West Virginia joined 25 other states several years ago to help develop a set of standards for teaching science across the United States. Among other topics, the standards acknowledge the overwhelming scientific consensus that climate change is real and has been profoundly affected by human activity.
And last month, the West Virginia Board of Education announced that it was among the first 13 states and the District of Columbia to adopt the “Next Generation Science Standards,” which it said would “equip students with the critical thinking and analytical skills they need to be successful in college and to compete for today’s most rewarding jobs.”
But before the standards were adopted, board members quietly made some changes that science educators say substantially weaken the current state of climate science and introduce far more doubt than is warranted.
The board’s decision has come under fire and prompted a meeting scheduled for Wednesday, when the board will reconsider its action. The board could decide to go back to the original language of the curriculum, to do nothing or to drop the new standards altogether.
***L. Wade Linger Jr., the board member who asked for the changes, said in an interview that members had improved the curriculum. “We simply added some balance, to get the politics out of it,” he said. “Adding balance to the classroom is a good thing, not a bad thing.”
One part of the altered standards, he told The Charleston Gazette, told sixth graders to “ask questions to clarify evidence of the factors that have caused the rise in global temperatures over the past century.” Mr. Linger had “and fall” added after “the rise.”
***Mr. Linger, who is a technology entrepreneur, said he had come to his conclusions about warming after doing research on the Internet and comparing data from satellites, weather balloons and ground sensors over time. Last month, Mr. Linger told The Gazette, “We’re on this global warming binge going on here.”
Amy Hessl, a professor of geography at West Virginia University who studies climate change, said that while temperatures might vary from year to year, the overall trend over time clearly shows warming.
Ms. Hessl said she taught her students about Milankovitch cycles — but to prove the human effects on climate, not to disprove them. According to the science of those cycles, the earth should be in a stable period or even a period of cooling, she said.
Mr. Linger’s arguments, she said, were “exactly what the problem is with regard to teaching our students.” Students “need to have the understanding, and the ability, to discuss these things in an intelligent way,” she added.
Ms. Hessl said she was unimpressed with the argument that the changes in the curriculum introduced balance, which she compared to “bringing someone into the classroom who says smoking is actually good for your health.”
This is akin to letting Jenny McCarthy set the vaccination standards for the state.
This sort of nonsense is going to go on at the state level until colleges and universities stop accepting the credit hours students receive in states where this kind of stuff is happening and mandate remedial science courses as a term of acceptance. Or Democrats start voting in midterms. I’ll let you decide which is more likely.
Baud
Trick question. It’s more likely that climate change is a hoax than any of these things happening.
NotMax
Remember the “affordable and adorable” promo?
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
I love self-taught climate scientists, immunologists, economists, etc. I have a couple of brothers who are experts in every field – especially in fields where they have no practical training or experience.
The internet has been a blessing and a curse. The village idiots used to be isolated and generally harmless. Now they can find each other and have formed the Legion of Dumb.
libarbarian
Liberals should just do that same shit with the debt.
Cons say the debt has risen. We say the science is still out on that one, and that even if it has risen we’re not sure humans are responsible.
Jado
“I’ll let you decide which is more likely.”
Neither will happen. For either to happen, US citizens will have to develop a backbone and be willing to argue with slobbering rage beasts. No one is willing to waste their time arguing anymore, so the rage beasts get their way more times than they should.
So we will go on, mis-educating our children and then bemoaning the fact that they are so stupid and unemployable. We really are as stupid as the stereotype suggests.
rikyrah
they’d sell their Mama for a buck
Cervantes
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford:
The comparison to Ms. McCarthy plus your comment both focus on this Linger person, who is described as a “technology entrepreneur.” He did make the best of his time in the Air Force, and more power to him for that, I suppose, but re “technology,” as you can imagine, there is less there than meets the eye. As for his formal training, he has a bachelor’s degree in business from (what was then) St. Leo College, a not-too-bad Catholic school in Florida.
The real problem is that Linger was able to get himself on the state Board of Education — and I’ll lay odds there are no firm (or even vague) plans to unseat him, either.
