Don't cloud young minds

THERE is a strong sense of d?j? vu about what is emerging over leaked emails from the Heartland Institute. The US libertarian think tank, which argues that global warming is not primarily caused by humans, intends to develop teaching material that would cast doubt on the scientific consensus on climate change. Its approach is sadly reminiscent of fogging tactics employed by the tobacco industry and creationists.

Children should be taught honestly what we know about climate change, as well as what we don't know and where the uncertainties lie. Yet a plan outlined in documents allegedly from Heartland would build a curriculum around statements such as "whether humans are changing the climate is a major scientific controversy" (see "Climate sceptics may find fertile ground in US schools"). This is to create controversy where none exists.

There simply is no credible scientific alternative to the theory that humans are warming the atmosphere. In 2010, a survey of 1372 climate scientists found that 97 per cent of those who publish most frequently in the field were in no doubt. They agreed with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that human activity had caused most of Earth's warming over the second half of the 20th century. By comparison with these scientists, the climate expertise of the small group of contrarians was substantially lower (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1003187107).

In the face of such broad agreement, the leaked strategy smacks of tactics used by tobacco companies as the evidence linking smoking to fatal diseases continued to grow. They employed accusations of scientific conspiracy, selective use of evidence and dissenting scientists to contradict public health experts and confuse the public. Oil companies have already used such tactics in the climate change debate.

The approach is also strikingly similar to the "teach the controversy" campaign mounted by the Seattle-based think tank the Discovery Institute. A decade ago, it designed lesson plans for teachers that focused on weaknesses in evolutionary theory and presented "intelligent design" as a scientific alternative. ID proposes that facets of the living world were created by a supernatural "intelligent cause".

An attempt to introduce ID by the district school board in Dover, Pennsylvania, was thwarted in 2005 when a judge ruled that ID is not science but the "progeny of creationism". As an offshoot of religion, its teaching in public schools is unconstitutional.

The judge ruled that focusing on a supposed controversy rather than being straight about science was "at best disingenuous and at worst a canard". There can be no excuse for such deceit in schools, no matter what the agenda.

It is easy to see that libertarians will never be best friends with scientists who tell them their lifestyle is leading the world into danger. But their real beef is with the political response to the science, which is likely to constrain their freedoms. Let's keep that debate where it belongs, in civics or politics classes. To seek to present distorted science to those who will have to deal with the consequences of worsening climate change is deeply cynical.

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