Creationists have been trying to rewrite biology textbooks in Texas for years, so I guess this next step was inevitable. Brad Johnson reports that South Dakota's House of Representatives has passed a bill calling for the "balanced teaching of global warming in public schools." Three guesses on what sort of nonsense is involved here:
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, by the House of Representatives of the Eighty-fifth Legislature of the State of South Dakota, the Senate concurring therein, that the South Dakota Legislature urges that instruction in the public schools relating to global warming include the following:
(1) That global warming is a scientific theory rather than a proven fact;
(2) That there are a variety of climatological, meteorological, astrological, thermological, cosmological, and ecological dynamics that can effect [sic] world weather phenomena and that the significance and interrelativity of these factors is largely speculative; and
(3) That the debate on global warming has subsumed political and philosophical viewpoints which have complicated and prejudiced the scientific investigation of global warming phenomena
That's right, South Dakotan kids will get to learn that climate change is partly due to "astrological" factors—presumably the glaciers all start melting when Sagittarius is at his zenith. It's also a little murky how "thermological" factors fit in here, as thermology involves the science of, um, infrared body imaging. Maybe the world will finally learn the shocking truth about breast scans...
(Flickr photo credit: honeyrider)