Controversy continues over the adoption of new schoolbooks in Texas, as environmental lobbyists fight to have sound science concerning global warming removed from the curriculum. With the ability to influence millions of schoolchildren regarding climate change, environmental alarmists are trying to ensure their message is the only one heard.
Alarmists claim the science is certain: Humans are causing catastrophic climate change and governments must force people to use less energy to prevent disaster. To be clear, climate change is occurring; the climate is always changing. However, there is an ongoing, heated and widespread scientific debate over whether human activities are responsible for all, some or none of the recent climate change. In addition, there is certainly no agreement a warmer climate will result in more dangerous weather patterns or climate conditions than we already experience.
The predictions of catastrophe are based on models that ignore the facts and failed to predict the current 18-year lack of increase in Earth’s average temperature, which has happened despite rising CO2 levels. All the models have assumed and continue to assume the increase in CO2 is the culprit causing temperature increases. The models are wrong.
The textbooks in question don’t deny human-caused global warming is happening; they just accurately report scientists are still debating the question. They present the evidence and ask the students to make up their own minds.
Having an open mind is what climate alarmists really object to.
A couple of textbook publishers, including Pearson Education just last week, buckled to the activists’ demands and replaced the scientific understanding of climate with the politically driven, dogmatic claim humans are causing dangerous climate change. Reasonable people will praise McGraw-Hill for, so far, resisting the alarmists’ pressure tactics.
The Texas Board of Education is justifiably acting cautiously to ensure its textbooks rigorously present the best science available and accurately portray ongoing debates, including those over climate change. They are right to do so and should endorse only textbooks that uphold critical thinking and skepticism in the face of unsupportable claims of pending climate disaster.
[Originally published at Dallas News]
H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D., is the Director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy and the managing editor of Environment & Climate News.
