Science Is Constantly Evolving
Discover the latest in climate change and evolution education news.
In “It Came from Outer Space,” I hinted that it would be fun to track Chandra Wickramasighe’s claims about extraterrestrial life in earth’s upper atmosphere back to the early days, when he was a witness for the creationists in the McLean v. Arkansas trial. Alas, the trial transcripts…
In the first part of “What’s wrong with ‘belief in evolution?’” I drew attention to the fact that it’s often problematic to talk about belief in evolution but—indulging my penchant for nitpickery—I argued that two diagnoses of the problem, denying that “belief” is used in science and asserting…
Ichthyosaurus image made available with thanks by UCMP Last week's Fossil Friday turned out being harder than expected! We had a lot of guesses: durodon, mosasaurus, dakosaurus ... sloth. But no, Mackinz and Dan Coleman once again led the pack with...…
Students today are more tech-savvy than ever before. Many teachers are taking advantage of this fact, bringing iPads and other technologies into the classroom. But why not bring in the predictive powers of technology to model the future of our planet? Computer models are a central part of…
I'm taking a break from our IPCC reporting for Fossil Friday! This week's Fossil Friday, being modeled here by UCMP Director of Outreach Lisa White, may be a little too easy for some of you. Did this creature lay eggs or have live births? Did it have gills or did it breathe air?…
The release of a new IPCC assessment, or even a new Summary for Policy Makers as we have at hand today (PDF), is legitimate cause for excitement. In no other field does a global body gather regularly to summarize the state of scientific research in a discipline, nor does one usually get to…
A slide from the IPCC press conference, tweeted by JPascal van Ypersele (@JPvanYpersele) Human influence has been detected in warming of the atmosphere and the ocean, in changes in the global water cycle, in reductions in snow and ice, in global mean sea level rise, and in changes in some climate…
A comment I often hear from chemistry teachers is that they are deeply interested in teaching students about climate change, but don’t see how it relates to chemistry. One might argue that climate change is all chemistry, but there are some really great places where the IPCC…
IPCC Working Group 1- Summary for Policy MakersHere's a graph from the IPCC WG1 SPM, as the above-referenced report is known for short, showing total cumulative carbon dioxide emisssions since 1870 in gigatons of carbon on the X axis and temperature anomoly above preindustrial levels on the Y axis…