Climate Denial In The Classroom ~ LATimes Editorial

News packed days.  
Unfortunately most people don't care and the media is doing little to change that.  
That's why I'm thinking, Jeez someone should be bearing witness.  

For the record after I posting the text of an article, I send the authors an email with a link.  Response has been supportive, no one has asked me to remove my reproductions of their work and I'm encouraged to continue, so, here it is.

I'm starting to think this may turn into a running feature, at least while the DenialGate things is running hot.  A select collection of timely articles. With the passage of months, it'll become a record of these events as they unfolded. The following is highlights from an LA Times editorial:

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LA Times Editorial ~ February 20, 2012

Climate denial in the classroom
It's bad enough that we're doing so little to fight climate change; let's not ask teachers to lie about it too.

The culture wars {...} The latest skirmish, by contrast, is centered on a scientific issue that has nothing to do with religious teaching: climate change.

{...} Heartland Institute in Chicago, one of many nonprofits that spread disinformation about climate science in hopes of stalling government action to combat global warming, reveal that the organization is working on a curriculum for public schools that casts doubt on the work of climatologists worldwide. Heartland officials say one of the documents was a fake, {...}. According to the New York Times, the curriculum would claim, {...} "whether humans are changing the climate is a major scientific controversy."


{...}

On one side of the "controversy" are credentialed climatologists around the globe who publish in reputable, peer-reviewed scientific journals and agree that the planet is warming and that humans are to blame; on the other are fossil-fuel-industry-funded "experts" who tend to have little background in climatology and who publish non-peer-reviewed papers in junk magazines disputing established truths. These are quickly debunked, but not before their findings have been reported by conservative blogs and news outlets, which somehow never get around to mentioning it when these studies are proved to be badly flawed.

{...} battle over classroom instruction {...} won't go on for decades, {...} impacts {...} already patently obvious. 

Seven of the 10 warmest years since global record-keeping began in 1880 have occurred in the 21st century. {...} Pennsylvania State University professor Michael Mann's "hockey stick" graph, which shows that temperatures in the latter half of the 20th century soared to their highest level in 1,000 years, {...} validated repeatedly.

 Last year set a record for the most climate-related disasters in the United States costing more than $1 billion in damage each — drought-fueled wildfires in Texas, Hurricane Irene, and Mississippi River flooding were among the 14 cases.

{...}
Sophisticated climate models show {...} going to get a lot worse. 
It's bad enough {...} gambling our children's futures {...} doing so little {...} fight this problem.

Let's not ask their teachers to lie to them about it too.

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LA Times Editorial ~ February 20, 2012
Climate denial in the classroom

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-ed-climate-20120220,0,3564279.story

{selections are unaltered, my emphasis & formatting}: