Proposed TX Science Textbooks Steaming Mounds Of Climate Anti-Science, Nonsense On Ozone Layer

[hatrack]

Texas public schools will teach its students from kindergarten through grade 12 false information regarding climate change and ozone depletion if a series of proposed textbooks pass a Texas Board of Education vote in November.

The proposed textbooks were written to include the sentiments of the Heartland Institute, a conservative advocacy group funded in part by the Koch brothers, which denies human-driven climate change. In one proposed sixth-grade social studies textbook, an exercise asks students to compare two passages. One is written by two Heartland Institute employees, who are not scientists, and the other by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which compiled the findings of thousands of scientists.

“Scientists agree that Earth’s climate is changing. They do not agree on what is causing the change,” the Heartland Institute passage reads. “Scientists who study the issue say it is impossible to tell if the recent small warming trend is natural, a continuation of the planet’s recovery from the more recent 'Little Ice Age,' or unnatural, the result of human greenhouse gas emissions.”

EDIT

The report also points out two inaccuracies with regard to basic facts about ozone depletion. An “Environment and Society activity” section of a grades 6-12 textbook, “Fossil fuel emissions have also caused a hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica.” But burning fossil fuels does not contribute to ozone depletion. Rather, chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), once used widely as aerosol propellants, cause this effect.

EDIT

http://www.newsweek.com/texas-proposed-new-textbooks-offer-false-information-climate-change-denialism-270931?piano_t=1

[Louisiana1976]

1. I've heard that what Texas accepts in its textbooks provides the standard for the whole

country. If that's true, we're all in trouble.

[starroute]

3. Last I saw, publishers were refusing to go along with Texas

This refers to biology, not American history (which they're also trying to dumb down, according to another thread), but it's encouraging.

https://www.au.org/church-state/december-2013-church-state/people-events/book-publishers-refuse-to-create-creationist

Book Publishers Refuse To Create Creationist Texts To Placate Texans

December 2013

It looks like creationism won’t be coming to Texas’ public school science books anytime soon.

Creationists in the state have been lobbying the Texas State Board of Education to undermine sound science in Texas’ public schools, where they’ve received a friendly hearing.

But there’s one problem: Biology textbook publishers have refused to give into fundamentalist demands that call for evolution to be treated as “controversial.”

In the latest twist of a long-running battle, the Dallas Observer reported in October that the board has narrowed its biology textbook options down to 14 titles – and not one of those choices includes any theories that run counter to evolution.

[drm604]

2. It's good to see a mainstream publication like Newsweek publishing the facts about this.

They're not trying to present a false "balance". They pull no punches and call it exactly what it is, false information, and they give the source of the nonsense, the Heartland Institute, and they link it to the Koch brothers.

This is the kind of journalism I like to see.

[lunasun]

6. Agree. Truth in reporting helps

[blkmusclmachine]

4. Here you go: Texas GOP's 2012 Platform Opposes Teaching Of 'Critical Thinking Skills'

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/texas-gop-s-2012-platform-opposes-teaching-of-critical-thinking-skills

[DhhD]

5. There was no reversal that I know of. They hope people have forgotten about it so it stands!

[sinkingfeeling]

7. When can universities start refusing to accept Texas students due to

their lack of education?