California 6th grade science books: Climate change a matter of opinion not scientific fact
If American teens are unsure about climate change or its cause, some school textbooks aren't helping, says teaching expert Diego Román, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, co-author of a new study on the subject.
Studies estimate that only 3 percent of scientists who are experts in climate analysis disagree about the causes of climate change. But the most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- the evidence of 600 climate researchers in 32 countries reporting changes to Earth's atmosphere, ice and seas -- in 2013 stated "human influence on the climate system is clear."
Yet only 54 percent of American teens believe climate change is happening, 43 percent don't believe it's caused by humans, and 57 percent aren't concerned about it.
The new study measured how four sixth-grade science textbooks adopted for use in California frame the subject of global warming. Sixth grade is the first time California state standards indicate students will encounter climate change in their formal science curriculum.
The researchers examined different textbooks, each published in either 2007 or 2008 by a different major publisher. They found and analyzed 279 clauses containing 2,770 words discussing climate change.
"We found that climate change is presented as a controversial debate stemming from differing opinions," said Román, an assistant professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning in the SMU Simmons School. "Climate skeptics and climate deniers are given equal time and treated with equal weight as scientists and scientific facts -- even though scientists who refute global warming total a miniscule number."
The message communicated in the four textbooks was that climate change is possibly happening, that humans may or may not be causing it, and its unclear if we need to take immediate mitigating action, the researchers found.
That representation matches the public discourse around global warming, in which previous studies have shown that media characterize climate change as Education Research Report: California 6th grade science books: Climate change a matter of opinion not scientific fact: