Straight from the You’ve Got To Be Kidding Me Files comes this story: Al Gore’s documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth” cannot be shown in Federal Way, Washington schools unless accompanied by an opposing view. That’s the ruling of the school board.

Why? Because of an email from this rocket scientist:

“Condoms don’t belong in school, and neither does Al Gore. He’s not a schoolteacher,” said Frosty Hardison, a parent of seven who also said that he believes the Earth is 14,000 years old. “The information that’s being presented is a very cockeyed view of what the truth is. … The Bible says that in the end times everything will burn up, but that perspective isn’t in the DVD.”

The school board immediately knuckled under and slapped a moratorium on the movie. Rather than bothering to dissect the madness, I’ll simply point you to the remarkably straight-laced reporting in the P-I. The findings in the documentary are supported by, you know, the entire scientific community, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and:

The basics of that position are backed by the American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Academy of Sciences.

At the risk of sounding didactic, the thing about science is this: it’s not a matter of opinion or personal belief (or free speech or freedom of religion, for that matter). Science is based on empirical evidence and on theories that are carefully constructed from that evidence. And the theories are vetted extensively by other scientists.

The scientific consensus that humans are causing climate change is so overwhelming that there is not a credible alternative position. So it doesn’t matter—at all—whether you really, really, really don’t believe it. And it doesn’t matter why you don’t believe it. You’re still wrong.

Over at Gristmill, Dave Roberts goes ape in a rather hilarious fashion.

Oh, by the way, if you feel like sending an email the Federal Way school board, here’s their contact info.