Blame the Stars: Climate-Change Debate Reaches New Level of Stupidity

(MoneyWatch)  Conspiracy theories surrounding climate change science are now seeping into public education -- just one more example of how efforts to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions have created paranoia and panic. The South Dakota state legislature passed a resolution that calls on schools to teach global warming as a scientific theory -- a similar approach used in the creationist versus evolution debate -- rather than a proven fact in an effort to give kids a balanced view on climate change.

What would constitute a balanced view of global warming causes anyway? How about astrology? Because that's exactly what the state's House of Representatives included as a reasonable possibility behind the cause of global warming.

There are a variety of climatological, meteorological, astrological, thermological, cosmological and ecological dynamics that can effect world weather phenomena and that the significance and interrelativity of these factors is largely speculative.

The state legislature's inclusion of astrology in the original language of the resolution shows their clear lack of understanding of what would be taught in a science class. Of course, the state Senate had to go look at a dictionary and strip out the word astrological and other the fun stuff. Even references to Erik the Red living in a once grass-covered Greenland has been removed in the final resolution. The irony? South Dakota legislators made up their own scientific facts while accusing climate change scientists of using incorrect information for political and philosophical reasons.

What's at the root of all the paranoia and skepticism? It's certainly not a a sudden interest in the scientific process. It's not even about education. State lawmakers are afraid the federal government's efforts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions will hurt South Dakota's biggest industries like farming, agribusiness, mining and construction.

And they're not alone in their fears or their efforts to discredit the science behind global warming. As pressure to curb greenhouse gas emissions grows, so have the attacks on climate change science. More than a dozen other state legislatures have passed resolutions that not only call for the EPA to overturn its greenhouse gas emissions endangerment finding, but argue the scientific consensus on the threat of man-made global warming is a conspiracy. Photo of climate change denial graffiti by Flickr user Matt from London, CC 2.0