Check out what’s new in climate change and evolution news this week from the team over at the National Center for Science Education.

Why Students Need Climate Change for Future Career Preparedness

“If you want to be an informed participant in … conversations, and ensure that the best decisions are made, you need to understand climate change” argues Josh Rosenau.

Today’s students, he says, have a lifetime of decisions to make, and a lot of new information to incorporate as the world changes”

"If our schools don’t prepare those children for the world they’ll live in, and give them the tools to assess how new discoveries and technologies relate to what we already know about climate change, we’re sending them into an unknown world without a map”

Read the full story.

Science Versus Politics

After a set of scientists reanalyzed their data to conclude that there has been no hiatus on global warming despite indication it was on hiatus since 1998, some politicians felt this to be conspiracy.

As a result, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas, chair of the House Science,) has asked these NOAA scientists to see all emails and correspondents between the papers’ authors and NOAA officials, right before a major international meeting on climate change.

Reid argues “[s]cientists have enough to worry about without fear that their lives will be turned upside down if their results are politically inconvenient.”

Read her full post.

Exxon’s Effect on Science Education

Exxon is currently being investigated by New York state attorney general for misleading the general public. This wouldn’t be the first time a company has gotten into hot water for using their resources to misconstrue science.

For years, Exxon funneled resources into promoting claims of uncertainty about the science behind climate change even when their own evidence contradicted this.

“Promoting claims of uncertainty about the science turned out to be an incredibly effective misinformation campaign,” NCSE said.

Not only did Exxon mislead the public, it severely damaged the quality of science education and the NCSE argues that this is one of the worst Exxon crimes of all. Read the full post here. 

Don’t Stop Eating Bacon Just Yet

Despite a recent IARC announcement that scared lots of folks by declaring that processed meats such as the wonderful bacon increase risk of cancer.

Ann Reid highlights Anahad O’Connor’s post for The New York Times, in which he concludes that processed meats might increase cancer, but with a risk so small you can keep on eating them.

Reid discusses the difficult nature of then nutrition study despite the frequent appearance of them in the media.

A proposal to feed an experimental group an all-meat diet for years and then follow their health outcomes for decades is never going to pass ethical review, no matter how many college kids would be willing to sign up for the all-bacon diet. So we’re left with correlations, and no two studies ever look at exactly the same thing. The result: endless examples of seemingly inconsistent results. Red wine is good for you! But not too much! Drink coffee! No, drink green tea! Cranberry juice is the magic bullet! No, it’s pomegranate juice! And that’s just clear beverages.

Instead of passing on the hotdog, Reid recommends to take part in some things that have a much better chance of increasing your lifespan- such as screening colonoscopy.

Read her full post here.