The Need to Teach the Controversial Science of Climate Change
There is a stark fissure between scientists and citizens about whether climate change exists and whether it is due primarily to the human use of fossil fuels (Funk & Rainie, 2015). Moreover, there is also public resistance to thinking critically about this issue, supported by hardened beliefs, motivated reasoning, fallacious thinking, and misinformation. To deal with such challenges, this treatise adopts a common core understanding of critical thinking that takes an argument apart using analysis and evaluates whether any resulting conclusion follows accurately from the evidence (see Crazypills, 2009, and QualiaSoup, 2009).
Accordingly, there is a need to deal with publicly popular resistance to—and misconceptions and distortions about—the issue of climate change (Union of Concerned Scientists, 2018). This demands that we promote and defend the integrity of science education in the face of the climate change controversy and help teachers gain the confidence and support they need to teach the science of climate change effectively against the tide of cultural, political, and religious ideological interference. Notably, the National Center for Science Education (https://ncse.com) defends the integrity of science education against ideological interference. It works with teachers, parents, scientists, and concerned citizens at the local, state, and national levels to ensure that topics like climate change are taught accurately, honestly, and confidently.
These changes in our science teacher education programs are crucial for our survival as a species because society and the relationships among individuals within a society influence how we make choices and how policy discussions might (or might not) improve how we think about climate change. Accordingly, only when the currently low scientific literacy of the American population rises to the level of accurate and sympathetic understanding of science will the appeal of nonscience, pseudoscience, and just plain bad science diminish sufficiently to disable the quackeries that today prey upon people. However, at least in America and probably in the United Kingdom as well, no improvement can be expected until there are major changes in the way schoolteachers are trained to teach science (Forrest & Gross, 2005).