This post is about theft by banning chapters from school science texts. Diane Ravitch published a blog post yesterday about a Texas school district that voted to delete chapters from science textbooks that they didn’t like. She writes that the Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District (Cy-Fair) located in suburban Houston has banned three chapters from an earth science textbook: “Earth Systems and Cycles,” “Mineral and Energy Resources,” and “Climate and Climate Change.” In all, the district has cut 13 chapters from several textbooks. According to Adam Zuvanich, in the Houston Public Media, “Trustees for the third-largest school district in Texas, which is served in part by Rosenthal, voted to omit a series of science textbook chapters that address subjects such as climate change, vaccinations, cultural diversity, depopulation and humans’ impact on the Earth and its ecosystems.”

This is common in the history of science education. An legislatures around the country have banned the teaching of cultural diversity, and related topics.

Before I discuss climate change, banning the teaching of evolution is in the batters box.

Evolution

We should start with the Scopes trial in Tennessee in 1925, which made it illegal for teachers to teach evolution. Creationism (disguised as intelligent design) made stealth and direct appearances in science and social studies classrooms for decades. From 2005 to 2015, I wrote blog posts about social and societal values that influence science teaching and put them together as an eBook, Evolution as Design.

The Dover Case

In what was a landmark case, Judge John Jones, a federal judge appointed by George W. Bush in his first term, not only rejected the teaching of intelligent design in science classes but rebuked the Dover, PA school board and perpetrators of intelligent design. The School Board’s directive required that intelligent design be taught alongside evolution.

Evolution is a Theory Stickers

At about the same time as the Dover case, the Cobb County (one of the largest districts in Georgia) School Board required that all 34,000 biology and life science books carry a sticker telling the reader, “This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered.” Two years later, a court required that the stickers be removed from the texts. BTW, high school students were hired at $10 per hour, which totaled a tab of $25,000 to clean up the texts. School boards never give up. Cobb appealed the decision in this case but lost due to a small group of parents who argued that the stickers were unconstitutional. The appeals court agreed.

The evolution controversy has not been settled. There are many biology teachers a who are conflicted about teaching evolution. And of course many students have preconceived ideas about human evolution. Many students come from families who do not accept the scientific basis of the evolution of life in the Universe.

Global Warming and Climate Change

Science deniers have opposed global warming and climate change for decades. Yesterday, the temperature in New Dehli, India, was 127 degrees Fahrenheit. In parts of New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine, temperatures approached 100 degrees. Climate change is real. Nearly all Americans are either under a heat dome, or living in areas where high temperatures are accelerating wildfires. Gulf coast areas are bracing for a higher than normal hurricane season. The school board of Cy-Fair has lived through the highest level of hurricanes and oppressive heat and humidity. And they have an issue with science educators helping student deal with their lives and their futures? For the next ten days and beyond the temperatures in Cy-Fair will be in the 90s.

Texas has suffered from climate change for decades as much as any area of the USA. Yet, this school district’s school board has ratified a move to ban chapters from science and social science texts.

Early Warning that it will be hotter

Even with warnings, beginning in 1898 by Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius, who published a report saying that burning fossil fuels will add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere resulting in higher temperatures, governments have been slow to deal directly with climate change.

Yet students who go to Cy-Fair middle and high schools know that students their around the world have taken activist, scientific and political action to challenge governments and politicians to take action to mitigate climate change. I refer to these students as the Climate Change Youth Activists. What the Cy-Fair Trustees have done is deny the world around them, and instead of providing a moral, ethical and intellectual education for their students, they instead resort to listening to science denial, and anti-science and anti-humanistic understanding of the world.

The advances of understanding climate change have taken a long time, and have met much resistance from politicians, government appointees, and business and industry, especially the petrochemical and fossil fuel industries. Censorship of science is a global issue,[4] but has been exacerbated by the Republican administrations of Ronald Reagan, George H. W., George W. Bush, and Donald Trump, or whenever the majority leadership was held by the Republicans.

James Hanses, An Early Science Activist

One of the first scientists who worked on global warming for more than three decades was put to the same kind of treatment other scientists whose work was condemned and ridiculed including Rachel Carson,[5] Alice Augusta Ball,[6]Hedley Marston[7] and Anthony Fauci.[8] The scientist I’m speaking about is James Hansen, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and former director of the Program on Climate Science. He is now adjunct professor directing the Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions of the Earth Institute at Columbia University.

