Pirate's Cove

Here we go: Darwin Foes Add Warming to Targets

Critics of the teaching of evolution in the nation’s classrooms are gaining ground in some states by linking the issue to global warming, arguing that dissenting views on both scientific subjects should be taught in public schools.

My first thought when I caught the headline and first paragraph (above) on my iPhone news app (Fluent News) was “please, no. Do not combine anti-Darwinism with anti-AGW. Let the science or lack thereof stand on their own merits.” As I have written, and said, time and time again, one of the things I hate the most about what the climate alarmists have done is incorporating every real environmental issue with global warming. We forget the real reasons. Manatees (I’m a big donor) must be saved from climate change, not boats going to fast in areas that are restricted. Coral must be saved from AGW, not polluted waters. The Amazon must be saved from globull warming, not pollution and deforestation. So, the real issues are not addressed anymore.

That said, the reality

In Kentucky, a bill recently introduced in the Legislature would encourage teachers to discuss “the advantages and disadvantages of scientific theories,” including “evolution, the origins of life, global warming and human cloning.”

The bill, which has yet to be voted on, is patterned on even more aggressive efforts in other states to fuse such issues. In Louisiana, a law passed in 2008 says the state board of education may assist teachers in promoting “critical thinking” on all of those subjects.

Last year, the Texas Board of Education adopted language requiring that teachers present all sides of the evidence on evolution and global warming.

This is what Excitable Chucky Johnson call “stealth creationism,” and, in some small cases, he is correct, however, what exactly is wrong with teaching all sides of an issue? Not all those bills, or others, are telling or allowing teachers to teach religion tenets, or even Intelligent Design (funny how the same liberals had no problem with teaching Islam in schools, something that happened quite a bit after 9/11, as lefties tried to teach “tolerance” and “multiculturalism”). Should not kids be taught the good and bad of scientific theories? Should they not be provided with all the facts from all sides, to allow themselves to make a rational, intelligent decision on where they stand? Or, are our schools simply to be used as indoctrination centers, much as in North Korea and Hitler’s Germany?

James D. Marston, director of the Texas regional office of the Environmental Defense Fund, said he worried that, given Texas’ size and centralized approval process, its decision on textbooks could have an outsize influence on how publishers prepare science content for the national market.

“If a textbook does not give enough deference to critics of climate change — or does not say that there is real scientific debate, when in fact there is little to none — they will have a basis for turning it down,” Mr. Marston said of the Texas board. “And that is scary for what our children will learn everywhere.”

A perfect example of which side is actually anti-science. It is “scary” that children be presented with all sides of a scientific argument.