Egg fried on hot asphalt.

Louis Pasteur: “Science is the torch which illuminates the world”
If we could absorb it all, some form of science is with us every second of the day. Heinrich Rohrer, Swiss physicist who won the 1986 Nobel Prize for developing the scanning tunneling microscope, has summarized the importance of science in our lives in an inclusive, revealing statement: “Science means constantly walking a tightrope between blind faith and curiosity; between expertise and creativity; between bias and openness; between experience and epiphany; between ambition and passion; and between arrogance and conviction — in short, between an old today and a new tomorrow.” 

If this statement is true, why is the Trumplican Party denying and rejecting science every second of the day? Because we have advanced as a world society, scientists have been right more often than wrong. 
As an example, scientists have identified about 870,000 viruses in the world population so far. Medical authorities have developed treatments for many – and still have been defeated by a few – the bubonic plague. for one. 

So here comes the big question: why has the Trumplican Party, Republican Party, and the Republican Supreme Court turned into the Science Denial Party? An essay by Thomas B. Edsall in The New York Times probably has some right and wrong answers. In April 2020, Pew Research polled that 14% of Republicans had little or no faith in science. By October 2023 that little or no faith had increased to a whopping 38%! Why? 

Because “conservative” politicians decided to make the Centers of Disease Control, Dr. Anthony Fauci and Democratic governors responsible for the spread of COVID-19 by preaching and hoaxing that masks, vaccinations, social distancing, the closing of public schools and their activities, the naming of essential businesses and the closing of many didn’t inhibit the new virus. During the same period of 2020 to 2023, Democrats moved slightly from 9% to 13% in rejecting science.

The anti-science politicians led the world pandemic in rate of death
Let us remember that in the first round of the Covid virus around the world, the Divided States of America led the countries of the world in the rate of virus deaths per 100,000 people. 

Let’s also remember that DSA red Trumplican states had much higher rates of death per 100,000 than DSA blue states. This means that science walked the tightrope much better than the anti-science crowd’s policies of banning masks, banning vaccines and vaccinations, allowing large crowds in non-essential businesses, and the operation of schools during the worst stages of the pandemic. And we must remember that the president at the beginning of the pandemic refused to wear a mask because it covered his “beautiful” face.

The American Medical Association sponsored a 50-state poll of 443,455 adults of all demographics between 2020 and 2024 concerning the trust physicians and hospitals had in the treatment of the virus. Because of the propaganda distributed by anti-science groups, the trust in treatments fell from 71.5% in 2020 to 41.1% by January 2024. 

The authors of the AMA report cited reasons for the big drop in trust: “During the COVID-19 pandemic, medicine and public health more broadly became politicized, with the internet amplifying public figures and even physicians encouraging individuals not to trust the advice of public health experts and scientists. 

As such, the pandemic may have represented a turning point in trust, with a profession previously seen as trustworthy increasingly subject to doubt.” In fact, the crazies and zombies associated with Trump’s MAGA cult called for the death of Dr. Fauci and his family, the “czar” of the CDC attempt to stop the pandemic.

The American Political Science Association reported this month that in the year 2000 46% of Democrats and 47% of Republicans expressed a great deal of confidence in scientists. In 2022 those percentages had changed to 53% for Dems and down to 28% for Trumplicans. 

That tells everybody who is selling anti-science garbage on the internet, Fox “Lies”, and MAGA political rallies. The Chosen One is the champion of lies, hoaxes and alternative facts.

An example of what DNA science can tell us about our ancestors
Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) is in the news every day, whether it’s involved in a crime, medical or family story. By analyzing the isotopes of a 500-year-old skeleton, a DNA expert can answer a whole slew of previously unanswerable questions. 

Was that man who was buried in a churchyard in England 500 years ago from some European country who was traveling with a grandson or a migrant stranger? 

Sam Leggett, a University of Edinburgh bio-archaeologist, has spent a lot of time with the skeleton of a woman to determine a rather complete biography. With DNA as his main assistant, he has almost brought her back to life. 

She was from Northern Europe, had lived in Scandinavia until she was about 15, died between the ages of 26 and 35 in England, and might have traveled to this part of England by herself because the cemetery had no other bodies with her DNA. Leggett wanted to answer two questions about her past: Was she a slave? Was she married? Leggett couldn’t answer those questions with today’s DNA.

