In the News

The American Enterprise Institute will hold a conference on Thursday, May 3 (9:00 - 11:30 a.m.) entitled "Darwinism and Conservatism: Friends or Foes?"

Speakers include Discovery Institute Senior Fellows Dr. John West and George Gilder. Opposing them with the thesis that Darwinism and Conservatism are compatible will be National Review's John Derbyshire and Larry Arnhart, political theorist of Northern Illinois University.

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Jacob Luecke, of the Columbia (MO) Tribune, reports that a Columbia medical professor made his case for scientific acceptance of "intelligent design" last night and found himself taking fire from his peers for his view.

John Marshall, a professor of internal medicine at the University of Missouri-Columbia, argued in front of about 100 people in a University Hospital auditorium that mainstream scientists were trying to kick intelligent design "off the playing field of science."

"It's as much science as Darwinian evolution is science," Marshall said. "And as a theory, I believe that intelligent design fits the evidence of biology better than Darwinian evolution."

"There's some three billion characters of information in each of our cells," he said. "If one were to put this code, write it out like you would onto a newspaper, you would fill some 75,000 pages of the New York Times."

Some scientists in the audience, however, accused Marshall of masking religion as science.

"I think 'intelligent design' is a code word for God," said John O'Connor, a water consultant and retired chairman of the MU Department of Civil Engineering. "I think that there's no reason for us to mince around and pretend that that's not really what" intelligent design "is trying to propagate."

Where have we heard this talking point before...everywhere!

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Science Daily reports that 'Junk' DNA Now Looks Like Powerful Regulator. Large swaths of garbled human DNA once dismissed as junk appear to contain some valuable sections, according to a new study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine and the University of California-Santa Cruz. The scientists propose that this redeemed DNA plays a role in controlling when genes turn on and off.

No surprise to us...

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This press release from Chapman University.

Orange, Calif. -- Professor Francisco J. Ayala, the Donald Bren Professor of Biological Science at the University of California, Irvine, will be the plenary speaker at the spring 2007 W.M. Keck Student Research Day program Thursday, April 26, 2007 on the Chapman University campus in Orange. His topic is "Darwin and Intellligent Design." The lecture, which is free and open to the public, will take place at 4 p.m. in Beckman Hall 404. Call (714) 744-7862 for more information.

In Evolution News & Views, Michael Behe makes a claim of Intelligent Design.

One day a guy walks up to you and says irreducible complexity is no problem for a random, Darwinian-like evolutionary process. In fact, he can explain how a mousetrap could be made step by step.

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It is interesting that the vast majority of those who criticized the recent Darwin vs. Design conferences in Knoxville and Dallas as unscientific did not bother to attend.

The Discovery Institute gives a summary of the SMU conference in Evolution News & Views.

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An opinion in the SMU Daily Campus thinks Professor John Wise is a hypocrite. Does Professor Wise think the First Amendment rights of scientists extend beyond his own cadre of Darwinists to scientists who are proponents of Intelligent Design? If so, he should be concerned when calls for censorship like his own lead to the persecution of professors like Nancy Bryson, who lost her position after teaching criticisms of Darwin's theory that life developed through an undirected process of natural selection and random variations. There are many other documented cases of scientists who lost their jobs because of their views on Darwinism. If First Amendment rights for scientists apply anywhere, they certainly apply here.

Instead of attempting to understand the arguments of his opponents, Wise introduces a red herring, suggesting that we don't have to choose between religion and science. No one was suggesting any such thing. ID starts with the science, not with any religious basis.

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The Missouri House of Representatives passed a bill last week that would require public colleges to report regularly on how they promote and protect "intellectual diversity." While the bill still must be approved by the Senate and the governor to become law, House passage was a major victory for groups seeking legislative help to change campus climates they view as hostile to conservative ideas.

The bill outlines a series of topics on which colleges could report, and one of them has academics afraid that "intellectual diversity" means that biology professors who teach evolution as more than just a theory competing with creationism may find themselves having to defend themselves against charges brought against them by complaining students. The legislation passed by the House says that among the things colleges could include in their reports are "intellectual diversity concerns in the institution’s guidelines on teaching and program development and such concerns shall include but not be limited to the protection of religious freedom including the viewpoint that the Bible is inerrant."

