Tag Archives: Eugenie Scott

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Darwinism-advocates at NCSE now want to indoctrinate children in global warming

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From the Washington Times.

Excerpt:

On Monday, the National Center for Science Education, a nonprofit group that denounces intelligent design and supports an evolution-only curriculum in the classroom, will expand its mission. The organization of scientists, anthropologists and others is turning its attention to climate change, and it will mount an aggressive effort to teach the nation’s schoolchildren that climate change is real and is being driven by human activity.

“For 20 years, we’ve helped teachers cope with what we can only describe as societal or political problems in teaching evolution. They’re running into the same opposition in teaching climate change,” NCSE Executive Director Eugenie Scott said. “We worry, because of our experience with evolution, that basic science is going to be compromised as a result of this political and ideological opposition. Good science needs to be taught.”

Critics point out important distinctions between the defense of evolution and the promotion of climate change, since the latter carries more obvious and immediate policy implications. Alarmists call for broad federal policies to combat climate change, such as President Obama’s proposed “cap-and-trade” legislation, which is designed to limit carbon emissions. Although that measure is on hold, a law imposed by the European Union requires all airline companies to pay for their carbon emissions during flights in and out of Europe. Officials at the United Nations have even called for a global tax on carbon dioxide emissions.

I’ve always said that there are only two beliefs that are accepted by most people that I do not accept. Darwinian evolution and man-made catastrophic global warming. I always find it telling when the people who push an ideology go after children, in order to indoctrinate them when they have the least understanding of how the real world works. Look at how the Darwinists and the global warmists handle criticism – by attacking and silencing anyone who dissents from their orthodoxy. That should tell you everything you need to know about their ability to win a debate. Notice also how they are not pushing for more Big Bang cosmology, fine-tuning or Cambrian explosion in the schools. That would not be germane to their secular leftist agenda.

News

This one graph should end the debate on wind and solar energy

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Federal subsidies per unit of electricity
Federal subsidies per unit of electricity

(Click for larger image)

From a U.S. House of Representatives report. (H/T Doug Ross)

Excerpt:

In the fall of 2008, then-candidate Barack Obama made a campaign promise to jumpstart the economy with an influx of green jobs… The President has kept his promise to spend billions of borrowed dollars on green energy, but his promises that such spending would create a new, self-sufficient industry capable of providing millions of jobs for Americans have proven empty.

[…]Two years later, the President’s promise of millions of jobs stands in stark contrast with reality. As a recent report from a Bay-Area news organization made clear, green jobs predictions are “proving a pipe dream.”

[…]Since its introduction in the 2009 stimulus bill, the Department of Energy (DOE) has issued $40 billion in new loan guarantees for private-sector loans for renewable energy projects that might not otherwise have been market-viable. Already, multi-million dollar projects, initially labeled as successes, have failed:

• The first renewable energy loan guarantee recipient, solar start-up Solyndra, received a loan guarantee for $535 million in the fall of 2009, even after repeated warnings from federal financial analysts. In the spring of 2010, it failed to complete its initial public offering after an independent audit questioned the ongoing viability of the firm. Then, in the fall of 2010, the firm closed one of its manufacturing facilities and laid off 180 workers. Finally, the firm declared bankruptcy and laid off 1,100 employees only 15 months after Obama visited a company factory.

• Beacon Power, received a $43 million loan guarantee in July of 2009. Since then, its stock price has dropped by 90 percent – a period during which the NASDAQ exchange on which it is listed has increased by 40 percent. The company has not been in compliance with NASDAQ listing requirements, leading to a delisting determination from the exchange.

• First Wind Holdings, received a $117 million loan guarantee in March of 2010. First Wind withdrew its initial public offering in October of 2010, due to a lack of investor demand. According to the Boston Globe, investors shied away from the company because “First Wind owes more than $500 million, loses money on a steady basis, and reports a negative cash flow.”

Even in the midst of these failures, DOE has been advertising additional loan guarantee recipients, announcing a $1.2 billion loan guarantee to another solar company just one day after the FBI raided Solyndra’s offices. Congressional investigators are initiating a review to examine how many future Solyndras have been already financed by this loan-guarantee program or approved through shoddy review, and how can we prevent future examples of this kind of wasteful federal spending.

Why are we in a recession and bleeding jobs? Because we voted for an anti-science ideologue whose energy policy is designed to 1) pay off his Democrat campaign fundraisers and 2) allow him to put on a show about caring for the planet more than those nasty Republicans. We aren’t going to have a lower unemployment rate and lower consumer prices on energy until we kick out the anti-science crowd. I understand that some people believe in religious nonsense like global warming and Keynesianism. That’s fine – let them keep that in the university classroom. Let the Democrat professors of rhetoric like Christina Romer and Paul Krugman make fine-sounding speeches and build castles in the sky there. But out here in the real world, we have to be more practical than that.

In other news, I note that naturalist High Priest Eugenie Scott is claiming that there is no evidence against Darwinism and global warming. God, save us from being ruled by flat-Earth religious nutcases. I don’t mind if they want to say these things in atheist churches, but the rest of us should NOT have to be ruled by their dangerous religious delusions. There’s a place for blind faith, and it’s not in legislature. They shouldn’t be subsidizing their religion with taxpayer dollars. Separation of church and state.