WALLACEANA!
In honor of the centenary of the death of Alfred Russel Wallace, NCSE is pleased to list a number of on-line resources on Wallace’s life and work. Wallace, who is credited along with Charles Darwin for formulating evolution by natural selection, is also remembered as the founder of the discipline of biogeography. Born on January 8, 1823, he died on November 7, 1913.
For Wallace Online, curated by John van Wyhe, visit:
For the Wallace Correspondence Project, directed by George Beccaloni, visit:
http://wallaceletters.info/
For the Alfred Russel Wallace page, curated by Charles H. Smith,
http://people.wku.edu/charles.smith/index1.htm
For “The Animated Life of A. R. Wallace” film at the website of The New York Times, visit:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/05/opinion/the-animated-life-of-ar-wallace.html
For a special (and free) issue of Theory in Biosciences devoted to Wallace, visit:
http://link.springer.com/journal/12064/132/4
For a virtual issue of the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society devoted to Wallace, visit:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1095-8312/homepage/alfred_russel_wallace__1823-1913__virtual_issue.htm
For the Wallace episode of the BBC’s “In Our Time” show with Melvyn Bragg, visit:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01r9rxr
For John van Wyhe’s discussion in the Guardian of Wallace and Darwin, visit:
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/aug/09/charles-darwin-alfred-russel-wallace
For Sherrie Lyons’s review of Natural Selection & Beyond for RNCSE (PDF), visit:
http://reports.ncse.com/index.php/rncse/article/view/66/57
For Aubrey Manning’s review of In Darwin’s Shadow for RNCSE, visit:
http://ncse.com/rncse/23/2/review-darwins-shadow
For a chapter about Wallace from Iain McCalman’s Darwin’s Armada (PDF), visit:
http://ncse.com/files/pub/evolution/Excerpt–DarwinsArmada.pdf
For David Quammen’s “The Man Who Wasn’t Darwin” in National Geographic, visit:
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/12/wallace/quammen-text
For Jonathan Rosen’s discussion of Wallace in The New Yorker, visit:
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2007/02/12/070212crat_atlarge_rosen?currentPage=all
For Wallace at the Natural History Museum in London, visit:
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/science-of-natural-history/biographies/wallace/
For three articles on Wallace from evolve, the magazine of the Natural History Museum in London, visit:
http://wallacefund.info/recent-articles-about-wallace-natural-history-museums-magazine-evolve
And for information on a November 12, 2013, Wallace event at the American Museum of Natural History, visit:
http://www.amnh.org/calendar/alfred-russel-wallace-centenary-natural-selection-and-beyond
A NEW POLL ON CLIMATE FROM PEW
“Two-thirds of Americans (67%) say there is solid evidence that the earth has been getting warmer over the last few decades, a figure that has changed little in the past few years,”according to a new survey by the Pew Research Center. Among the striking results of the survey:
“While partisan differences over climate change remain substantial, Republicans face greater internal divisions over this issue than do Democrats.”
Asked whether there is solid evidence that the earth is warming, 67% of respondents said yes, with 84% of Democratic or Democratic-leaning respondents saying yes and with 46% of Republicans or Republican-leaning respondents saying yes. While 61% of non-Tea Party Republicans said yes, only 25% of Tea Party Republicans agreed.
On the primary cause of global warming, 44% of respondents attributed it to human activity, 18% attributed it to natural patterns, and 4% said that they didn’t know. (The remainder either said that there was no solid evidence that the earth is warming, volunteered that the evidence is mixed, or said that they didn’t know.)
The partisan split was evident here too, with 64% of Democratic or Democratic-leaning respondents attributing global warming to human activity, and 23% of Republican or Republican-leaning respondents attributing it to human activity. While 32% of non-Tea Party Republicans attributed it to human activity, only 9% of Tea Party Republicans agreed.
Pew noted, “A majority (54%) now say that scientists generally agree that the earth is warming because of human activity, while 37% say that scientists do not generally agree. A year ago, opinion was evenly divided: 45% said scientists generally agreed, while 43% said they did not.”
Unsurprisingly, attitudes toward scientific consensus on global warming were associated with individual attitudes toward global warming. And the partisan split was again evident: while 71% of Democrats agreed that there is scientific consensus on global warming, only 41% of Republicans and 52% of independents agreed.
According to Pew, “[t]he analysis in this report is based on telephone interviews conducted October 9-13, 2013 among a national sample of 1,504 adults, 18 years of age or older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia (752 respondents were interviewed on a landline telephone, and 752 were interviewed on a cell phone, including 407 who had no landline telephone). The survey was conducted by Abt SRBI.” The margin of error for the full sample was +/- 2.9%.
For the Pew Research Center’s poll, visit:
http://www.people-press.org/2013/11/01/gop-deeply-divided-over-climate-change/
And for NCSE’s collection of polls and surveys on climate change, visit:
http://ncse.com/polls/polls-climate-change
Thanks for reading. And don’t forget to visit NCSE’s website— http://ncse.com—where you can always find the latest news on evolution and climate education and threats to them.
Sincerely,
Glenn Branch Deputy Director National Center for Science Education, Inc. 420 40th Street, Suite 2 Oakland, CA 94609-2509 510-601-7203 x305 fax: 510-601-7204 800-290-6006 branch@ncse.com http://ncse.com Check out NCSE’s new blog, Science League of America: http://ncse.com/blog Read Reports of the NCSE on-line: http://reports.ncse.com Subscribe to NCSE’s free weekly e-newsletter: http://groups.google.com/group/ncse-news NCSE is on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter: http://www.facebook.com/evolution.ncse http://www.youtube.com/NatCen4ScienceEd http://twitter.com/ncse NCSE’s work is supported by its members. Join today! http://ncse.com/join