Discovery Institute: A Friendly Letter to the Heartland Institute and Other Advocates of Free Speech on Global Warming

“Climate skeptics and Darwin doubters now have a common opponent, and we’re going to be linked and attacked in many of the same ways. Whatever you believe about evolution or global warming, may intellectual freedom prevail.”

The Discovery Institute’s Casey Luskin writes:

For years, the primary mission of the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) had been to censor any scientific criticisms of Darwinian evolution in schools — and sometimes in the academy too. We at Discovery Institute were curious and concerned recently to learn that the NCSE is expanding its struggle against free speech to the debate over global warming and climate change.

Now before I go any further, please let me explain that I don’t consider myself a confirmed dissenter from the “consensus” view on manmade global warming. I’m very open to believing that human activity is causing changes in the climate. I have fond memories of taking courses at Scripps Institution for Oceanography, while earning my master’s degree in earth sciences, where we discussed how the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has been going up steadily, year after year, especially since the onset of the Industrial Revolution. Almost everyone acknowledges that fact, and I don’t think it’s purely a coincidence.

That said, I’m also a proponent of healthy, free, and robust scientific debate over these controversial scientific questions. So while I’m probably not going to go out and argue against manmade global warming, I do maintain that we need unimpeded scientific debate in the classroom, the laboratory, the peer-reviewed journals, the government, and the public square, especially on controversial scientific issues like global warming. I’m concerned that in the debate, we’ve seen the same kind of censorship and suppression of minority, dissenting scientific views that have become routine in the debate over Darwinian evolution…

Read the entire commentary.

4 thoughts on “Discovery Institute: A Friendly Letter to the Heartland Institute and Other Advocates of Free Speech on Global Warming”

  1. Steve, thank you so much for posting this article.
    Gamecock, I hadn’t either until a few years ago. Looks like Franks has already posted a good list. My favorite is probably origin of life (chemical evolution). A great place to start is the book THE MYSTERY OF LIFE’S ORIGIN: Reassessing Current Theories. You can find a free pdf copy of the book online. Even though it was written in 1984, not much has changed in the field.

  2. SLP — That’s a great list! Another good list of problems with evolution (with links to articles with LOTS of citations to peer-reviewed scientific publications) is at:

    http://www.ideacenter.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/1510

    “There are a number of scientific problems with neo-Darwinian (biological) and chemical evolution. They include:

    – The failure of evolutionary biology to provide detailed explanations for the origin of complex biochemical features.
    – The failure of molecular and anatomical homology to provide evidence for universal common descent.
    – The failure of the fossil record to provide evidence for gradual neo-Darwinian change.
    – The failure of developmental biology to bolster common descent.
    – The failure of genetics and chemistry to explain the origin of the genetic code.
    – The failure of neo-Darwinian evolution to explain the biogeographical distribution of many species.
    – A long history of inaccurate predictions inspired by neo-Darwinism regarding vestigial organs or so-called “junk” DNA.”

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