Shame of the Smithsonian

Shame on us ...

The billionaire Koch brothers’ war against Obama : The New Yorker

... The David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins, at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, is a multimedia exploration of the theory that mankind evolved in response to climate change. At the main entrance, viewers are confronted with a giant graph charting the Earth’s temperature over the past ten million years, which notes that it is far cooler now than it was ten thousand years ago. Overhead, the text reads, ‘HUMANS EVOLVED IN RESPONSE TO A CHANGING WORLD.’ The message, as amplified by the exhibit’s Web site, is that ‘key human adaptations evolved in response to environmental instability.’ Only at the end of the exhibit, under the headline ‘OUR SURVIVAL CHALLENGE,’ is it noted that levels of carbon dioxide are higher now than they have ever been, and that they are projected to increase dramatically in the next century. No cause is given for this development; no mention is made of any possible role played by fossil fuels. The exhibit makes it seem part of a natural continuum. The accompanying text says, ‘During the period in which humans evolved, Earth’s temperature and the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere fluctuated together.’ An interactive game in the exhibit suggests that humans will continue to adapt to climate change in the future. People may build ‘underground cities,’ developing ‘short, compact bodies’ or ‘curved spines,’ so that ‘moving around in tight spaces will be no problem.’

The Koch brothers are immensely wealthy bankers of the Republican War on Reason. In addition to funding attacks on health care reform, government of all forms, and environmental regulations, they fund a variety of organizations designed to block CO2 regulation.

That's a bad, but the behavior of the Smithsonian is much worse. Omissions speak loudly.