According to Mr. Don McLeroy, the chairman of the Texas State Board of Education any contribution by humans to global warming is a bunch of hooey! The Board of Education met for several days in Austin to discuss and vote on the new science standards (Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills) for Texas.

Most of the contention regarding the new standards was on the teaching of evolution in that up until these new standards, teachers were required to teach the “strengths and weaknesses” of any theory, from evolution, to plate tectonics to gravity. Although the Board approved the standards (which removed the “strengths and weaknesses” requirement) as developed by the science committee, the political maneuvers by conservatives such as McLeroy resulted in the addition of amendments to the science standards. One amendment suggests that students must “analyze and evaluate different views on the existence of global warming. Amazingly this amendment was adopted unanimously! Here we have the group that constitutes the leadership of education in Texas, and they really question the existence of global warming—what a bunch of hooey.

But global warming is not a bunch of hooey. Thomas Friedman’s editorial in today’s New York Times Mother entitled Mother Nature’s Dow gives us pause to think seriously about the evidence that shows that the Earth’s atmosphere is heating up faster than climate scientists predicted. Friedman cites work at the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology (at Stanford University) that indicates that the pace of global warming is accelerating due to increasing emissions of greenhouse gases. In a recent press release, the Department of Global Ecology had this to say:

The data now show that greenhouse gas emissions are accelerating much faster than we thought,” says Field. “Over the last decade developing countries such as China and India have increased their electric power generation by burning more coal. Economies in the developing world are becoming more, not less carbon-intensive. We are definitely in unexplored terrain with the trajectory of climate change, in the region with forcing, and very likely impacts, much worse than predicted in the fourth assessment.

There is so much evidence to show that the Earth’s climate is changing due to human interaction with the atmosphere that it continues to amaze me that we have political and educational leaders such as the Chairman of the Texas Board of Education who claim that global warming is just a bunch of hooey.

Fortunately, the science education community strongly opposes the the conivings of the consevative right, and creates sconce teaching environments that are inquiry-based and innovative.