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Evolution News & Views comments on the self-imposed ignorance of ID opponents.

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Tom Heneghan, of the Scotsman reports on Pope Benedict, who elaborated his views on evolution for the first time as Pontiff. The Pope says science has narrowed the way life's origins are understood and Christians should take a broader approach to the question.

The Pope also says the Darwinist theory of evolution is not completely provable because mutations over hundreds of thousands of years cannot be reproduced in a laboratory.

But Benedict, whose remarks were published on Wednesday in Germany in the book "Schoepfung und Evolution" (Creation and Evolution), praised scientific progress and did not endorse creationist or "intelligent design" views about life's origins.

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The Dallas Morning News features a bold op-ed by Bruce Chapman and John West calling for critics at SMU to employ the method of Charles Darwin himself: engage in the discussion.

The article, "Are the Darwinists afraid to debate us," is a response to the SMU science professors who called on their university to ban the conference from campus.

Rather than "ludicrously comparing ID proponents to faith healers or even Holocaust-deniers," as one columnist did last week, Chapman and West suggest that critics of intelligent design "engage ID scholars in a serious discussion." They pointedly ask, "what is so frightening about allowing it [the evidence for design] to be heard at SMU?"

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ARN now has the "Teaching Origins Objectively" (Kansas Science Hearings) DVD in stock. There is a 2 hour version and a 5 hour version (which includes transcripts of the entire 20 hour hearing). It contains testimony from some familiar names as well as some you may not have heard before:

William S. Harris, Ph.D.: Biochemist and developer of Omega-3 Index for which he has gained international standing
Charles Thaxton, Ph.D.: Chemist, co-author of "The Mystery of Life’s Origins"
Jonathan Wells, Ph.D.: Molecular biologist, author of "Icons of Evolution"
Bruce Simat, Ph.D.: Professor at Northwestern College, Biochemistry and Human Physiology
Ralph Seelke, Ph.D.: Professor of Biology, University of Wisconsin
Edward Peltzer, Ph.D.: Research specialist in oceanography and chemical evolution
Russell Carlson, Ph.D.: Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and University of Georgia
John Sanford, Ph.D.: Geneticist and Associate Professor, Cornell University
Robert DiSilvestro, Ph.D.: Biochemist, Professor of Nutrition, Ohio State University
Bryan Leonard, High school biology teacher, Ph.D. candidate in Science Education
Daniel Ely, Ph.D.: Professor of Biology, University of Akron in Ohio
Roger DeHart, B.S.: High school biology teacher, Westlake Village, CA
Jill Gonzalez-Bravo, M.A.: Middle school teacher, Rose Hill, KS
John Milliam, Ph.D.: Theoretical chemist, developer of computational chemistry software
Nancy Bryson, Ph.D.: Assistant Professor of Chemistry, Kennesaw State University
James Barham, M.A.: Scholar and author specializing in evolutionary epistemology
Stephen Meyer, Ph.D.: Director and Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute, Seattle, WA.
Angus Menuge, Ph.D.: Professor of Philosophy with expertise in the philosophy of science
Warren Nord, Ph.D.: Professor of Philosophy and Religion, University of North Carolina
Mustafa Akyol, Freelance writer for Turkish and U.S. media
Michael Behe, Ph.D.: Professor of Biochemistry at Lehigh University and author of "Darwin’s Black Box"
John H. Calvert, J.D.: Lawyer specializing in constitutionally appropriate ways to teach origins science in public schools

This documentary reveals the problems with how origins is taught in our public school and shows that the other side refused to take the witness stand. Thanks to John Calvert for staging the event and documenting it for the world to see.

Evolution News & Views questions the dogmatic statement put out by the Darwinists that there are no peer reviewed refereed articles.

There is also academic punishment for those who fail to publically toe the philosophical naturalist's line.

