Kansas Bill Would Force Teachers To Question Climate Change
The bill refers to climate change as a “scientific controversy.”
House Bill 2306, introduced last week, says science classes must “provide information to students of scientific evidence which both supports and counters a scientific theory or hypothesis.”
The bill says instruction about “scientific controversies” should be objective and include “both the strengths and weaknesses of such scientific theory or hypothesis.” The only controversy identified in the bill is “climate science.”
Think Progress reports:
Kansas would join Texas, Louisiana, Tennessee and Oklahoma as the fifth state to cast climate change as a “controversial” topic. But climate change is only controversial in political and polluter circles, not the scientific community. 97 percent of climate scientists actively publishing in the field agree climate change is human-caused.
As National Center for Science Education executive director Eugenie C. Scott explained, “The only effects of enacting such a misguided bill would be to discourage responsible teachers from presenting climate science accurately and to encourage irresponsible teachers to misrepresent it as controversial.”