Amazing LAT Editorial: Climate denial in the classroom

[kpete]

Climate denial in the classroom
It's bad enough that we're doing so little to fight climate change;
let's not ask teachers to lie about it too.

The culture wars have been fought in the classroom for decades, waged over such issues as school prayer, the teaching of evolution and whether the Pledge of Allegiance should include the phrase "under God." But the conflict usually pits backers of religious instruction against secularists. The latest skirmish, by contrast, is centered on a scientific issue that has nothing to do with religious teaching: climate change.

Leaked documents from the Heartland Institute in Chicago, one of many nonprofits that spread disinformation about climate science in hopes of stalling government action to combat global warming, reveal that the organization is working on a curriculum for public schools that casts doubt on the work of climatologists worldwide. Heartland officials say one of the documents was a fake, but the curriculum plans were reportedly discussed in more than one. According to the New York Times, the curriculum would claim, among other things, that "whether humans are changing the climate is a major scientific controversy."

That is a lie so big that, to quote from "Mein Kampf," it would be hard for most people to believe that anyone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously." On one side of the "controversy" are credentialed climatologists around the globe who publish in reputable, peer-reviewed scientific journals and agree that the planet is warming and that humans are to blame; on the other are fossil-fuel-industry-funded "experts" who tend to have little background in climatology and who publish non-peer-reviewed papers in junk magazines disputing established truths. These are quickly debunked, but not before their findings have been reported by conservative blogs and news outlets, which somehow never get around to mentioning it when these studies are proved to be badly flawed.

the rest:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-ed-climate-20120220,0,3564279.story

[saras]

1. There's really nothing more to be said. There is no "other side".

The SCIENCE was in by the mid-seventies. Since then, we've been gathering data, filling in details, tweaking models, and dealing with the fact that most SCIENTISTS don't change their opinions, just die off and let the young teach the new paradigm.

Of course, we lie equally badly about other subjects. Teen sexuality and "abstinence". Legal vs. illegal drugs. Aging and death. Pollution and behavior. Fertility rates worldwide. The "liberal-conservative" dichotomy. The neurological effects of media on children. Why NOT lie about climate disruption?