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From Evolution News & Views: the Anthropology department at SMU is not willing to have a public dialogue about intelligent design and Darwinian evolution.

Robert Kemper, chair of the Anthropology department writes:

Thank you for your invitation to participate in the Friday night session of your conference. We appreciate your recognition of the value of dialogue on issues that have such opposing viewpoints. Unfortunately, previously scheduled events and prior commitments prevent our department from taking advantage of this opportunity. We nevertheless remain committed to public understanding of these issues, and to providing the public with information to make intelligent choices.

We've yet to hear from the other science departments at SMU that we invited.

It's interesting that these professors are willing to air their complaints and objections in public forums where there is no way for them to be "heatedly debated and discussed."

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Global warming is back in the news this week with the Supreme Court consensus (5-4) opinion that the word "pollution" in the EPA Clean Air Act should be redefined to include C02, and the release of the IPCC Working Group II 2007 Summary for Policy Makers. Since the media seems fixated on keeping the global warming issues in the news every week, sooner or latter you are going to be required to offer up your opinion on the topic in the school classroom, around the workplace water cooler, or at the family dinner table. With that in mind, we've put together a global warming resource list to help you sort out the science from the politics.

Global warming is an indisputable fact. No one seems to disagree that global measurements of the temperature at the Earth's surface have indicated a warming trend of between 0.3 and 0.8 degrees C over the past century. What is disputed, however, is the primary cause of global warming and what we can reliably predict about future climate patterns based on past climate data. The debate has separated in to two opposing camps: 1) the global warming alarmists who claim global warming is primarily caused by human activity and unless we make immediate drastic changes in our behavior, natural disasters such as increased storms and global flooding will result in irreversible global catastrophe over the next 100 years; and 2) the global warming skeptics, who are generally not skeptical of global warming itself, but of the gloom and doom predictions of the alarmists, as well as the role that human activities actually play in the warming trend, pointing instead to historical climate cycles driven by natural causes.

Like the Darwin vs. Design debate, we think the public is best served by a fair and open debate of the evidence. In that spirit, here are some resources for you to consider from both camps. Since the media tends to report primarily on the more sensational alarmist camp, we will try to balance that out by offering more resources from the skeptics camp that are not usually mentioned in the media reports.

The Alarmists:

1. An Inconvenient Truth with Al Gore (2006, Davis Guggenheim, Director). Academy Award winning documentary. Director Davis Guggenheim eloquently weaves the science of global warming with Mr. Gore's personal history and lifelong commitment to reversing the effects of global climate change. An Inconvenient Truth is not a story of despair but rather a rallying cry to protect the one earth we all share. "It is now clear that we face a deepening global climate crisis that requires us to act boldly, quickly, and wisely," said Gore. Also available in book format by the same title with very similar content.

2. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Recognizing the problem of potential global climate change, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988. It is open to all members of the UN and WMO. The IPCC Third Assessment Report (TAR) was released in 2001. The Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) was released in 2007 (these are the policymaker summaries, the full reports can also be found at the IPCC website). The IPCC reports have been the source of many media alarmist stories.

3. US Global Change Research Program. Produced the US National Assessment of the Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change. A detailed overview of the consequences of climate change and mechanisms for adaptation.

4. RealClimate. A commentary website on climate science by working climate scientists for the interested public and journalists. They aim to provide a quick response to developing stories and provide the context sometimes missing in mainstream commentary. Their goal is to restrict discussion to scientific topics and not get involved in any political or economic implications of the science-but as you will find out that is very difficult to do in this debate.

5. Friends of the Earth International. The world's largest grassroots environmental network, uniting 71 diverse national member groups and some 5,000 local activist groups on every continent. With approximately 1.5 million members and supporters around the world, they actively campaign on the most urgent environmental and social issues. They challenge the current model of economic and corporate globalization and organize campaigns against any organization or project they perceive as contributing to climate change.

6. Greenpeace International. A global campaigning organization that acts to change attitudes and behavior, to protect and conserve the environment and to promote peace by stopping climate change among other things.

