Koch Brothers Planning Effort To Turn Kids Into Climate-Change Deniers

[Bill USA]

http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/koch-brothers-planning-effort-turn-ki

I was talking to a friend who lives in another state about how allergies are really, really bad this winter. I told him my eyes were burning and watering, and my nose runs all the time, too. We were kidding around: "Gee, wonder why that's happening?" It was 52 degrees today in Philadelphia and the plants and flowers are starting to bud and bloom. More importantly, the leaf mold from the fall never got killed off, because we never got a sustained frost.

So of course I'm really happy to see that the Koch brothers are gearing up for an all-out propaganda effort to turn children into climate-change deniers:

Internal documents acquired by ThinkProgress Green reveal that the Heartland Institute, a right-wing think tank funded by the Koch brothers, Microsoft, and other top corporations, is planning to develop a “global warming curriculum” for elementary schoolchildren that presents climate science as “a major scientific controversy.” This effort, at a cost of $100,000 a year, will be developed by Dr. David E. Wojick, a coal-industry consultant.

“Principals and teachers are heavily biased toward the alarmist perspective,” Heartland’s confidential 2012 fundraising document bemoans. The group believes that Wojick’s project has “potential for great success,” because he has “contacts at virtually all the national organizations involved in producing, certifying, and promoting scientific curricula.” The document explains that Wojick will produce “modules” that promote the conspiratorial claim that climate change is “controversial”:

"Dr. Wojick proposes to begin work on “modules” for grades 10-12 on climate change (“whether humans are changing the climate is a major scientific controversy“), climate models (“models are used to explore various hypotheses about how climate works. Their reliability is controversial”), and air pollution (“whether CO2 is a pollutant is controversial. It is the global food supply and natural emissions are 20 times higher than human emissions”).Wojick would produce modules for Grades 7-9 on environmental impact (“environmental impact is often difficult to determine. For example there is amajor controversy over whether or not humans are changing the weather“), for Grade 6 on water resources and weather systems, and so on."

(more)

[physioex]

1. Microsoft?

It comes as no surprise since the Koch Brothers have a stake in the oil industry but Microsoft?

[louis-t]

2. Tell repugs to "stop indoctrinating our children".

They had a fit when Obama addressed kids to tell them to work hard and stay in school. "Outrageous!1!!11"

[immoderate]

3. On the bright side...

Maybe this could lead to a law suit like Dover. And then we can get the court to evaluate the climate argument and (presumably) find for the science.

Maybe?

--imm