The Case of the Missing Climate Science

Me

Hi GEEKs readers! This is GEEKs cofounder Katie M-T, here with a thrilling account of drama, mystery and hope from the world of high school environmental education.

My Generation's Climate Science Education
My freshman year of high school started out with a bang when my Human Geography class featured several readings from "experts" who argued that climate change was not real. Our class learned that the existence of climate change
was still a controversial topic among scientists in 2009. I've been outraged, and on the lookout for similar situations, ever since.

Peer-reviewed climate articles
from 1991 to 2012- the red
line is the 24 that reject
climate change

My vigilance paid off recently in my senior year, when I got curious about a friend's Wildlife Biology class and asked him what they learned about climate science. He said that his class had split into groups to read articles either supporting or refuting the theory of climate change, then presented facts from each of the articles to the whole class. Each student had written a paragraph on their own feelings about the theory's legitimacy. My friend and his group had read one of the articles that refuted the climate change theory, and this experience in science class had helped him decide that climate change was probably a hoax. Confused by my look of horror, he was happy to hand me his copy of the offending article. Which leads me to a segment I call...

I Can't Believe They Read This in a Science Class

The article provided to my friend and his classmates to read was called "Sorry Global Warming Alarmists, the Earth is Cooling" by Peter Ferrara. Ferrara is a senior fellow for

Peter Ferrara

entitlement and budget policy (not climate science!) at the Heartland Institute, a group the Economist calls
"The world's most prominent think tank promoting skepticism about man-made climate change". You can
read more about the Heartland Institute and its self-described "ambitious program of research and educational projects in defence of free-market environmentalism" on its website here.

But first, read the article presented to my friend's science class as a legitimate source of information in a controversial scientific debate on climate change: 
ARTICLE <--- Please click this link!

I Understand That You Might Not Have Time to Read the Whole Article
So here are some of my favorite highlights:
-"global temperatures have already been declining for more than 10 years, and global temperatures will

The article suggests that
climate change will not be an issue
because sunspots like these are linked
to global cooling.

continue to decline for another two decades or more."
-Low sunspot activity has historically caused cooling periods, and since we now have low sunspot activity, we should actually be worried about how cold it's going to get.

-"All I ever see from the global warming alarmists... is political public relations, personal attacks, ad hominem arguments, and name calling, combined with admissions that they can't defend their views in public debate."

Damage Control

Seeing my friend's heavily underlined copy of this article, and hearing his astonishment at the idea that I believe in climate change despite all this evidence against it, I felt disappointed with my school system. It's no wonder that we move so slowly on

This kid from the Lorax also wishes
his school had better Enviro Ed.

terrifying environmental issues when my school is teaching my friends that climate change is not real. 
I spent the next few days frantically researching ways to prove climate science to my Heartland-brainwashed friend, and this NASA website did partially convince him that climate scientists have a legitimate point.

I reported the issue to the incredibly supportive teacher in charge of a lot of my school's science curriculum. She brought up the problem right away with the other science teachers, and gave me the helpful information that a long-term substitute teacher had delivered the offending lesson. Since the usual Wildlife Biology teacher is apparently a hardcore climate science believer, the original lesson plan was probably a discussion of bias and
credibility in the science articles the class read- so this situation might not be as bad as it looks at face value.
However, the fact that we even once let true climate science slip through the cracks- especially in an incredibly liberal school district like mine- is still a symptom of a very, very flawed system.

Redemption?

Unless someone like you
cares a whole awful lot,
nothing is going to get better-
it's not.

Note the question mark. I put it there because the last-minute semi-happy ending at my school doesn't really
solve the problem. Our problems with environmental education won't be fixed until we all start paying attention to whose facts our communities' students are underlining in their "science"
articles. We have to notice when climate change is mysteriously absent, or shows up as a controversial topic of debate, in our science classes. We have to make sure that our communities' teachers don't need to fight to sneak environmental education into their classes. We're already standing up to the biggest powers in our Capitol buildings and around the world, fighting massive battles- pipelines, renewable energy standards, pollution controls, the entire fossil fuel industry. It's time that we start fighting the underhyped, underrated, and infinitely important battle for real environmental education.
My classmates and I are counting on it.

Thanks for reading! Have something to say about environmental education in your school or community? Send us an email at get.geeky28@gmail.com, or check out our Facebook page. If you want to spread this message, be sure to click under "Share This!" on the sidebar!