Over 24,000 Texans have signed petitions calling on the Texas board of education to require the correction of errors in the coverage of climate change in social studies textbooks presently under consideration. As NCSE previously reported, among the problematic claims are a statement that fossil fuel emissions have caused a hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica; a claim that scientists "disagree about what is causing climate change"; and a quotation from a notorious climate change denial organization presented in rebuttal of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The petitions were delivered in person to the board and the publishers on October 20, 2014. In a joint press release issued the same day by NCSE, the Texas Freedom Network, and Climate Parents, NCSE's Josh Rosenau explained, "From the redwood forests to the Gulf Stream waters, teachers and school boards want textbooks that handle climate change accurately, and they are watching to see which publishers fix these errors." He added, "These petitions show that parents, teachers, students, and voters across Texas will make sure the board doesn't let these errors slip into their classrooms."
"Students in Texas and around the country will be living with the consequences of climate change for the rest of their lives," Ryan Valentine of the Texas Freedom Network commented. "They deserve textbooks that tell them the truth about what they are up against." And Lisa Hoyos of Climate Parents added, "Censoring climate science in order to sell books is unethical and an unacceptable disservice to students, and must be corrected." The Texas state board of education is expected to vote in November 2014 about which textbooks to place on the approved list for use in the state.