Battle over climate science spreads to US schoolrooms

SCHOOLS in three US states - Louisiana, Texas and South Dakota - have been told to teach alternatives to the scientific consensus on global warming. The moves appear to be allied to efforts to teach creationism in public schools. Such efforts have in the past been thwarted when courts ruled them unconstitutional, but those advocating the teaching of sound science may find it harder to fight misrepresentations concerning climate change.

Last week, South Dakota's state legislature adopted a bill which "urges" schools to take a "balanced approach" to teaching about climate change, because the science is "unresolved" and has been "complicated and prejudiced" by "political and philosophical viewpoints".

When New Scientist asked what these were, the bill's sponsor, Don Kopp, mentioned claims commonly cited in opposition to the idea of human-induced global warming: for example, that any global warming is due to changes in solar activity. "I am against bankrupting the country to fight warming," he said, "without being sure it's true."

The measure makes no mention of evolution, but its wording resembles bills in other states primarily aimed at teaching alternatives to evolution. Since a court in Pennsylvania ruled in 2005 that "intelligent design" had religious origins, so could not be taught in state schools, states have used vaguer language in bills when calling for schools to teach alternatives to established science.

In Michigan in 2005, one such bill also called for students to "critically evaluate... theories of global warming". It failed, as have all similar bills - except in Louisiana, which in 2008 passed a law requiring "open and objective discussion" of warming, evolution and human cloning. Kentucky is now debating a similar bill.
In March 2009, Texas adopted school standards that both allow creationist claims and say students must "evaluate different views on the existence of global warming". Texas buys more textbooks than any other state, so publishers often conform to Texan demands, including adding scepticism about warming.
Bundling warming with evolution in calls for "academic freedom" may make it harder to challenge these laws. Steve Newton of the National Center for Science Education in Oakland, California, observes that the US constitution restricts the teaching of religious ideas in state schools, but not the teaching of bad science. A study last year found that evangelical Christians, who account for most creationists, are up to three times as likely as other Americans to deny that warming has human origins.

Moves against climate science and in favour of creationism are linked in other ways too: some see warming, like evolution, as the product of a hostile scientific establishment. When the US Chamber of Commerce, which opposes stringent cuts in greenhouse emissions, called for a public hearing on climate science last August, it called it "the Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century", after the 1925 Tennessee trial about teaching evolution.