[UPDATED 3:45 p.m. below – response from publisher] Matthew LaClair, a high school senior in Kearny, N.J., had already gained fame as something of a one-man American Civil Liberties Union for pointing out intrusions of religion into the classroom.

Now he has persuaded Houghton Mifflin, one of the powerhouses in textbook publishing, to review a popular college and advanced-placement high school text, “American Government,” over its characterizations of human-caused global warming and other controversial issues.

Nancy Zuckerbrod of The Associated Press provides a summary of the criticisms of the book, and the publisher’s reaction:

Talk about a civics lesson: A high school senior has raised questions about political bias in a popular textbook on U.S. government, and legal scholars and top scientists say the teen’s criticism is well founded. They say “American Government,” by conservatives James Wilson and John DiIulio, presents a skewed view of topics from global warming to separation of church and state. The publisher now says it will review the book, as will the College Board, which oversees college-level advanced-placement courses used in high schools.

Matthew started the process rolling by contacting the Center for Inquiry, a nonprofit group in Amherst, N.Y., that says its goal is to defend reason and science. (A PDF version of its critique is online.)



Letters criticizing the book’s portrayal of climate science were written to the publisher and authors by James E. Hansen of NASA and Michael MacCracken, a former government climate expert and longtime contributor to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. They can be found as PDFs in a news release from Friends of the Earth.

Here are some lines from the book that were excerpted by the environmental group:

The earth has become warmer, but is this mostly the result of natural climate changes, or is it heavily influenced by humans putting greenhouse gases into the air? (p.559)

Certainly, if the I.P.C.C. is to be relied on as a bellwether of the predominant view of climate experts, that is a dubious assertion, even if it refers to the 2001 report from the panel and not last year’s. The 2001 report said: “There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities.”

On the one hand, a warmer globe will cause sea levels to rise, threatening coastal communities; on the other hand, greater warmth will make it easier and cheaper to grow crops and avoid high heating bills. (p. 559)

The panel’s latest climate panel reports did say that at least until 2050 or so, mid-latitude regions will probably see agricultural benefits, and certainly heating bills will be lower (while cooling bills will rise). But to set up a comparison of heating-bill changes and coastal retreats in a way that implies equivocal costs and benefits seems questionable.

But many other problems are much less clear-cut. Science doesn’t know how bad the greenhouse effect is. (p. 566)

Here things get interesting. As we’ve written many times, the climate system’s response to rapidly rising greenhouse gas concentrations remains laden with uncertainty. A doubling of concentrations from the long-term ceiling of 280 parts per million for carbon dioxide before the industrial revolution would most likely raise global temperatures 3.6 to 8.1 degrees Fahrenheit, by the latest I.P.C.C. analysis. So in that legalistic sense, it’s true that science hasn’t defined “how bad” climate change will be.

Needless to say, these lines have to be seen in full context. I’ll be trying to wade through the book once I have a copy. If anyone has it, please weigh in here. I imagine you’ll have a range of reactions reflecting the continuing polarization of the public on this issue. Dot Earth has been exploring how values create filters for information, and this has impeded efforts to galvanize a large-scale movement.

I encourage you to read the letters from Dr. Hansen and Dr. MacCracken, which provide lots of additional detail. Is it possible to write a policy-neutral, scientifically accurate textbook on such a charged issue? I hope so.

[UPDATE 1 p.m.] Some teachers and school systems using the book have defended it. Grist weighed in yesterday with a different kind of response.

[UPDATE 3:45 p.m.] Richard Blake, senior vice president for communications and government relations of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, sent this note: