Denying Climate Change Science

The South Dakota House of Representatives passed HCR 1009 last week, a resolution calling for the "balanced teaching of global warming in the public schools of South Dakota." Writing in the Huffington Post, Steve Martin offered this assessment:

Science cannot be legislated. Science is not determined by opinion polls and petitions. South Dakota can outlaw global warming if it wishes, but such decisions mean as much to science as arguments by ornithologists mean to birds [emphasis added].

That old analogy about the Ostrich with its head stuck in the sand has never seemed more appropriate.