Punchy
Lemmie guess…he studied the data from September thru February?
These are the same people that completely trust their doctors to heal them, their financial advisors to invest for them, and their kid’s baseball coach to teach the fundementals. But scientists? Untrustworthy and ignorant.
Elizabelle
Why we have newspapers. With or without cartoonists on staff.
Kudos to the NYTimes.
JPL
@Punchy: Science is only a theory. In GA, the public colleges have to issue a disclaimer at the beginning of class, in order to appease the evolution deniers.
North Carolina is using History books in their schools developed by the Koch brothers.
Jacks mom
It’s snowing here in southwestern Colorado, which means I’ll get to hear “where’s the global warming?” at least 10 times today.
I think I’ll just stay in bed.
CONGRATULATIONS!
Colleges are in deep shit, having maxed out their ability to extract money from the American public. Admissions standards will get much easier as they try to pull in whatever rubes are left who still have two coins to jingle together; not harder.
So, that’s not going to happen. What was the other impossible thing you posited would stop this oncoming tidal wave of dumbed-down education?
JPL
@CONGRATULATIONS!: The unions are the blame for supporting inadequately trained teachers, says the troll.
Rex Tremendae
You misspelled “Cole” in the headline.
Belafon
@Jacks mom: I got somthing similar to that at work here in Texas the other day – “When is global warming going to start, it’s too warm” – and I told them global warming didn’t suddenly change the tilt of the axis. It still gets cold in the winter.
NCSteve
@Belafon: I don’t understand. If the Earth is tilted, why don’t we all slide off over the edge?
OzarkHillbilly
@NCSteve: Hunter S Thompson: “It’s because they have claws.”
kindness
Does this Standards Committee have a web-site where one might leave comments?
Amir Khalid
@NCSteve:
Because gravity is tilted too, you silly-billy.
Belafon
@NCSteve: God pushes down on you with his finger. Don’t get God angry, he might let go.
Belafon
@Amir Khalid: I like yours better.
SenyorDave
I woke up this morning and realized that I now believe 2 = 3. My proof? 2 x 0 = 0, and 3 x 0 = 0. Therefore, 2 must equal 3. I think this should now be taught in the public schools. I know many people assume that 3 is greater than 2, so I propose we present both sides of the argument in public schools.
MomSense
@NCSteve:
Had a guy tell me seriously that the proof that God created the world in 7 days is that we have 7 days in a week.
That was a couple years ago and I still don’t know how I should have responded besides scooping my jaw up off the ground.
PurpleGirl
@NCSteve:
@OzarkHillbilly:
@Amir Khalid:
@Belafon:
LOL. Good comments, guys. Thanks for the laughs.
Debbie(aussie)
I commented in the previous thread about the onion article to question the truthfulness of a Bush married to a Koch. Looked it up, apparently he is not one of ‘those’ Koch’s (worked for a Democrat once).
Bobby B.
Helps make the Mason Dixon Line more clear, handy for the Coming Unpleasantness.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@SenyorDave: Teach the controversy.
I might also add that by your formula, the deficit now equals zero, as does the number of US soldiers killed in Iraq. Also, there is no more income inequality. You’d think the Republicans would be all over this.
Derelict
@Cervantes:
This is part of a national, perennial problem: Everyone agrees that education sucks. But look at how these same people regard the only tools they have for changing that–they don’t vote in school-board elections, and the DO vote to cut their school budgets.
Here in Vermont, we have a tragically fragmented system. There are more school districts than there are towns (my town of 15,000 people has 6 school districts). Everyone here is all about “local control” of the schools. Yet, some board elections have turnout of 10 or 12 people.
Unhappy with the schools? Stop ignoring and underfunding them!
Amir Khalid
@MomSense:
I would have been ROFLMAO.
OzarkHillbilly
In the wake of the Hebdo attacks, British Prime Minister David Cameron has decided the best way to protect freedom of speech is by banning it.
If re-elected in May, Cameron promised to ban encrypted online communication services — unless tech companies give British intelligence special access. Those backdoor permissions would be folded into legislation requiring telecommunications companies and broadband providers to collect and store citizens’ online communications.
