Visitors to the Perot Museum of Nature and Science can stand beside an enormous rotating drill bit, take a virtual ride down a fracking well and run their fingers along the smooth, dark surface of the Barnett Shale, the natural gas-rich rock that has fueled Texas’ energy boom.

But as several reviews have pointed out, the Perot Museum makes only a few subtle references to one of the most pressing issues in science: how human activities, primarily emissions from coal, oil and gas plants, are contributing to a rapid warming of the planet.

‘Some [of the museum’s] choices are scientifically questionable,” wrote James S. Russell for Bloomberg. ‘In displays on water and weather I could find no consideration of climate change – the defining natural-science challenge of our time.”

Museums across the country face challenges in presenting climate change to the public at a time when the issue has become politically fraught.

A series of interviews with museum experts revealed that many factors stand in the way of an institution’s complete and accurate portrayal of global warming: the difficulty of presenting a complex subject in a clear, engaging way; the rapid pace of new findings about the effects of climate change vs. the amount […]