Kansas state lawmakers are pushing a bill that would command teachers to include evidence in their curriculum that would counter climate change.
With the Kansas State Board of Education preparing to vote on new science standards this year, the House Education Committee has introduced a bill asking schools to include evidence against climate change in science classes.
House Bill 2306, introduced last week, says science classes must “provide information to students of scientific evidence which both supports and counters a scientific theory or hypothesis.”
The bill says instruction about “scientific controversies” should be objective and include “both the strengths and weaknesses of such scientific theory or hypothesis.” The only controversy identified in the bill is “climate science.”
Aside from the fact that this would be a giant red flag warning teachers not to move to Kansas to teach, there’s another problem — there is no tangible evidence that counters climate change. There is only conspiracy theories and accusations published by the likes of World Net Daily, a ginned up email scandal known as “Climategate” which was promoted for several years by Fox News, and “Al Gore is fat” jokes.
If the state House Education Committee is going to mandate that teachers provide counter-evidence that challenges well-established climate change science, the committee should provide it. Because any credible teacher or board of education is going to have a hard time uncovering such evidence on their own if it wasn’t published in the dank corners of the internet or repeated ad nauseam on Fox.
And in case you weren’t aware, the scientists behind the much-hyped “Climategate” scandal were cleared of any wrongdoing by the National Science Foundation.