“Are we going to allow a means of communications which it simply isn’t possible to read?” he said. “My answer to that question is: ‘No, we must not.’”
Violet
@Derelict:
Also, if Democrats and/or non-wingnuts want to have an impact, do what evangelical conservatives did 20-30 years ago and show run for school board, show up and precinct meetings and take over. They did it, and this mess is partly the result of that.
As for actual global warming, it’ll only get attention when it starts to affect us. When food gets really expensive or we run out of water or people have to move due to drought or flooding or there isn’t enough snow to run ski areas. That sort of thing. Not a moment before will anything change.
japa21
Let me get this straight. Linger says he wants to remove politics from the classroom but introducing politics to the classroom. Makes sense to me.
Belafon
@Derelict: And I thought Texas was bad.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@OzarkHillbilly: He’s simply codifying something that’s already the case anyway. See: True Crypt, fate thereof, encrypted email services, fate thereof, etc.
I frankly appreciate the honest approach here. Would like if our lawmakers were so honest…oh wait, they were, way back when we passed a similar law.
JPL
@Amir Khalid: When I moved to GA a few decades ago, I decided that hmmm was the best response. At some point, a friend noticed my habit and asked me what I was thinking. I responded honestly that when all I could think of was wtf, hmmm seemed, an appropriate response.
chopper
@Bobby B.:
shrug. seems pretty clear to me.
Gin & Tonic
@CONGRATULATIONS!: PGP/GPG still works. So does SSL access to a mail server in a country not subject to GB/US law.
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
@OzarkHillbilly:
Not that I think Cameron is doing the right thing, but how is it infringing on freedom of speech to say you can’t have secret speech? It’s kind of a contradiction in terms.
ETA: Plus, if the issue of keeping speech secret is a matter of free speech rather than a matter of privacy, doesn’t that mean the government could tell you that you can say anything you want as long as you keep it secret? Seems like the wrong road to go down when it comes to Internet privacy.
OzarkHillbilly
@Mnemosyne (iPad Mini):
Knock knock
“Who’s there?”
“The police.”
“The police, why?”
“You said something we don’t like.”
When you can’t have a private conversation, you can’t have an honest conversation. (the justifications are just as valid for what you say to your spouse in bed as for what you say to your spouse electronically)
Cervantes
@Mnemosyne (iPad Mini):
I don’t have free speech unless the government knows what I’m saying?
That’s … mind-blowing.
Gin & Tonic
@Mnemosyne (iPad Mini):
Phil Zimmerman.
As true today as it was 20+ years ago when he wrote this.
OzarkHillbilly
@Mnemosyne (iPad Mini): As to your ETA, you can’t find an explicit right to privacy in the Constitution (tho many, including me, argue that it is implicit in the 4th amendment) but freedom of speech is front and center in the 1st. And the 1st amendment says, “Congress shall make no law… or abridging the freedom of speech,”
Eric U.
our local school board argued in court that zero is not a number.
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
@Cervantes:
Like I said, if secret speech is protected by free speech rights rather than privacy rights, doesn’t that mean the government could decide that you can say anything you want as long as you say it in private? After all, it’s still “free speech.”
Cervantes
@Eric U.:
That is fabulous!
What was the argument they offered?
OzarkHillbilly
OOO-OOOO-OOOO… Pick me PICK ME!!!!!
Oklahoma Republican wants law to keep Hobby Lobby owner’s Bible classes in public schools
Now, Loveless believes that he has the key to ensuring that the course — titled “The Book: The Bible’s History, Narrative and Impact” — can go forward without legal interference.
I want to be a special guest lecturer for the section entitled “The Inquisition- A Misunderstood Debate about the Values of Jesus.”
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@OzarkHillbilly: I’ve noticed that discussing the nuances of Constitutional law is far more interesting on the internet that it was with a buncha classmates. Some of the recent justices fear a right to privacy is implicit in the 4th amendment and have worked very hard to root it out.
