Plunket shot back: "Well, clearly you can't dispute that at all you like if you're an intermediate school kid... you're going to be told you can't dispute it."

Shaw replied: "Of course you can, but you'd have to go to town against the entire New Zealand scientific community and suggest that they were wrong."

The new resources for teaching climate change in schools was announced on Sunday by Education Minister Chris Hipkins, who said kids will be taught the "role science plays in understanding climate change".

The resource, called 'Climate Change - prepare today, live well tomorrow', includes video, text and guidance. It will be available for students in years 7-10 and will be optional.

It will teach things like the difference between weather and climate, as well as sea-level rise impacts and the effects of agriculture on the climate, according to Shaw.

The pilot was picked up by the Ministry of Education and is supported by organisations including NASA, NIWA, and National Geographic for Kids, among others.

"We're getting a lot of demand from teachers so the fact that there were some resources that had been developed, once it was piloted and some changes were made, it seemed appropriate to be rolling out," Shaw said.