Climate Science Meets a Stubborn Obstacle: Students - The New York Times - 0 views
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WELLSTON, Ohio — To Gwen Beatty, a junior at the high school in this proud, struggling, Trump-supporting town, the new science teacher’s lessons on climate change seemed explicitly designed to provoke her.So she provoked him back.When the teacher, James Sutter, ascribed the recent warming of the Earth to heat-trapping gases released by burning fossil fuels like the coal her father had once mined, she asserted that it could be a result of other, natural causes.When he described the flooding, droughts and fierce storms that scientists predict within the century if such carbon emissions are not sharply reduced, she challenged him to prove it. “Scientists are wrong all the time,” she said with a shrug, echoing those celebrating President Trump’s announcement last week that the United States would withdraw from the Paris climate accord.
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She was, he knew, a straight-A student. She would have had no trouble comprehending the evidence, embedded in ancient tree rings, ice, leaves and shells, as well as sophisticated computer models, that atmospheric carbon dioxide is the chief culprit when it comes to warming the world.
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When she insisted that teachers “are supposed to be open to opinions,” however, Mr. Sutter held his ground.“It’s not about opinions,” he told her. “It’s about the evidence.”
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As more of the nation’s teachers seek to integrate climate science into the curriculum, many of them are reckoning with students for whom suspicion of the subject is deeply rooted.
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rejecting the key findings of climate science can seem like a matter of loyalty to a way of life already under siege.
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Originally tied, perhaps, to economic self-interest, climate skepticism has itself become a proxy for conservative ideals of hard work, small government and what people here call “self-sustainability.”
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“What people ‘believe’ about global warming doesn’t reflect what they know,” Dan Kahan, a Yale researcher who studies political polarization, has stressed in talks, papers and blog posts. “It expresses who they are.”
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I thought this article was very interesting as it showed students' increasing suspicion of climate change. Something I found remarkable is that one student said that teachers should be open to opinions, but the environmental teacher said, 'It's not about opinions, it's about the evidence." The article also touched on the way economic self-interest led to a town's climate skepticism.