Monday, March 30, 2009

Climate denialism in Texas textbooks

A press release from Environmental Defense Fund: Indicating doubt about the existence of global warming, today's final vote on textbook language by the Texas State Board of Education flouts leading scientific consensus as well as the board's own scientific advisors.

Surprising environmentalists, the board's last-minute decision Wednesday changed the language in a school textbook chapter on Environmental Systems to include the phrase "analyze and evaluate different views on the existence of global warming."

Dr. Ramon Alvarez, senior scientist with Environmental Defense Fund, said that to deny the existence of global warming is not only an affront to the board's own advisors, but also to established science, citing agreement by the National Academy of Sciences, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and even one of the state's premier academic institutions, Texas A&M University. "In a last-minute assault on science and sensibility, the board appears to be supporting its own ideological views rather than those of proven science," Alvarez said. "Experts around the country, including the tenured faculty of Texas A&M's Department of Atmospheric Sciences, agree that our climate is warming and that humans are responsible."

The new textbook language also positions Texas children behind regions already addressing global warming. "The tragedy of this ruling is that it places Texas children at a competitive disadvantage in science education, thus failing them as they prepare to compete in the global marketplace," said Jim Marston, regional director of Environmental Defense Fund.

The outdoor track of Texas Christian University, shot by General125

3 comments:

Created4Life said...

While Alverez may think he is defending science, science is not in the habit of ceasing investigations just because the current 'consensus knowledge' happens to match someone's political agenda.
Teaching children to meekly accept the status quo is not the way we make investigational scientists. Nice assembly line workers, drones, party-line mouthpieces, yes,... but not scientists.

Anonymous said...

I love it. Own condo on the beach. As water rises and I need to sell-will need a stupid Texas kid to believe me when I tell em the water rise is due to the sun's orbit around the earth. Texas is still teaching that one too "right"?
so sad

Clark Wade said...

Great for Texas! The purpose of a good education is to teach kids "how" to think and not "what" to think. Those who claim this is a scientific consensus are liars. There are plenty of scientists who strongly disagree with this agenda of politicizing the data. Let the kids be exposed to the real debate regarding the scientific desenters, of which there is many the global-warming fanatics don't want the kids to learn about. I think Texas is realizing we have been hood-winked long enough. Go git 'em Texas!