Science Education & Policy

Dr. Daniel P. Schrag, a climate adviser for President Obama and director of the Harvard University Center for the Environment, told the New York Times we need "a war on coal" - so we kind of know what the president thinks there, and the president simultaneously endorses nuclear power while he cuts funding for the projects he just endorsed, the same way he said he would fast-track an extension to Keystone XL after he overruled his own government scientists and told them to keep studying it until they found something wrong so he wouldn't have to approve it. In 4 years he spent a large chunk of…

Attention, activist groups: Open-minded people don't change their view when you control what they learn and they only get one side of the issue, according to a new paper, so framing can only take you so far. The results of a new paper in the Journal of Communication suggest that climate change deniers may be less effective in swaying public opinion than many scientists and advocates fear, and may even hurt their own cause among those who are most open-minded, according to the authors.  Closed-minded people usually aren't changing their minds regardless of the messages they receive, or…

Nuclear power is not an environmental issue. There is just no way to spin that it is.  What started off with activists being anti-nuclear weapon has morphed into irrational, anti-science stances against all energy - even reactors that simply cannot have a meltdown and use old nuclear waste for fuel.  Who could protest against such a thing? Well, when you have tens and hundreds of millions of dollars at stake, and a lot of that money is coming from aging hippies who bought into the Ralph Nader/Jane Fonda hysteria that nuclear power was causing a cancer epidemic and the Apocalypse,…

A student who shows up on time, listens respectfully and appears fully engaged to teachers might still lack emotional and cognitive involvement with the course material, according to survey results More importantly for educators, the paper in Learning and Instruction suggests that student engagement—essential for success in school—is malleable, and can be improved by promoting a positive school environment. The result may lead to diagnostic tools for recognizing disengagement, as well as strategies for creating a school environment more conducive to student engagement.  The authors…

Sustainability programs are not just about advocation and action - a lot of thought also goes into how many people working together can change the world. It doesn't matter what issue, conservation or climate change action, some groups work using strength of numbers while others believe a dedicated core is best - and just as many groups have been huge flops using both. The mystery of how to keep a group dynamic powerful rather than unproductive hasn't been solved. Sustainability scholars say they have found that there is a sweet spot – a group size at which the action is most effective.…

Almost no one outside New York City government and health advocates engaged in social experimentation thought a ban on some drink sizes for New York City made any sense or would actually do any good.  Soda companies were obviously against it. They would prefer not to be demonized in Mayor Michael Bloomberg's latest culture war. Small businesses were against it, since a ton of products sold by large companies like Starbucks and McDonald's were somehow exempted. Movie theaters were against it, since overpriced giant sizes of popcorn and drinks are part of the experience (and a lot of the…

A Georgia State University researcher says the Clean Air Act signed by President Richard Nixon in 1970 led to climate change - in a good way.  Jeremy Diem, an associate professor in the Department of Geosciences, analyzed summer rainfall data from nine weather stations in the Atlanta metropolitan area from 1948 to 2009, and discovered that precipitation increased in the late 1970s after drops in the 1950s and '60s. Cause: Passage of the Clean Air Act of 1970, he says. Pollution had been higher in the earlier decades. Some studies have found a general correlation between air pollution and…

A few years ago, I wrote a piece for Communicating Astronomy with the Public outlining how to more effectively reach the public.(1) I have some credibility. Science 2.0 has become a well-known movement despite not having media conglomerate backing, a marketing department, a sales force or any government funding, Not many can do that - or they probably would. The biggest problem I saw among people who wanted to do science outreach was that they didn't always want to do science outreach - they wanted to correct the mistaken beliefs of other people.  They were engaged in deficit thinking,…

Congressman Raul Grijalva, (D-Arizona), has some interesting ideas about science. Namely, he thinks that all of the government scientists in the State Department who did numerous environmental impact assessments regarding the Keystone XL project don't know what they are talking about. And that he can prove it with a few rocks. His confusion is understandable. The White House was and is also a little confused over both science and their own policies.  While the President was stonewalling approval of Keystone XL, siding with environmentalists over science and union members in an election…

It seems like a great idea, doesn't it, to send an automated rover to Mars to gather samples of rocks and dust, and return it to Earth, to study in laboratories with all the specialist instruments we have here. You can understand why so many scientists and mission planners are keen on the idea. However  there are a few reasons for doubting that it is such a great idea to do a Mars sample return at this early stage, with different issues raised by various researchers. Some of these doubts are about the science value. Do we know enough to return interesting samples to Earth,…