Keeping West Virginia's Children Ignorant About Climate Change

Once again West Virginia Board of Education is trying to weaken the science standards when it comes to global warming.

This started in December of last year, when board member Wade Linger, who has said that, “[w]e need to look at all the theories about [climate change] rather than just the human changes in greenhouse gases,” and that he doesn’t believe that global warming is a “foregone conclusion,” had language inserted in the state’s science standards that portrayed climate change as something that is doubtful and debatable. His suggestion, that “and fall” followed the word “rise” in the sixth grade science standard, was adopted. Other changes included the following:

Original ninth grade science requirement: “Analyze geoscience data and the results from global climate models to make an evidence-based forecast of the current rate of global or regional climate change and associated future impacts to Earth systems.”

Adopted version: “Analyze geoscience data and the predictions made by computer climate models to assess their creditability [sic] for predicting future impacts on the Earth System.”

Original high school elective Environmental Science requirement: “Debate climate changes as it [sic] relates to greenhouse gases, human changes in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, and relevant laws and treaties.”

Adopted version: “Debate climate changes as it relates to natural forces such as Milankovitch cycles, greenhouse gases, human changes in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, and relevant laws and treaties.”

Other Board of Education members also expressed views that were skeptical about the reality of global warming. After the Charleston Gazette reported on the adopted changes, however, scientists, West Virginia residents, and educational and environmental activists pressured the Board of Education to correct the standards to be more in line with the accepted science on the subject. Linger’s changes to the standards were withdrawn. That was back in January.

            While not a word-for-word revamp of his original science standards changes, Linger’s latest move is very similar to the ones he proposed last December. We will see what sort of backlash this latest move generates.

            Members of the West Virginia Board of Education might simply be avid listeners to Rush Limbaugh and other AM radio folks who deny global warming. Or these changes to the curricula might be due to pressure from King Coal. The coal industry already has a big influence on the curricula of eastern Kentucky schools with their Coal Energy and Resource (CEDAR) program. This video below gives an idea of what CEDAR is all about. Watch it and try to tell me it is not indoctrination:

Those tons and tons of coal that are mined in Appalachia turn into tons and tons of CO2 when they are burned in power plants and factories. The coal industry knows this. They know that children who fully grasp this connection will not likely be supporters of their industry when they grow up. So it’s best to keep them in the dark on what the science says about coal and a warming world.