Science Is Constantly Evolving
Discover the latest in climate change and evolution education news.
In my fourth-ever post on this blog, Peter Hess and I wrote about how a whooping cough epidemic in California was a symptom of denialism and overall resistance to certain scientific messages. We said: “To successfully change minds, it’s important to catch the denialism before it becomes entrenched…
We recently reached an interesting milestone: for the first time in human history, the global monthly average carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere exceeded 400 parts per million (ppm). This wasn’t the first time that the 400 ppm barrier had been broken; that occurred at Mauna Loa back in…
Over one hundred clergy — including leaders of Christian, Jewish, Unitarian, and Humanist groups — have endorsed a new Clergy Climate Letter. The letter, modeled roughly on the pro-evolution Clergy Letter Project (which boasts over 13,000 clergy), was vetted by leaders from many denominations…
Periodically, people get het up when someone suggests that climate change might be, in some sense, related to changes in extreme weather patterns. Lately, the targets of this outrage were Bill Nye, the Science Guy, and Barack Obama, the President Guy. For all the reasons Chris Mooney discusses in…
People who downplay or deny evolution often forget that evolutionary processes have major, dynamic impacts on the quality and future of their lives. Case in point: microorganisms. I was thinking about evolution and microbes after listening to a recent Science Friday podcast . There was…
Recently delegates from around the world gathered in Bonn, Germany, for a UN conference to discuss how the nations of the world can reach a “new, universal agreement on climate change.” This agreement is meant to outline how nations will work together to reduce greenhouse gases and limit, to the…
In Part 1, I told you about my work with the 1918 influenza virus, and promised to tell you more about why the Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza H5N2 (HPAIH5) influenza strain that is currently rampaging through chicken farms in the Midwest is unlikely to jump to humans. I ended Part 1 by…
For our last Fossil Friday, we took a look at a particularly graceful little specimen rising out of the rock: But what was it? A crinoid, as many of you probably guessed, but not just any crinoid. This particular fossil is a holotype specimen for the species Cupulocrinus crossmani, as…
This week on Fossil Friday, we have a beautiful little specimen collected in Stewartville, Minnesota. Dating from the Middle Ordovician, this specimen is 460 million years old—give or take twenty million. What is it? Guess right and win bragging rights for the week…