The U.S. government is using the popular Nickelodeon character to teach kids about climate change.

The U.S. Department of Education has teamed up with Nickelodeon to teach kids about global warming via the network's popular character SpongeBob SquarePants, and the folks at Fox News Channel's Fox & Friends aren't too happy about it.

The government agency recently showed a video and handed out books to children in Washington, D.C., that "blamed man for global warming, but they did not tell kids that is actually a disputed fact -- oops," host Gretchen Carlson told viewers on a recent telecast.

The show's Steve Doocy also chimed in, adding, "What happened was, the Department of Education invited a bunch of D.C. kids in and they had this festivity and they handed out these particular Nickelodeon books where clearly Nickelodeon is pushing a global warming agenda. While there is no disputing the fact that the Earth is getting a little warmer, the big questions is, is it man-made or is it just one of those gigantic climactic phases?"

Fox's Dave Briggs added that global warming is "unproven science."

"This is a public education system that we all pay our tax dollars for and the SpongeBob book says that it's a man-made problem that requires human intervention," he said.

He also argued that the Department of Education should be focusing its priorities elsewhere.

"The schools there -- I mean, we're talking about 14th in the world in reading, 17th in the world in science, 25th in math. So we're forcing an issue that is not yet proven -- we can't even teach our kids the adequate math, reading and science at this point," he added.

While the Fox hosts don't acknowledge global warming as proven to be caused by humans, the mainstream scientific community has generally accepted that belief as fact.