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
@OzarkHillbilly:
My right to privacy is under constant attack because, as a woman, there are a whole lot of people in the US government who think they should be able to take a look in my uterus whenever they feel like it. If privacy is tied to free speech, what’s to prevent them from shoving a probe in me whenever they feel like it? That’s why I think it’s better to defend the right to privacy (including private speech) AND the right to free speech rather than lump all speech under “free speech” and leave the rest of the privacy question dangling.
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
It’s probably because we all get to talk out of our asses instead of having to quote case law.
;-)
pluky
@Violet: Unfortunately, by then it will be way to late to do anything.
gene108
@MomSense:
You can always go with the Inherit the Wind line about how did God measure time/days before he made the Sun?
Mike in NC
I know the Kochs secretly fund scores of politicians, pundits, academics and economists. Why don’t they just set up a Koch University and be done with it? It could teach cutting-edge classes in phrenology and alchemy.
SatanicPanic
The public is actually back to believing in global warming- turns out GOP isn’t as influential as they think they are- so this might just be a case of the South deciding to continue to earn itself a place as a backwater.
I’d modify your theory- colleges will continue to accept students, who will go out and find jobs. Those companies will have to spend extra training to get those grads up to speed, and start saying “hey, maybe hiring kids that graduate from southern diploma mills is a bad idea.” Then word will get out that you can’t get a job if you go to those schools, and those schools will suffer the same fate some law schools are suffering now. Then they’ll shut down. And then those southern kids will have to either not go to school (great for Republicans) or pay out-of-state tuition in blue states (great for us). really, it’s a win-win. Maybe.
burnspbesq
‘Splain this, Cole.
http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/13-684_ba7d.pdf
Belafon
@Cervantes: I want to see fractional and decimal Roman numerals.
OzarkHillbilly
@Mnemosyne (iPad Mini): As I said, I believe in a right to privacy, but when discussing speech, at least here in the US, one is on firmer ground to argue from the 1st amendment. but this:
Gave me a thought: Government can not search your house with out either your permission or a search warrant. How is it they can search you vagina/uterus without either? (ultrasound laws when seeing a gynecologist, for the ostensible reason of getting an abortion, but how do they know why you are there???)
Hey, LAWYERS? This argument ever been tried? If not, why not?
burnspbesq
@Mike in NC:
Easier to buy than to make from scratch. They could probably get a deep discount on a certain dump on a certain hump right about now, seeing as how said dump is in danger of losing its accreditation.
burnspbesq
@OzarkHillbilly:
Because it’s a dead-bang loser. The crazy mental gymnastics that the 1960s Supreme Court went through to find a supposed right to privacy in “penumbras and emanations” from the Fourth and Ninth Amendments were on shaky ground the day the opinion in Griswold was issued, and that ground hasn’t gotten any less shaky since then. It may, as a practical matter, be impossible to sweep away 41 years of abortion jurisprudence, but having stare decisis on your side isn’t the same as having a solid argument.
Ella in New Mexico
BINGO!!
I can’t imagine how fast all this would change if the sons and daughters of the middle/upper class Republicans in states that keep dumbing down their curriculums would do if their snowflakes couldn’t get accepted into anything more than an auto-mechanic’s certificate program at a community college.
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
@OzarkHillbilly:
And then to make things REALLY confusing, some states have decided that doctors do not have free speech and can be compelled to read legislature-written statements or narrate an ultrasound to their patients. So there are some parts of the issue that intersect with free speech, though free speech can’t solve everything.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Gin & Tonic: Go for it. Personally I would not, had I secrets I really wanted to keep.
Bill Arnold
@MomSense:
It’d be more convincing if a lunar month were exactly 28 (4*7) days, rather than 29.5, and solar years were exactly 12 lunar months.
Mike G
“We simply added some
balance, to get thepoliticsout of it,” he said.Fixed that for you.
Villago Delenda Est
@rikyrah: @Bill Arnold: The other problem is that the invisible sky buddy’s creation myth was retconned to fit the way we do calendar stuff.