7. The Kyoto Protocol. An agreement made under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Countries that ratify this protocol commit to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases, or engage in emissions trading if they maintain or increase emissions of these gases. The Kyoto Protocol covers more than 160 countries globally and over 55% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The United States has declined to ratify this protocol.

8. United States Supreme Court. (Jolly Green Justices, Wall Street Journal, April 3, 2007). The U.S. Supreme Court trumped the Executive Branch and the EPA when it ruled in April 2007 on the Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency case and redefined the word "pollutant" in the Clean Air Act to include CO2. To justify its global warming wisdom, the Justices simply asserted that the Massachusetts coastline faces imminent threat from rising seas. The WSJ editorial claimed this was a blatant case of judicial overreach, and places the Court squarely in the center of the alarmist camp.

The alarmists can sound pretty convincing on their own. But before you pull out your checkbook to pay your CO2 tax for exceeding your personal quota, we recommend you browse the following resources to get "the rest of the story" from the skeptics:

The Skeptics:

1. Gorey Truths: 25 Inconvenient Truths for Al Gore by Iain Murray (National Review, June 22, 2006). If you are looking for a quick summary of the top 25 objections to Al Gore's documentary, this is the best place to start.

2. A Skeptic's Guide to An Inconvenient Truth by Mario Lewis (Competitive Enterprise Institute, November 21, 2006). If you are looking for the meat behind the top 25 objections to Al Gore's movie, this is the place to dive in. 154 pages of "Gorey" detail with 324 references and now available in pdf format as a CEI Congressional Briefing Paper.

3. The Great Global Warming Swindle. If you are going to watch Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth", then you owe it to yourself to watch this 75-minute rebuttal by UK's Channel 4 which premiered on UK public television in March 2007. Through interviews with prize-winning climate experts and others, this documentary explains the origins of global warming alarmism; debunks claims of man-made global climate change; exposes the motivations of organizations, scientists and activists sounding the alarm; and explains why it's been extremely difficult, if not downright dangerous, for climate scientists to question global warming orthodoxy publicly. Proponents on both sides of the debate complain that both documentaries play loose and fast with the data and the viewer's emotions-but by watching both, you will have a more balance perspective on the issues. Unofficial copies of this program keep appearing and disappearing on the internet. Hopefully Channel 4 will release an official DVD edition in the near feature.

4. The Climate of Opinion, Editorial (Wall Street Journal, February 5, 2007). The WSJ chimes in on the IPCC WG1 AR4 summary: "While everyone concedes that the Earth is about a degree Celsius warmer than it was a century ago, the debate continues over the cause and consequences. We don't deny that carbon emissions may play a role, but we don't believe that the case is sufficiently proven to justify a revolution in global energy use. The economic dislocations of such an abrupt policy change could be far more severe than warming itself, especially if it reduces the growth and innovation that would help the world cope with, say, rising sea levels. There are also other problems--AIDS, malaria and clean drinking water, for example--whose claims on scarce resources are at least as urgent as climate change."

5. State of Fear by Michael Crichton (HarperCollins, 2004). If you are easily bored with charts and graphs we recommend this unique novel by Crichton that tells a fictional story using factual foot notes. You will learn a lot about the global warming issues while reading an engaging, suspenseful thriller typical of Crichton's style.

6. Global Warming is not a Crisis Debate Transcripts Public debate held on March 14, 2007 in New York City. If you thought Crichton could only deal with this topic in the fictional world, think again. Here is Iain Murray's comment about the debate the next day "Last night, NPR and Intelligence Squared hosted a debate in New York City on the motion 'Global Warming is not a Crisis.' The proposition, Michael Crichton, Richard Lindzen and Philip Stott, won by 46% to 42%. What makes the performance all the more impressive is that before the event the organizers found the motion would have been disapproved of 57% to 30%, so there was quite a swing as a result of the arguments deployed. A cynic (who, me?) might suggest that this sort of result illustrates just why 'alarmists' are trying to close down the debate on the issue."