Leggett used DNA working on two skeletons in an Anglo-Saxon cemetery close by. By DNA he determined that the two skeletons buried together were young siblings, one a boy of about 15, and his sister, about 12. In a nearby grave was an older man who shared a Y chromosome with the boy and was probably the father. On the skeletons of the boy and girl were placed a knife and buckle, a sign that parents were mourning their deaths in the land becoming England. 

Remember from the definition of science: “Science is walking a tightrope between experience and epiphany.” 

Science deniers in America are still refusing to drink fluoridated water, and, therefore, have the poorest dental health in the OECD. Republicans also refuse to add dental care to Medicare and Medicaid.

Think climate change a hoax? Go fry a burger on an asphalt playground!
A principal of a Las Vegas elementary school decided to take the temperature of his school’s asphalt playground on one of Vegas’s many 110F days. It was 171F. Eggs and burgers are well done at 165F. 

The guys on superyachts who actually run the country don’t seem to have any knowledge why hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, fires, power outages, empty reservoirs and famines have anything to do with millions of refugees moving to higher and cooler earth. Some say God will counter climate change and begin to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere if we pray. Think of one miracle by prayer. 

We have enough hoaxers and deniers to kill Planet Earth because we have a national failure to invest in renewable energies and restrict the use of fossil fuels that have made so many rich. A hotter climate will bring more pandemics because bacteria, germs and viruses love to be in a warm climate.

Brazil, with the Amazon Basin and its Pantanal Wetlands, possesses 10% of the world’s fresh water and can be the holder of a tremendous share of the world’s carbon dioxide. But those areas are now on fire. Brazil has twice as many fires today as it had in 2023. Smoke and contaminated sooty black rain has blackened the skies of cities in both Brazil and Bolivia, causing many deaths from pulmonary diseases. Almost half of the Amazon fires burned old forests in normally pristine areas. 

Scientists in Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research have estimated that the collapse of the Amazon rainforest could release the equivalent of a year’s worth of global carbon emissions into the atmosphere. In other words, climate change acrobats walking a tightrope across the Amazon Basin will not be able to see the water beneath them. They will have a mighty scientific battle between ambition and passion. 

The old goal of limiting global warming to an increase of 1.5C made almost a decade ago cannot be met in the latest predictions. It will be extremely difficult to limit the increase to 1.8C now.

Louis Pasteur, the famous French immunologist and microbiologist who has saved millions all over the world from deaths, wrote this about science: “Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world.” 

I suggest the statement be inscribed in stone above the entrance to the White House and the Senate and House chambers. 

To anti-vaxxers: Besides his development of pasteurization of milk and other liquids, Pasteur developed a vaccine for the treatment of rabies, which cures the disease and the foaming at the mouth. It’s too bad he didn’t develop a vaccine to prevent lying by the mouth of politicians. The lying virus is most likely not treatable.

Here we are again, leading the world in health care costs and disasters
The Commonwealth Fund Foundation is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing quality health care to all Americans, particularly those of low-income. It provides grants to organizations researching major medical issues and systems. 

In a new report, the fund ranked the Divided States of America health system as the worst of the top 10 systems in the world: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Sweden and Switzerland. 

Americans pay at least double for health care than any other countries and performs poorly on 70 indicators based on five major sectors: access to care, health equity, care process, administrative efficiency and outcomes. 

The foundation called this year’s report “a portrait of a failing U.S. health system. Dr. Joseph Betancourt, a doctor of internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and president of the Commonwealth Fund, summed up the condition of our system with these comments: “I see the human toll of these shortcomings on a daily basis. I see patients who cannot afford their medications. I see older patients arrive sicker than they should because they spent the majority of their lives uninsured. It’s time we finally build a health system that delivers quality affordable health care for all Americans.”  

We are the only wealthy, industrialized country that does not have a universal care system for life. Germany had a universal system under Chancellor Otto von Bismarck in 1883, which covered all blue-collar workers and eventually covered all German citizens by 2007. 

Anti-science Republicans have been opposed to universal health care problems since President Harry Truman tried to establish a system in 1945 after World War II, like conservative Winston Churchill did in England in the same year. Ignorant anti-science is the torch setting the world on fire while pro-science is failing to illuminate the world.

William Butler Yeats wrote the poem “The Second Coming” in 1919, describing the conditions in the world at the beginning of the 20th century. It also could have been written by his great-grandson yesterday describing the conditions in the world in the 21st century. Here is just the first stanza:
“Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer.
 Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold:
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”