While political views are often affected by the religious views of the public, the opposite can also occur. Our religious views of today, for example, are being strongly affected by political views. The implications of this statement are profound as was explained today in Jennifer Rubin’s op ed in the Washington Post (12/29/2021).  I have provided major portions of her article below (in italics). Much has been written about White evangelicals’ central role in the fraying of democracy. More attention, however, should be paid to the damage the political movement has inflicted on religion it ..read more

Two years prior to his presidency, Abraham Lincoln gave his famous “house divided” speech, part of which went as follows: “A house divided against itself, cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other”. On the then controversial issue of slavery, he reasoned that the USA would have to decide one way or the other – would it allow the enslavement of the black portion of it ..read more

The Darwin Awards salute the improvement of the human genome by honoring those who accidentally remove themselves from the human gene pool in a spectacular manner. By the various actions it has taken during the recent Covid-19 pandemics, the citizens of the USA have become dangerously close to receipt of this dubious honor. US citizen’s case for “winning” this award is based on the following observations. The US government and its scientific communities have been strong driving forces behind the development of Covid-19 vaccines and have made these readily available to the American public at no ..read more

A large fraction of Americans believes that there is an almighty God who is aware of their individual personal lives and is capable of affecting them in either a positive or negative manner whenever He feels such actions are warranted. It is a common practice, for instance, for religious fundamentalists to ask their God to help others or themselves when a particular need arises. It is also common practice within a wide range of fundamental religious groups to promote specific views on controversial issues of society and to insist that the word of God as revealed in the scriptures of their reli ..read more

The 2021 report of the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change provides a clear scientific message to the entire world.  In doing what needs to be done in order to stop the ravages of global warming, we have no chance of success if we continue to dwell on the “good times” we have enjoyed on our planet over the last 150 years – all made possible by the Earth’s plentiful and low-cost supplies of fossil fuels along with free of charge waste disposal into our atmosphere. The ease with which we learned to use fossil fuels for our transportation, heating, and material needs was astounding an ..read more

The ability of our planet to sustain life for its human inhabitants can now be described in the terms we normally use for the type of health care we provide for our exceedingly ill. One of these is hospice care in which care and comfort is provided to our very sick when they do not expect to live much longer.  That is, the patients in this case have reached a point where it no longer is considered possible to cure them and, therefore, the objective is simply to make the patients as comfortable as possible during the rest of their lives. Palliative care is similar, but significantly differ ..read more

In his recent address to the joint chambers of congress, it was most refreshing to hear President Biden declare that his administration will put a very high priority on combating the relentless advance of global warming. This constitutes a great improvement over the expressed goals of all previous presidents and especially those of Biden’s predecessor. As we all know, however, the passage of progressive legislation concerning this issue will be strongly opposed by the powerful fossil fuel lobbies. We have already seen some efforts along these lines by various Republican legislators and I will ..read more

While I have been very pleased to see that President Biden intends to give high priority to addressing the world’s greatest problem, climate change, I have also noted that he has not yet mentioned in his concerns the contributions of agriculture and, more specifically, our need to change a large portion of our diets from meat-based to plant-based foods. His reason for this omission is most likely due to political rather than scientific considerations. The agricultural lobby of the USA is very strong and firmly entrenched.  Asking them for their support in reducing beef production is proba ..read more

  While studying and teaching the science associated with climate change for many years, I am sometimes asked “The Big Question”: that is, what is my best guess as to the fate of planet Earth due to our emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. In this post, I will try to answer that question as well as I can – with the understanding shared by the great baseball philosopher, Yogi Berra, who admitted that “predictions are hard to make – especially about the future.”  Nevertheless, here goes my attempt.      First, I will break my r ..read more

The nature of the ongoing arguments concerning anthropogenic (man-caused) global warming (AGW) has recently changed, as is thoroughly explained in Michael Mann’s new book entitled, “New Climate Change War”.  Mann is an American climate scientist who has been on the front line of the AGW war throughout the last three decades. In this post, I will relate one of the major points made by Dr. Mann.   A few years ago the climate change debate was largely between those who believed in the science behind AGW and those who denied that possibility.  Today, the argument has changed du ..read more