Climate change in Texas school textbooks is causing friction in America’s biggest oil and gas state

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — How science textbooks in Texas address climate change is at the center of a key vote expected Friday after some Republican education officials criticized books for being too negative toward fossil fuels in America’s biggest oil and gas state.

The issue of which textbooks to approve has led to new divisions on the Texas State Board of Education, which over the years has faced other heated curriculum battles surrounding how evolution and U.S. history is taught to more than 5 million students.

Science standards adopted by the board’s conservative majority in 2021 do not mention creationism as an alternative to evolution. Those standards also describe human factors as contributors to climate change.

But some Republicans on the 15-member board this week waved off current textbook options as too negative toward fossil fuels and failing to include alternatives to evolution. One of Texas’ regulators of the oil and gas industry, Republican Wayne Christian, has urged the board to “choose books that promote the importance of fossil fuels for energy promotion.”
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I've only had experience in the SE part of TX, which is very flat. I've been of the Gulf of Mexico & the land on shore is almost at sea level. Houston has flooded. Texans might want to trade their guns for boats. How long can you tread water?

JacksinPA said:

Texas approves new textbooks after friction over fossil fuels in the US's biggest oil and gas state

The Texas education board has approved new textbooks but called on some publishers to change their depictions of fossil fuels in the U.S.'s biggest oil and gas state.

apnews.com

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — How science textbooks in Texas address climate change is at the center of a key vote expected Friday after some Republican education officials criticized books for being too negative toward fossil fuels in America’s biggest oil and gas state.

The issue of which textbooks to approve has led to new divisions on the Texas State Board of Education, which over the years has faced other heated curriculum battles surrounding how evolution and U.S. history is taught to more than 5 million students.

Science standards adopted by the board’s conservative majority in 2021 do not mention creationism as an alternative to evolution. Those standards also describe human factors as contributors to climate change.

But some Republicans on the 15-member board this week waved off current textbook options as too negative toward fossil fuels and failing to include alternatives to evolution. One of Texas’ regulators of the oil and gas industry, Republican Wayne Christian, has urged the board to “choose books that promote the importance of fossil fuels for energy promotion.”
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I've only had experience in the SE part of TX, which is very flat. I've been of the Gulf of Mexico & the land on shore is almost at sea level. Houston has flooded. Texans might want to trade their guns for boats. How long can you tread water?

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Just tell the truth, no need to PROMOTE things. Same for environmentalism, that much of it is not proven. There should be balanced factual information without all the politics and agenda driven wording. Evolution has been overblown as some absolute undeniable truth. It is a theory with some basis, but what they've done is teach it like a religion.

American said:

Just tell the truth, no need to PROMOTE things. Same for environmentalism, that much of it is not proven. There should be balanced factual information without all the politics and agenda driven wording. Evolution has been overblown as some absolute undeniable truth. It is a theory with some basis, but what they've done is teach it like a religion.

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Might as well just admit that schools aren't for producing educated citizens, they're for producing proud, loyal citizens.

Grand Mal said:

Might as well just admit that schools aren't for producing educated citizens, they're for producing proud, loyal citizens.

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I used to call on Shell in Houston. These big oil companies have lots of power.

Grand Mal said:

Might as well just admit that schools aren't for producing educated citizens, they're for producing proud, loyal citizens.

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They certainly aren't producing what they should, and they're not teaching people how to reason.

Facts hurt their tiny fossil-fuel driven feelings.

StillBallin75 said:

Facts hurt their tiny fossil-fuel driven feelings.

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Are those textbooks going to tell students this is the coldest Inter-Glacial Period in history in the last 800,000 years?

Are those textbooks going to tell students that we have the lowest sea levels in any Inter-Glacial Period in the last 800,000 years?

Are they going to tell students that global temperatures are normally 7.5°F to 15.2°F higher than they are now and have been for the last 10,000 years?

Are they going to tell students that sea levels are normally 4 meters to 14 meters higher than they are now?

Palaeo data suggest that Greenland must have been largely ice free during Marine Isotope Stage 11 (MIS-11). The globally averaged MIS-11 sea level is estimated to have reached between 6–13 m above that of today.

[emphasis mine]

https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms16008

“Even though the warm Eemian period was a period when the oceans were four to eight meters higher than today, the ice sheet in northwest Greenland was only a few hundred meters lower than the current level, which indicates that the contribution from the Greenland ice sheet was less than half the total sea-level rise during that period,” says Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, Professor at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, and leader of the NEEM-project.

[emphasis mine]

https://www.nbi.ku.dk/english/news/n...e-of-the-past/

Our pollen-based climatic reconstruction suggests a mean temperature of the warmest month (MTWA) range of 9–14.5 °C during the warmest interval of the last interglacial. The reconstruction from plant macrofossils, representing more local environments, reached MTWA values above 12.5 °C in contrast to today's 2.8 °C.

https://people.ucsc.edu/~acr/migrate...0al 2008.pdf

Just to make sure we're clear on the concept, 12.5°C is 22.5°F warmer than present temperatures.