7. States of Fear: Science or Politics? DVD with Michael Crichton and a panel of distinguished scientists, including Bruce Ames (University of California, Berkeley), Sallie Baliunas (Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), William Gray (Colorado State University), and George Taylor (Oregon State Climatologist)

8. Al Gore's Remission of Sin by Tony Blankley (Washington Times, March 7, 2007). While many global-warming alarmists would be offended if they were called pagan neo-animists, in fact, some leading religious scholars have written cogently on the point as summarized by Tony Blankley in this article.

9. Dissenting Scientists. Although global warming alarmist continue to claim a consensus of scientists, a growing number of scientists are going on recorded as disagreeing with alarmist conclusions: The UPDATED Leipzig Declaration; The Heidelberg Appeal; Statement by Atmospheric Scientists on Greenhouse Warming; Sixty Canadian Scientists; Global Warming Petition Project.

10. Natural Resources Stewardship Project, Junk Science, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Biology Cabinet, The Independent Institute, Global Warming Hyperbole. Several websites committed to offering counter opinions and data to global warming alarmism. This is a good page to start with if you want to understand the science behind global warming and the greenhouse effect.

11. Global Warming Lecture by Dr. Art Robinson (52 minute free online video). A review of the research literature concerning the environmental consequences of increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide leads to the conclusion that increases during the 20th Century have produced no deleterious effects upon global weather, climate, or temperature.

12. Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years by S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery (Roman & Littlefield, 2007). If you only have time to read one book on global warming, this should be the one. Singer and Avery make a compelling scientific case for a 1500 year sun-driven climate cycle that has very little to do with human activity. It is both readable for the educated layman and well referenced to the scientific literature for the professional scientist.

13. The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World by Bjorn Lomborg (Cambridge University Press, 2001 Reprint). If you want a clear-headed assessment on the status of any environmental issue, including global warming, this is the book for you. Lomborg, a former member of Greenpeace, challenges widely held beliefs that the world environmental situation is getting worse and worse. Using statistical information from internationally recognized research institutes, Lomborg systematically examines a range of major environmental issues that feature prominently in headline news around the world, including pollution, biodiversity, fear of chemicals, and the greenhouse effect, and documents that the world has actually improved. He supports his arguments with over 2500 footnotes, allowing readers to check his sources. Lomborg criticizes the way many environmental organizations make selective and misleading use of scientific evidence and argues that we are making decisions about the use of our limited resources based on inaccurate or incomplete information. Concluding that there are more reasons for optimism than pessimism, he stresses the need for clear-headed prioritization of resources to tackle real, not imagined, problems. The Skeptical Environmentalist offers readers a non-partisan evaluation that serves as a useful corrective to the more alarmist accounts favored by campaign groups and the media.

14. Shattered Consensus: The True State of Global Warming edited by Patrick J. Michaels (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005). A collection of ten papers by scientists who disagree with global warming alarmism. If you love graphs and data, this is the book for you. Again well referenced to the scientific literature.

15. The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism by Christopher C. Horner (Regnery Publishing, 2007). In general we are big fans of the P.I.G. series of books (especially the ones on Science and Darwinism), but this one seems a little over the top as the author refers to global warming proponents as "the greens" throughout the book. If you can get past the author's tone (he's just trying a little too hard to be politically incorrect), the book is a useful expose on the political motivations behind environmentalism in general and global warming alarmism in particular. The book is a little light on contrary data graphs that we appreciated in some of the other books, but it is probably the most readable book for the average citizen and a real eye-opener regarding the political motivations of the global warming alarmists.

16. Is There a Basis for Global Warming Alarm? Report by Richard S. Lindzen. The author asks whether alarmism is good for science or likely to have an impact on global warming: "The global warming issue parts company with normative science at an early stage. A good indicator of this disconnect is widespread and rigorous scientific agreement that the Kyoto Agreement would have no discernible impact on climate. This clearly is of no importance to the thousands of negotiators, diplomats, regulators, general purpose bureaucrats and advocates whose livelihood is tied to climate alarmism."