In 1988 Hansen testified before the United States Congress saying that “he was ninety-nine percent certain the earth was warmer then than it had ever been measured to be, there was a clear cause and effect relationship with the greenhouse effect and lastly that due to global warming, the likelihood of freak weather was steadily increasing.” Mark Bowen,[9] says it became clear that Hansen’s ideas were result in him facing headwinds from climate science deniers. I want to point out that Hansen published one of the earliest papers on greenhouse gases.[10] In this paper he reported that the non-carbon dioxide gases, such as methane, nitrous oxide and fluorinated gases trap more heat becoming important greenhouse gases. However, it wasn’t until 2007, that the Environmental Protection Agency would start monitoring greenhouse gases (Massachusetts v. EPA).

James Hansen was convinced he needed to share his research as widely as possible. He began by giving the “Keeling talk: Is there still time to avoid dangerous anthropogenic interference with global climate change”[11] at the American Geophysical Union Meeting in San Francisco. The “Keeling Talk” honors Charles David Keeling, the scientist who monitored carbon dioxide at the Mauna Loa Observatory beginning in 1958. After this and other talks, Hansen was admonished by political operatives within NASA to seek pre-clearance for any future media interviews, speeches, and Web postings. Despite these rebukes, Hansen blew the whistle and asserted a scientist’s right and responsibility to call attention to research findings and their implications for society. Hanson spoke out during George W. Bush’s administration while they attempted to dissuade him from speaking freely. Finally, Hansen was convinced that the United States and other countries needed to act on reducing global fossil fuel emissions now rather than later.

At the height of the “censorship controversy” a top NASA administrator secretly gutted the agency’s earth scientist’s (Hansen) budget by 20%. Hansen would have none of it. He circulated a letter widely within the scientific community entitled “Swift boating, stealth budgeting and the theory of unitary executive.”[12] Hansen’s research on climate change conflicted with the high-level NASA administrators and the Bush White House. Hansen believes that someone within NASA changed the mission of NASA from “to understand and protect our home planet” to “to pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research…”. To this Hansen replied that “to protect our home planet” was erased by the slimy belly of a slug crawling in the night.”

Jack Hassard, The Case of Censorship Against James Hansen

References

^[1] The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. IPCC. (2021). https://www.ipcc.ch/. 

^[2] Sixth assessment report, Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. IPCC. (2021). https://www.ipcc.ch/assessment-report/ar6/. 

^[3] During the summer of 2021, the Northwest region of the United States and British Columbia experienced one heat done after another resulting in the highest temperatures ever recorded in some of the cities in the region.

^[4] Ritchie, E., Driscoll, D. & Maron, M. Science censorship is a global issue. Nature 542, 165 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/542165b

^[5] Stoll, M. (2020, March 5). The Personal Attacks on Rachel Carson as a Woman Scientist. Environment & Society Portal. http://www.environmentandsociety.org/exhibitions/rachel-carsons-silent-spring/personal-attacks-rachel-carson-woman-scientist.

^[6] Edugyan, E. (2019). The silencing of black scientists. Retrieved February 01, 2021, from https://unbound.com/boundless/2019/11/08/the-silencing-of-black-scientists/.

^[7] Cross, R. (2001). Fallout: Hedley Marston and the British bomb tests in Australia. Kent Town, South Australia: Wakefield Press.

^[8] Klein, C. (2020, September 12). Trump health officials reportedly tried to censor Fauci’s covid messaging. Vanity Fair. Retrieved October 11, 2021, from https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/09/trump-health-officials-reportedly-tried-to-censor-faucis-covid-messaging.

^[9] Bwen, M. (2008). Censoring science: Inside the political attack on Dr. James Hansen and the truth of global warming. New York: Dutton.

^[10] Wang, W.-C., Y.L. Yung, A.A. Lacis, T. Mo, and J.E. Hansen, 1976: Greenhouse effects due to man-made perturbation of trace gases. Science, 194, 685-690, doi:10.1126/science.194.4266.685.

^[11] Design & Development Cause Inspired Media (2006, February 3). Censorship of Federal Climate Scientists: The Critical Case of Jim Hansen. Retrieved February 02, 2021, from https://whistleblower.org/general/whistleblowers/censorship-of-federal-climate-scientists-the-critical-case-of-jim-hansen/

^[12] Hansen, J. (n.d.). Swift boating, stealth budgeting, and unitary executives. Retrieved August 30, 2021, from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/293773830_Swift_boating_stealth_budgeting_and_unitary_executives