From applications of both correspondence analysis regression and best modern analogue methodologies, we infer July air temperatures of the last interglacial to have been 4 to 5 °C warmer than present on eastern Baffin Island, which was warmer than any interval within the Holocene.

https://www.researchgate.net/publica..._Arctic_Canada

Again, to make sure we're clear on the concept, 4.0°C - 5.0°C is 7.2°F - 9.0°F.

Those studies were conducted on Baffin Island and in northeastern Siberia.

Are they going to tell students wild fluctuations in temperature are normal?

Are they going to tell students what their government already knows?

One of the more recent intriguing findings is the remarkable speed of these changes. Within the incredibly short time span (by geologic standards) of only a few decades or even a few years, global temperatures have fluctuated by as much as 15°F (8°C) or more.

For example, as Earth was emerging out of the last glacial cycle, the warming trend was interrupted 12,800 years ago when temperatures dropped dramatically in only several decades. A mere 1,300 years later, temperatures locally spiked as much as 20°F (11°C) within just several years. Sudden changes like this occurred at least 24 times during the past 100,000 years. In a relative sense, we are in a time of unusually stable temperatures today—how long will it last?

[emphasis mine]

Glad You Asked: Ice Ages ? What are they and what causes them? – Utah Geological Survey

While that is the State of Utah, this is your pseudo-federal government:

Climate shifts up to half as large as the entire difference between ice age and modern conditions occurred over hemispheric or broader regions in mere years to decades.

[emphasis mine]

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC34297/

Something tells me those textbooks are going to thump the climate change bible and lie.

American said:

Just tell the truth, no need to PROMOTE things. Same for environmentalism, that much of it is not proven. There should be balanced factual information without all the politics and agenda driven wording. Evolution has been overblown as some absolute undeniable truth. It is a theory with some basis, but what they've done is teach it like a religion.

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Well, they're gonna lie their asses off. If you don't believe that, this is from a college textbook currently in use:

You can read this on page 297 in a college history textbook called Worlds Together, Worlds Apart.

The actual quote is:

"What's more, new research has revealed that the great dying of Amerindians in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as described in the previous chapter, was a major factor producing the Little Ice Age. The decimation of millions of people cleared the way for a return of trees and bushes to what was once densely tilled land. With time, reforestation absorbed vast quantities of carbon dioxide; this in turn intensified cooling and drying all across planet earth."

That's a fantastic example of propaganda and disinformation.

The Little Ice Age was underway before European exploration started. That's why the 3 attempts to colonize at Roanoke, Virginia in the 1590s failed.

The story so far....

Using the wrong population models and then lying and exaggerating the results to over-inflate population estimates to support a false claim that Millions of "Native Americans" died and caused the climate to change but the deaths of 75 Million to 200 Million Eurasians as a result of the Little Ice Age did not make Earth colder nor did it extend the Little Ice Age for a longer period.

Witness also the very same history textbook that asserts the Little Ice Age started in the 16th Century due to the de-population of Amerindians tells a whopper of a lie here:

"How did the Black Death move so far and so fast? One explanation may lie in climate changes. The cooler climate of this period -- scholars refer to a 'Little Ice Age' -- may have weakened populations and left them vulnerable to disease. In Europe, for instance, beginning around 1310, harsh winters and rainy summers shortened growing seasons and ruined harvests. Exhausted soils no longer supplied the resources required by growing urban and rural populations, while nobles squeezed the peasantry in an effort to maintain their luxurious lifestyle. The ensuing famine lasted from 1315 to 1322, during which time millions of Europeans died of starvation or of disease against which the malnourished population had little resistance. Climate change and famine crippled populations on the eve of the Black Death. Climate change also spread drought across central Asia, where bubonic plague had lurked for centuries. So when steppe peoples migrated in search of new pastures and herds, they carried the germs with them and into contact with more densely populated agricultural communities, Rats also joined the exodus from the arid lands and transmitted fleas to other rodents, which then skipped to humans."

You'll find that on page 137 of the same textbook source.

So, either the Little Ice Age started in the 14th Century or it started in the 16th Century, but not both, and, again, if the depopulation of a small number of Amerindians causes the Little Ice Age in the 16th Century then why didn't the massive depopulation during the 14th Century cause the Little Ice Age?

That's what our children are up against and why home-schooling is best and you should send your kids to college in other countries (where they really do have colleges.)

American said:

Just tell the truth, no need to PROMOTE things. Same for environmentalism, that much of it is not proven. There should be balanced factual information without all the politics and agenda driven wording. Evolution has been overblown as some absolute undeniable truth. It is a theory with some basis, but what they've done is teach it like a religion.

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Conflating telling the truth with PROMOTING is ****ing stupid, FYI