17. New Perspectives in Climate Change: What the EPA Isn't Telling Us, Report by S. Fred Singer, John R. Christy, Robert E. Davis, David R. Legates, and Wendy M. Novicoff. This report reveals that critical portions of science in the IPCC 2001 TAR reports and the 2000 National Assessment of U.S. Climate Change report are misleading, inaccurate, unreliable, or simply wrong. However, that is not an indictment of the individuals involved, but is rather more symptomatic of the nature of science when funded by a government leviathan.

18. Hot Talk, Cold Science: Global Warming's Unfinished Debate, Book by S. Fred Singer. Are the often alarming claims about global warming based on science and justified by the facts? Is the human race really facing a major crisis due to emissions from fossil fuels? Would the proposed Climate Treaty solve a real environmental threat or would it create worldwide economic and social harm? S. Fred Singer is a distinguished astrophysicist who has taken a hard, scientific look at the evidence. In this book, Dr. Singer explores the inaccuracies in historical climate data, the limitations of attempting to model climate on computers, solar variability and its impact on climate, the effects of clouds, ocean currents, and sea levels on global climate, and factors that could mitigate any human impacts on world climate.

19. Global Crises, Global Solutions edited by Bjorn Lomborg (Cambridge University Press, 2004). This book is an outcome of the Copenhagen Consensus 2004. Eight economists ranked 38 proposals for spending $50 billion to address ten problems - climate change, communicable diseases, conflicts, access to education, financial instability, government corruption, hunger, migration, sanitation and clean water, and subsidies and trade barriers. Leading economists evaluate the evidence for costs and benefits of various programs to help gauge how we can achieve the most good with our money. Each problem is introduced by a world-renowned expert analyzing the scale of the problem and describing the costs and benefits of a range of policy options to improve the situation. Shorter pieces from experts offering alternative positions are also included; all ten challenges are evaluated by a panel of economists from North America, Europe, and China who rank the most promising policy options. Global Crises, Global Solutions provides a serious, yet accessible, springboard for debate and discussion and will be required reading for government employees, NGOs, scholars and students of public policy and applied economics, and anyone with a serious professional or personal interest in global development issues. The need for safe drinking water and solutions to communicable diseases such as AIDS and malaria rank at the top of the world's priority list while spending limited research money on climate change solutions falls at the bottom of the cost/benefit list.

20. Aliens Cause Global Warming A lecture by Michael Crichton (California Institute of Technology, January 17, 2003). Here are Crichton's opening remarks: "My topic today sounds humorous but unfortunately I am serious. I am going to argue that extraterrestrials lie behind global warming. Or to speak more precisely, I will argue that a belief in extraterrestrials has paved the way, in a progression of steps, to a belief in global warming. Charting this progression of belief will be my task today. Let me say at once that I have no desire to discourage anyone from believing in either extraterrestrials or global warming. That would be quite impossible to do. Rather, I want to discuss the history of several widely-publicized beliefs and to point to what I consider an emerging crisis in the whole enterprise of science-namely the increasingly uneasy relationship between hard science and public policy."

21. The Reference Frame. A blog by Harvard Physics Professor Dr. Lubos Motl. There is nothing politically correct about this guy who likes to write about "the most important events in our and your superstringy Universe as seen from a reactionary physicist's viewpoint". Global warming is one of his favorite topics these days and if you want to know his thoughts about the IPCC, give him a gander.

22. I Was On the Global Warming Gravy Train. David Evans is a mathematician and engineer who spent six years doing global warming-related research for the Australian government. He jumped on the funding gravy train as a true believer, convinced by the early data that a strong link existed between carbon emissions and climate change, but in time became more skeptical, as new scientific evidence made the causal connection seem more tenuous. His "confession" reveals that the debate is no longer just about the evidence.

23. Scientific Consensus on Global Warming. The Heartland Institute has made available this survey of climate scientists that reveals a wide range of views on Global Warming data and issues. If you poke around on the Heartland website you will find a host of other resources on the topic.

24. What Would Jesus Drive? Global warming is heating up as a 2008 election issue. In this National Review article, Jay Richards takes a look at the varied positions of Evangelical Christians on global warming and explains that there are four distinct questions to be asked (and answered). He concludes by predicting that global warming will be a focus of Democratic candidates to woo the Evangelical vote in the upcoming elections.

