Leo Hickman points us to an article by the Guardian's Suzanne Goldenberg:
Texas proposes rewriting school text books to deny manmade climate change.
Sounds pretty interesting. Here's the article. In it we learn that:
Texas has proposed re-writing school text books to incorporate passages denying the existence of climate change and promoting the discredited views of an ultra-conservative think tank.
The proposed text books – which come up for public hearing at the Texas state board of education on Tuesday – were already attracting criticism when it emerged that the science section had been altered to reflect the doctrine of the Heartland Institute, which has been funded by the Koch oil billionaires.
Golly. Evil personified then. However, if you look at the actual report that Ms Goldenberg is citing, you learn that the furore concerns the adoption of new textbooks in Texas schools. Her claim that textbooks are being rewritten is an invention.
Ms Goldenberg has helpfully included a screenshot of the objectionable passage, which begins:
Scientists agree that the Earth's climate is changing. They don't agree what is causing the change.
and goes on to discuss the possibility that some or all recent warming might be natural in origin. I think reasonable people on both sides of the debate would agree that "some" was a racing certainty but that "all" is probably going a bit too far. But of course this being our environmentalist friends, we have the perennial mispresentation of the debate into all or nothing on a human influence (citing Cook et al in the process!), faithfully reported by Ms Goldenberg.
Perhaps more importantly for the students in question, it seems that the Heartland text was put up next to an excerpt from the Fourth Assessment Report, with students asked to assess the two texts. So when Ms Goldenberg says that Texas is "re-writing school text books to incorporate passages denying the existence of climate change" it's simply not true. Nothing is being rewritten. The text is a sceptic one and students are being asked to assess it next to an official one. Education in other words, not propaganda; science rather than religion.
You can see why the greens might not like it.