MoJo: South Dakota Public Schools to Teach Climate Denial?

[amborin]

http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2010/03/south-dakota-codify-climate-change-denial

"South Dakota may soon make climate-change denial the law of the land, if an effort underway in the state legislature is successful. Via Brad Johnson, we learn that the state House of Representatives recently passed a new law calling for "balanced teaching of global warming in the public schools of South Dakota."

The resolution, approved by a vote of 36-30, states that public schools should be required to teach students that "global warming is a scientific theory rather than a proven fact" and that a variety of "climatological, meteorological, astrological, thermological, cosmological, and ecological dynamics" could be changing the weather. Yes, that’s astrological, as in horoscopes. And as Brad Plumer points out, thermology involves the science of infrared body imaging. Not quite clear what role that might play in global warming......

snip

[meeshrox]

1. K&R

idiots... :dunce:

[prairierose]

2. Thanks for posting this....UInfortunately, my state reps ....

are all repugs and so there is little point in talking/writing to them. I might have to go to the saturday morning coffeklatch where the reps sometimes answer questions.

[Viking12]

3. Ya really gotta watch out for those astrological influences...

I'm sure our resident anti-science denier trolls are jumping for joy at such a provision.

[Spoonman]

4. Religion is a theory....

GW actually is still a scientific theory.

[amborin]

5. everything in science is a 'theory'; but not in the colloquial sense of the term

even where there is massive, overwhelmingly supportive and irrefutable evidence supporting a theory, such that it is, by all measures, a fact, science still refers to it as a 'theory'. alas, this gives deniers a wedge

[joshcryer]

6. AGW is a theory with 95% confidence.

[pscot]

7. Itmakes no difference

what's taught in Dakota's schools. It won't affect what's coming.

[malakai2]

8. On the plus side, there aren't that many people in the Dakotas

So I guess if we must sacrifice some children on the altar of pseudoscience, at least it's a smaller number than if this were being proposed in California or Illinois. In that sense, this is like the Dakotas' version of reinvesting in their future...by thoroughly confusing their students about what science is, they ensure a larger proportion of them have no economic future outside the Dakotas. Solves that pesky depopulation problem big swaths of the plains are experiencing.