25. What You Ought to Know about Global Warming. A hilarious five minute rebuttal of Al Gore and the Global Warming alarmists..."In junior high my science teacher said that the world would be out of fossil fuels by the year 2000."

26. Yellow Science. In this June 25, 2008 Wall Street Journal Online article James Kerian points out that when journalists ignored the standards of their profession, Yellow Journalism was born. Global warming proponents are falling into the same trap resulting in Yellow Science.

27. Climate Change Reconsidered. On June 2, 2009 as Congress debated global warming legislation that would raise energy costs to consumers by hundreds of billions of dollars, the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) released an 880-page book challenging the scientific basis of concerns that global warming is either man-made or would have harmful effects. In "Climate Change Reconsidered: The 2009 Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC)," coauthors Dr. S. Fred Singer and Dr. Craig Idso and 35 contributors and reviewers present an authoritative and detailed rebuttal of the findings of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The scholarship in this book demonstrates overwhelming scientific support for the position that the warming of the twentieth century was moderate and not unprecedented, that its impact on human health and wildlife was positive, and that carbon dioxide probably is not the driving factor behind climate change. The full 880 page report can be downloaded for free at the link above. A free 48 page downloadable summary is also available and the recommended place to start for those who want a quick overview or the evidence and arguments.

Dr. Marcus Ross will be giving a lecture on ID and the Cambrian Explosion at Temple University Monday, April 9. The lecture will be located in Gladfelter Hall, Room #16. Also giving a lecture that evening, on the side of evolution, is dinosaur paleontologist Dr. Peter Dodson of the University of Pennsylvania. The lectures begin at 6 and go until 8:30 p.m. This event is open to the public, and is in the Philadelphia area.

Temple University Web site...

WorldNetDaily reports on the passing anniversary of another great bioethics debate. Only one century ago, eugenics - the attempt to improve the human race through better breeding - was all the rage in the scientific world. And this spring marks the centenary of the world's first forced-sterilization law.

While modern Darwinists may wince, eugenics clearly drew inspiration from Darwin's theory. Back then, Francis Galton (Darwin's cousin), took evolutionary theory seriously, arguing persuasively that hospitals, mental institutions and social welfare all violate the law of natural selection. These institutions preserve the weak at the expense of the gene pool. In the wild, such people would die off naturally, thus keeping the human race strong. As Darwin himself declared in "The Descent of Man," "No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this has been highly injurious to the race of man...Hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed."

Todays' Family News reports that science journalist Denyse O'Leary believes Canadian advocates of the theory of evolution are attempting to "import a controversy" by claiming, as the Toronto Star reported, that God-centred instruction on the origins of life is "creeping into this country's public school science classes and it's up to parents to do something about it."

Read on...

In Evolution News & Views, John West reports that in an over-the-top op-ed appeared in Dallas Morning News, journalist Lee Cullum attacks the upcoming "Darwin v. Design" conference at Southern Methodist University (SMU) as "intellectually confused," complains that ID proponents "refuse to understand who and what they are," and asserts that Southern Methodist University "needs to rethink its policy regarded future use of its facilities" in order to prevent intelligent design proponents from expressing their views on the SMU campus in the future.

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Dr. Kenneth Poppe, author of "Reclaiming Science from Darwinism," will lecture at Northwest Nazarene University Tuesday, April 3 at 7 p.m. Poppe's presentation will be held in the Science Lecture Hall on NNU's campus.

Dr. Kenneth Poppe received his doctorate in secondary education from North Texas State University in 1984. He has been the Colorado state consultant for alternative schools, Colorado legislative coordinator for the "Schools of Choice" grant program, and guest lecturer for Boise State University's teacher education department. He is also the executive director of the International Foundation for Science Education by Design, and has assisted in DNA research of stream ecology. With 25 years of teaching high school biology, Dr. Poppe is well acquainted with public education's stance on evolution and the many challenges now being levied against strict Darwinism.

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