OzarkHillbilly
@burnspbesq: On the off chance you are still around and a lawyer, How is searching a woman’s vagina different from taking blood? One, you need a warrant for, the other not.
Genuinely curious.
Villago Delenda Est
@japa21: The French have a word for people like Linger.
Merde.
Villago Delenda Est
@OzarkHillbilly: Women are not actually people, silly.
NCSteve
@Belafon: “Gravity” is just a theory.
Villago Delenda Est
@NCSteve: The theory of intelligent falling.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@OzarkHillbilly: I am neither burns nor a lawyer but my guess is that the 4th Amendment is entirely irrelevant to the question of vaginal ultrasounds. They aren’t being required as a part of a criminal investigation and the results won’t be used against you in a prosecution. So I’m not seeing how these two things have anything to do with each other, since the 4th Amendment has to do with the government (not your doctor) searching in order to investigate a crime (rather than as a part of a counseling session). Requiring a blood test is usually a part of a search for drug use and thus a part of such an investigation.
Requiring an ultrasound is dumb and invasive and shouldn’t be required, but there are a lot of dumb, invasive, unnecessary things that are perfectly okay by the 4th amendment.
Roger Moore
@OzarkHillbilly:
I can imagine three differences that people arguing in favor of pre-abortion ultrasounds could trot out to distinguish the two:
1) The blood draw is used to generate legal evidence against the person whose blood is being drawn. That is very different from the ultrasound, which will not generate criminal evidence and thus doesn’t have any 4th Amendment implications.
2) The blood draw is initiated by the police and is done only for the benefit of the police, while the ultrasound is being mandated as a necessary part of a voluntary procedure.
3) The blood draw involves actually taking something from the patient, while the ultrasound doesn’t.
Calouste
@Bill Arnold: If this God entity had done her/his work properly, we would have had at least had no leap years, right? I’m not even talking about a proper decimal year of 10 months with 10 weeks of 10 days.
Tree With Water
“Or Democrats start voting in midterms. I’ll let you decide which is more likely”.
That depends whether or not voters are being played, and they always can sense that.
Kentucky voters were saddled with a democratic nominee that refused to answer the simple question, “did you vote for the POTUS and leader of the democratic party”? She managed to make Sarah Palin’s inability to name any newspaper she reads appear reasonable. Voters aren’t much to blame for turning their backs on that grade of rubbish, en masse. Republicans don’t win elections so much as democrats lose them, generally for reasons substantially similar to those on display in Kentucky last November. Gratuitous parting shot: things won’t change if Hillary Clinton gains power in 2016.
burnspbesq
The right that is protected by the first clause of the Fourth Amendment is the right of the people to be “secure … against unreasonable searches and seizures.” At least since the 1920s, the courts have recognized a number of exceptions to the warrant requirement. Even if the transvaginal ultrasound to which you refer constitutes a search (which is far from clear), there are non-frivolous arguments that it would fall within the “administrative search” exception to the warrant requirement. And there is a whole other body of case law about whether searches by persons other than the Gubmint even implicate the Fourth Amendment at all.
Also too, states have broad authority to regulate the practice of medicine, which includes the authority to regulate how certain medical procedures are performed. As the case law currently stands, state law restrictions on how a certain medical procedure is performed run afoul of the right to privacy that Justice Douglas ginned up out of whole cloth only if they substantially burden a woman’s right to obtain that particular medical procedure, and whether a particular restriction imposes a substantial burden is determined on a case-by-case, fact-specific basis.
Elizabelle
Mr. Linger believes he is smarter than climate scientists.
Mr. McCain also fails on Dunning Kruger.
John McCain, 78 and Untamed, Savors Senate Dream Job
From the article:
It never comes.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Roger Moore:
That makes me think of that poor bastard in New Mexico who had a forced colonoscopy because the cops claimed they just knew he had drugs.
So, lawyers, would that be considered an unreasonable search and/or seizure?
Cervantes
@Tree With Water:
She could have dealt more effectively with that question, perhaps.
