Antievolution Legislation

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

That's a piece of cake - the northeast/New England states centralized education way ahead of the Southern states - and even with their manufacturing base having gone south (moved to the Southern states, before it moved out of the country altogether), had then and still has higher educational attainment (as measured by scoring on standardized tests. Standardized tests are frequently ethnically biased, although they are getting better, but are very good indicators of educational attainment of the "majority" (white) populace.)

[Hogeye]

RealClimate.org is a great site ... if you're looking for errors in critical thinking. Almost as "good" as intelligent design sites! Darrel's cited article is yet another example: What does the lag of CO2 behind temperature in ice cores tell us about global warming?

The article admits that several studies have shown a 600-1000 year time lag between warming and CO2 rise. It totally ducks the question of whether this implies that CO2 is a result (not cause) of temp rise. (It does.) Instead, it diverts the issue (red herring) to a loaded question: "Does this prove that CO2 doesn't cause global warming?" Well, duh! Hardly anything is proved in climatology, particularly the complex relationships between factors.

Then the article goes into a spiel about how warming starts before CO2 rises and ends before CO2 stops rising ... and again fails to draw the obvious conclusions, instead pointing out the rather irrelevant fact that the process lasts 5000 years. Then the article makes the true but inane conjecture that maybe, although the warming had already been going on for 800 years or so, that suddenly in year 801 the original cause magically disappears and the remaining 4200 years is caused by CO2. Sure, it's conceivable - it doesn't contradict any natural laws that we know - but it is of course highly unlikely. It's also conceivable that it's caused by massive ant flatulence after year 801. How silly!

A more plausible hypo is given later in the article: CO2 may act as an amplifier to warming caused by something else. Note that this does not contradict the skeptic temp rise causes CO2 claim at all. It is quite possible that temp rise causes CO2 and CO2 amplifies the change. This is typical of RealClimate articles - giving an innocuous conclusion and pretending it refutes something. Kind of like the "humans affect climate" claim in the Hockey Stick article.

RealClimate seems to be created by ultra-biased Mann cronies, who tend to let their chicken-little environmental alarmism trump logic.

[Savonarola]

Once again, it seems we have three active threads discussing global warming. This one, however, is really for discussion of antievolution legislation.

Let's take this to either here or here, folks.

--Sav, Science moderator

[Savonarola]

Mississippi anti-evolution bill becomes law.. sort of.

Despite being rejected by one house and left to die, Mississippi legislators have finagled enough to get one clause of an anti-evolution bill passed into law as part of another bill.

SECTION 3. No local school board, school superintendent or school principal shall prohibit a public school classroom teacher from discussing and answering questions from individual students on the origin of life.

While this appears rather benign, its vagueness renders it dangerous. Read more at NCSE.

At least we know Mississippi will keep challenging Arkansas for last place in education...

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

I grew up in Texas, a state that so wants the "st" rather than an "er" at the end of every adjective that if it can't be best, it wants to be worst (that's how we got W) - but Mississippi consistently beats out for worst in education - and logic - every time. In fact, when I was teaching, Mississippi was worst even when DC or, heaven help us, Puerto Rico, was factored in.

Now teachers in Mississippi get to waste time they don't have to "discuss" with brain-washed students the reasons, "the bible says so" isn't evidence.