Skeptics Failing to Get Anti-Climate Science Agenda into Texas Classrooms

Last March, the Texas State Board of Education approved controversial language in the curriculum requiring teachers to cast doubt on human contributions to climate change. Now, more than one year later, it appears that rule is being largely ignored by educators across the state, a SolveClimate examination has found. 

In fact, dozens of inquiries failed to turn up one science teacher in Texas whose approach to the subject of climate change has been at all affected by the amendment to the state science curriculum. The standard has also done nothing to turn students against the consensus view of man-made global warming, according to educators.

Some even said that their students are more receptive than ever to the established science. 

"It's too 'in the news' for it to go away," said Paul Caggiano, an environmental science teacher at St. Pius X High School in Houston. "When I ask a kid to do a current events report, they're not going to come up with a skeptical view of climate change. They're going to see it for what it is."

Still, as the scientific consensus continues to build worldwide, skeptics of global warming show no sign of giving up their fight against teaching the mainstream view in classrooms in Texas, and across the United States.

Skeptic-Led Efforts  Aim for 'Objective Review' of Science

On May 25, the Mesa County School Board in Colorado received a 700-signature petition from a local lawyer and conservative activist demanding that climate change no longer be taught as scientific fact in Mesa County schools.

Similarly, in March, the South Dakota State Legislature passed a bill urging teachers to make clear to their students that "global warming is a scientific theory rather than a proven fact." And earlier this year, the Kentucky Science Education and Intellectual Freedom Act was submitted to the state legislature in an effort to encourage debate over "the advantages and disadvantages" of scientific theories being studied.

Though the Kentucky bill died in committee, it was modeled after a similar bill, which became Louisiana state law in 2008, and encouraged teachers "to help students understand, analyze, critique, and objectively review scientific theories," such as climate change.

If these laws sound somewhat redundant — promoting lessons and teaching techniques that most educators already use — it's because they are.

Beyond merely encouraging additional "analysis" and "objective review," of course, they're intended to get teachers to devote more class time to arguments against the existence of anthropogenic, or man-made, climate change. So was the case in Texas.

New Climate Language 'Unnecessary,' 'All Politics,' Teachers Say

In March 2009, the Texas State Board of Education changed the language in the state curriculum to force teachers to analyze and evaluate "different views on the existence of climate change."

Even in that notoriously conservative state, however, the effort appears to be failing. 

Jamie Biel, an environmental science teacher at Lake Travis High School in Austin, for instance, said the amendment was "unnecessary."