A Climate Hostile To Logic, Con't

As I said in the article below, global climate change skeptics try to pretend that the science is on their side and they explain that the debate is over what should be done about climate change, rather than if it's happening. The problem of course is that it's impossible to take them seriously when the reality is Big Energy lobbies that fund these skeptics instruct state legislatures to reject science education standards in order to lie to students and parents, because an ignorant population is more easily controlled.

Sitting in the headquarters of the Wyoming Liberty Group, Susan Gore, founder of the conservative think tank, said new national science standards for schools were a form of “coercion,” adding, “I don’t think government should have anything to do with education.”

Ms. Gore, a daughter of the founder of the company that makes Gore-Tex waterproof fabric, was speaking here weeks after the Republican-controlled Legislature made Wyoming, where coal and oil are king, the first state to reject the standards, which include lessons on human impact on global warming. The pushback came despite a unanimous vote by a group of Wyoming science educators urging acceptance. Wyoming was the first state to say no, but likely not the last. A House committee in Oklahoma last week voted to reject the standards, also in part because of concerns about how climate change would be taught.

Amid a growing cascade of studies documenting melting ice caps and rising temperatures, schools are increasingly teaching students about climate change and the new guidelines, known as the Next Generation Science Standards, have been adopted so far by 11 states and the District of Columbia. They assert that human activity has affected the climate.

Many here and elsewhere consider that liberal dogma rather than scientific consensus and want their children to hear it as theory rather than fact. What is more, some Wyoming lawmakers say, such teaching is a threat to the state’s economic engine.

The scientific fact is a threat to Big Energy, so it must be obliterated.  Your kids have to remain ignorant in order to protect the profits of these companies, so they can continue to wreck our environment (and they fully expect taxpayers to deal with the mess.)  These companies aren't just greedy, they are truly evil.

In Wyoming, after 18 months of study and comparison with standards from other states, a committee of science educators unanimously recommended last fall that the State Department of Education adopt the guidelines. In March, at the tail end of the state’s legislative session, lawmakers passed a footnote to the biennial budget, prohibiting any public spending to implement the new standards.

And last month, the State Department of Education ordered the committee of science educators to come up with a new set of standards. Mr. Micheli, the chairman and a cattle rancher from Fort Bridger, said he was concerned about any teaching on climate change that did not consider “the cost-benefit analysis in terms of the expenditure of the effort to bring under control global warming.”

Scientific education is now subject to cost-benefit analysis in an America run by Republicans and their multi-billion dollar industrial backers.  Imagine the sentence "concerned about any teaching on slavery that did not consider the cost-benefit analysis in terms of the expenditure of the effort to emancipate slaves" and you're beginning to see how shockingly ludicrous the Wyoming GOP's position on this is.

They are wholly owned by the energy companies, and these companies are the ones making decisions about what kids are now allowed to learn.  We have to say "Well there's controversy" because you know, teaching that mad-made climate change is happening right now due to consumption of petroleum products might get people to think that this level of consumption is unsustainable.

By the way, here in Kentucky?

In other states, the debate is also intense. Last fall, the Legislature in Kentucky voted to reject the new science guidelines but Gov. Steven L. Beshear overruled the Legislature and put the standards in place with an executive order.

We were nearly the first state to reject climate change education standards.  A Democrat prevented that.   Don't tell me there's no difference between the two parties.