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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13476 Posts |
 Posted - 04/10/2008 : 17:23:04
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Student Sees Problems With H.S. Text
…LaClair said he was particularly upset about the book's treatment of global warming. James Hansen, the director of NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, recently heard about LaClair's concerns and has lent him some support.
Hansen has sent Houghton Mifflin a letter stating that the book's discussion on global warming contained "a large number of clearly erroneous statements" that give students "the mistaken impression that the scientific evidence of global warming is doubtful and uncertain."
The edition of the textbook published in 2005, which is in high school classrooms now, states that "science doesn't know whether we are experiencing a dangerous level of global warming or how bad the greenhouse effect is, if it exists at all."
A newer edition published late last year was changed to say, "Science doesn't know how bad the greenhouse effect is."
The authors kept a phrase stating that global warming is "enmeshed in scientific uncertainty."
While there are still some scientists who downplay global warming and the role of burning fossil fuels, the overwhelming majority of climate scientists and peer-reviewed scientific research say human activity is causing climate change. Last year an international collection of hundreds of scientists and government officials unanimously approved wording that said the scientific community had "very high confidence," meaning more than 90 percent likelihood, that global warming is caused by humans. |
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Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 04/11/2008 : 02:52:21 [Permalink]
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Hmm. Houghton Miffin's been bandied about the stock exchanges quite a bit over the years. At this point, who's to say what the company's philosophy might be?
Or it might be something like the Texas mess that recently came to light, where the state is such huge a customer that they have to do a little kow-towing in order to keep it on board.
At any rate, I'm glad to see someone hitting back!
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
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A conservative agenda in a HS text book...
