CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Academics and citizen groups are gearing up opposition to the West Virginia Board of Education’s alterations to science education standards on climate change, with the release Tuesday afternoon of a report outlining damage that global warming is already doing to state’s Allegheny Highlands and a unanimous vote by West Virginia University’s faculty senate speaking out against the changes.

Also, following the West Virginia Science Teachers Association’s recent comments that the alterations compromise and misrepresent climate change science, the larger National Science Teachers Association also released a statement Tuesday urging the board to reverse the changes.

Temperatures are increasing in the highlands region, causing significant changes to historic weather patterns, more intense precipitation and flooding events and more seasonal drought. The changes threaten “the widespread loss of historic ecosystems and related wildlife, forestry and sporting resources,” says the new report from the Allegheny Highlands Climate Change Impacts Initiative.

“Climate change impacts are already affecting temperatures, precipitation, weather, growing seasons, streams, forests, plants, animals and humans — and future impacts will be severe, unless global warming is reined in,” says the report, called “On the Chopping Block: The Impacts of Global Warming and Climate Change on the Mid-Atlantic Allegheny Highlands.”

The state Board of Education is scheduled to discuss the changes on Wednesday. School officials said the changes were meant to encourage more student debate on the idea that humans’ greenhouse gas emissions are causing a global rise in temperatures — a theory that an overwhelming majority of scientists accepts.

Opposition has grown since the Gazette first reported on the changes…