we can learn much by working with these extinct creatures — the mammoth blood was found to contain an anti-freeze component that no one would have guessed existed.
Woolly mammoths were not significantly larger than today’s African elephants, and males reached around 9 feet. Unlike today’s elephants they had small ears, the largest found are only 12 inches long. The tusks were extremely long, up to 16 feet long, and markedly curved. It’s not clear what the purpose was, they may have been used as shovels to clear snow from the ground and reach the vegetation underneath.
By 1929 the remains of thirty-four mammoths had been found with frozen soft tissues. Only four were relatively complete. Large amounts of mammoth ivory have been found in Siberia. Mammoth tusks have been items of trade for at least 2,000 years. They disappeared at the end of the Pleistocene —10,000 years ago, but an isolated population survived on Wrangell Island until roughly 1700 B.C. Woolly mammoths appear in cave art in Dordogne, France. Mammoth specimens have been found in North Carolina and Kentucky.
I suspect that anyone who saw Jurassic Park would find the cloning effort a little uncomfortable at best.