Apparently seeking to exceed my home state in sheer pigheaded ignorance, the state school board in Wyoming has rejected the Next Generation Science Standards:
The science guidelines in question are the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), adopted so far by 11 states and the District of Columbia. The National Research Council, the National Science Teachers Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science—working with 26 state governments—developed the NGSS to update K-12 science education in schools for the first time since 1998. Essentially the NGSS provides benchmarks for what students should learn in each grade, but leaves decisions about specific textbooks and how to teach the curriculum up to individual districts, schools and educators.
In Wyoming, a committee comprised of 30 science educators spent 18 months studying and comparing the NGSS with existing guidelines in other states, and then unanimously recommended that it be adopted by the State Board of Education. However, in March, the legislature added a footnote to the state budget that prohibited any public spending to implement the NGSS—effectively killing it. Then, a month later, the State Board of Education told the committee of science educators to develop a new set of standards, which would better reflect the values and economic interests of Wyoming.
The chair of the state board opined that he doesn’t accept climate change as a fact, and frets that the standards are biased against fossil fuel development.
Unpack that for a minute: the standards suggest children lean settled science. The science shows that fossil fuels are causing no small amount of harm. They are concerned that learning this information will hurt an industry.
I mean: Damn.
Last night, Mrs Heathen and I watched the episode of Cosmos about Clair Patterson’s work exposing the dangers of lead emissions from gasoline, and how vigorously opposed he was by the oil industry at the time.
The oil goons even had a so-called expert on their payroll who insisted that the levels of lead in the environmental background at the time were completely normal. (Eventually, Patterson prevailed, and lead has been phased out — and, wouldn’t you know it, lead levels have dropped dramatically.)
You’d think they’d learn, but apparently not. You’d think we as a culture would learn, too, not to listen to people who say pollution is no big deal when they stand to make money doing so.
Lean the kids off of energy is exactly what the climate change alarmists are trying to do. Considering that NOAA and NASA are replacing actual temperature readings with models in order to make data look right, I would hardly call this settled science or science.
It is odd that you use the example of reformulated gasoline as a reason to buy into this bullshit, as replacing lead with Toluene and Xylenes (Aromatics) put more compounds into the atmosphere than lead. Now that the government has moved to ban MTBE ( the only one in the world, I might add) we put alcohol made from corn into gasoline and into the air. This was a move to transfer farm subsidies to the driver. Hypocrisy in terms of science hardly broaches the bullshit that is perpetuated in the name of the environment. The same “environmentalists” who pounce on evil oil, and GMO corn forget it was their “science” that forced our fuel supply to be cut by an unattainable 15% ethanol grown with GMO seeds. Alcohol puts more vapor into the air, is less efficient as a fuel, and damages the longevity of engines. So tell me about the science again, especially that which changes data in the name of science.