Rep. Clow: ‘Temperatures have gone up and down before’

Rep. Lance Clow, R-Twin Falls, has been closely questioning Scott Cook of the state Department of Education about proposed new school science standards regarding climate change. “If there are two scientists out there … who kind of take different approaches to the same data … should we have a standard that says only take this scientist’s opinion?” Clow asked. He said in his view, the rewritten standards language “says we need to be teaching this direction, we need to be teaching this topic … these are the primary factors, we’ve already come to a conclusion in the standard. At what point can the school district deviate from the standards?” he asked. If there’s “new scientific evidence,” he said, “why do we need that terminology in the standards?”

Cook said, “What we really want students to do is engage with the tools that scientist use every day,” including creating models based on data. “Science is always evolving, and science welcomes healthy skepticism at all levels,” he told Clow.

Clow pointed to a clause in supporting examples that says “temperatures will continue to rise,” and said, “Geologic history shows that temperatures have gone up and down before, so that’s one of the challenges that some people have run into. … We know that solar activity, volcanic activity, things like that – they contribute.” He said he didn’t like “the implication that human activity is the only thing that contributes to rising temperatures.”

Cook responded, “The language reflects what this committee asked us to do, which is to talk about ways in which humans could mitigate impacts. We did that. What we said is that it reflects those, the preponderance of evidence of current models.” It’s not foreclosing other data, he said. “That’s always part of the discussion.” And if new data shows something else happening with temperatures, he said, “when that is the case, then you’ll see that, you’ll absolutely see that reflected if it comes out. There’s no question that temperatures have risen and declined in the past.”