That said, in a democracy, members of the electorate should either vote for the best (or least bad) candidate or, if possible, run for office (and vote). People who do neither because they are holding their noses waiting for someone else to run a perfect campaign — they’re making a huge mistake, and hurting everyone else in the process.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@burnspbesq:
We seem to be running into that problem of states regulating things regardless of the scientific evidence. A transvaginal ultrasound is not medically necessary for every abortion, but the state has mandated it, so it has to be done. Can states decide that only triple bypasses are allowed and anyone who needs a quadruple bypass has to go to another state to get one?
Cervantes
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Not medically necessary for the physical health of the woman — but you know very well what the first two retorts are.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Cervantes:
In many cases, the transvaginal ultrasound is not medically necessary in order to perform the medical procedure of an abortion. I’m not sure what competing medical necessity arguments you’re thinking of. I can only think of political ones, which is my point — politics are overriding decisions about medical necessity and the best standard of medical care.
Tree With Water
@Cervantes: Nope, not that argument again, not in January 2015.. Glad I’m on my way out the door.
Villago Delenda Est
@Elizabelle:
This is a very polite BURRRRRRRRRN.
No one deserves it more than apologist for torturers Grandpa Walnuts.
Cervantes
@Tree With Water:
Before you offer a counter-argument? Or did I miss it?
Jado
@Jacks mom:
http://www.kusi.com/story/27777236/southern-california-heat-wave-sets-record-highs
Elizabelle
@Villago Delenda Est: Eisenhower pulled it on Nixon, did he not?
Bill Arnold
@Tree With Water:
Are Republican voters being played? Just trying to understand the argument.
Sherparick
@libarbarian: 1. Please give an example of what you talking about? Who and what did they say?
2. I assume you are talking about the Federal Government’s accumulated deficit. Where can we start? First, what is the harm caused by a sovereign state’s deficit when it borrows in its own currency. That harm is usually an increase in real interest rates caused by the Government increasing the demand for credit. With 10-year Treasury notes at 2%, not much current evidence of that at the moment.
3. A slightly stronger argument is that paying interest on the increasing debt crowds out other things we might want spend money on or forces Government to raise taxes to pay for Defense, transfer payments, infrastructure, education, pollution control, courts, etc. Again, this is only a problem if debt grows faster than the overall economy, and if there is an economic slump, then interest rates usually fall, at least until they get to Zero boundary. So again, not to much of a problem if a Government is still able to raise taxes and borrow in its own currency.
4. Just on the facts, there are lots of kinds of liberals and socialists, and more than a few share the “balance budget fetish.” One of them unfortunately is the President. But if you mean the Keynesian variety, you are wrong there as well, because we would have a balance budget across the business cycle: that is the Government runs a deficit during economic slumps, and than runs a surplus once the economy is near full out put (despite the recent unemployment news, there is still a lot of slack in the domestic labor force, plus pressure on wages from a strong dollar and foreign labor competition. As these charts from “Calculated Risk” show, we are still a long way from full employment. http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2015/01/employment-report-comments-first-come.html. So the Government should be running a deficit until are back at the 2007 level when adjusted for 8 years of workers graduating from school (HS, Community College, undergrad, and graduate school), and legal and illegal immigration about 1.4 million workers join the labor force annually. So since 2007, when the shit hit the fan, about 9 million workers additional jobs are needed, in addition to the 8.7 million jobs lost during the 2007-2009 period. So we are only half way to getting to the 17 million jobs that we should have now over 2007. http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/fix-sluggish-job-market-dean-baker-122131251.html
5. Finally, we need to consider the trade deficit and the current account deficit, which is right now about 3% of the economy. If the private savings rate is around 5%, but the U.S. has 2.5% current account deficit, then Government deficit spending will have to equal that 2.5% in under the National Income Identity formulas. Further, in the late 1990s when Government became a net saver, private savings fell as U.S. remained a net importer as the U.S. exported demand, and countries like Germany and China imported employment by running trade surpluses with high savings and investment rates.
6. To conclude, this “debt” thing is really not that important as long s interest rates remain near zero and demand is the world’s problem. And of course it is shrinking under Obama and may well be balance by FY 2017 if current trends continue.