Tea Partiers Bid to Keep Climate Change Out of the Classroom

First, South Dakota put forth a measure to teach public school students that climate change wasn't real. Now, residents in Mesa County, Colorado have presented a petition to their school board asking that science teachers remove climate change lessons from their curriculum.

The petition, which garnered 700 signatures, was spearheaded by the conservative group (with the Fox News-esque name) Balanced Education for Everyone. It was presented by Rose Pugliese, a recently unsuccessful candidate for a school board seat with strong ties to the Tea Party movement, who has also become the measure's unofficial spokesperson. (One of her recent soundbites: "It [global warming] is not a proven scientific theory. There is not enough evidence to support it.")

Interestingly, the petition—echoing the movement behind it—frames global warming as a political rather than scientific issue. Specifically, it asks that "political" issues be kept out of the classroom. Meanwhile, residents of local Colorado counties have taken to the group's website to decry "liberal madness."

At a petition meeting with some 40 Tea Party acolytes and other conservative residents, a scientist and a professor got up to speak about the very real threat of man-made climate change. "This is not just some liberal theory," Richard Alward, an ecologist with a Ph.D, stated. In response, the stalwart skeptics "scoffed and shook their heads," according to The Denver Post.

Also troubling is that while the petition specifically seeks to silence the discussion of global warming in the classroom, there are signs that it could actually lead to explicit denialist teaching. Balanced Education for Everyone was started by the Independent Women's Forum, a conservative group that has called for the skeptic documentary Not Evil, Just Wrong to be a part of the school curriculum.

Even those queasy about the idea of global warming see folly in the measure. In The Denver Post, op-ed columnist Vincent Carroll wrote that he wasn't happy Colorado schools were using An Inconvenient Truth as a teaching tool. But, he wrote:

Climate change happens to be an important scientific issue, and it would be foolish to ban its discussion simply because some teachers are too unsophisticated — or too ideological — to distinguish between propaganda and an appropriate lesson plan. In fact, climate change is a model topic for teaching students the complexities and uncertainties that characterize evolving scientific theories, while introducing them to a range of opinion among scholars — from MIT's Richard S. Lindzen to NASA's James Hansen — as well as the "consensus" view represented by the scandal-plagued Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

As of now, the school board has accepted the petition but hasn't yet acted on it. If the board does decide to pretend climate change doesn't exist, this will negatively impact not only the students of Mesa County, but potentially many more. Balanced Education for Everyone has called its petition a "national test case," and, already, a parent in Las Vegas has started her own. In other words, what we're seeing may only be the beginning.

Photo credit: Flickr user Old Shoe Woman (Creative Commons)