How do you prove you're really the anti-science administration? It’s not enough just to deny climate change or spout anti-evolution slogans—any Republican can do that much. To be a serious member of the anti-science brigade, you need to stop funding research, including medical research.

Mick Mulvaney, the ultra-conservative South Carolina congressman whom Donald Trump has tapped to be his budget director, has questioned whether the federal government should spend any money on scientific research.

Mulvaney recently delivered his insights to the flouride-is-a-communist-plot John Birch Society, and for those really craving a flashback to the days of “the AIDS virus does not cause AIDS,” the man who would have his finger on the figures for the nation’s research budgets justified the attack on basic science by questioning the connection between the Zika virus and birth defects.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) concluded in April that the Zika virus causes microcephaly and other defects. But Mulvaney wrote:

“Brazil's microcephaly epidemic continues to pose a mystery -- if Zika is the culprit, why are there no similar epidemics in countries also hit hard by the virus?”

The answer is likely one that Mulvaney never even paused to consider—abortion. Brazil was hit first, but as the disease spread to other areas, increased awareness of its effects made detection and treatment more available. 

But for those like Mulvaney, who regard all of science as some sort of mystery religion run by a cabal of leftists who only want excuses to steal money from hard-working billionaires and halt the righteous profits that could be made selling DDT, the idea that Zika only caused 1,500 cases of microcephaly is a reason to stop the payments on science.

Over the past many years, scientists have piled up evidence and data that point to humanity’s responsibility in warming trends to our planet’s climate. Republicans, backed by fossil fuel concerns and a base that is afraid that science will kill Santa Claus, have funded bogus deniers and enlisted hack right-wing writers and news-folk to sow the seeds of confusion surrounding what the science around climate change is. Texas Republican Lamar Smith is the oxymoronic Chairman of the House Science Committee. He spends a lot of energy trying to protect ExxonMobil. The other day his committee’s official government Twitter account tweeted out this.

The Breitbart piece was written by James Delingpole. Delingpole is the go-to Brit for climate denial writing at Breitbart, because he writes in a faux-British sarcastic and dry style—think of him as a dumb-man’s Nick Hornsby. The fake “wit” masks the fact that Delingpole is just a liar. The quote that Delingpole bases his attack on climate scientists is an article by David Rose at the Dailymail in England. Climate deniers have one argument that they conflate in varying degrees at any given time:

If the earth is getting “warmer” how come sometimes it still gets cold?

That’s basically it. In its most juvenile form it’s headlines from the New York Post during a cold stretch of winter putting out a headline saying “global warming?” In other forms it’s the oldest denier “science” fad—climate change “hiatus.” Since global warming is a large phenomenon, going day by day with your finger out the window won’t give you enough data to base a serious theory on. But, people like Delingpole and David Rose only need to remember that snow is cold to know that everything is fine. Even though this denial argument has been debunked, it doesn’t change the Republican post-fact repetition machine from squawking and squawking about it.

The Breitbart drivel above relies heavily on this story by David Rose. David Rose’s story doesn’t actually link to the “evidence” he pretends to give and that “evidence” isn’t real.

“They’re not serious articles,” said Adam Sobel, a Columbia University climate scientist. “They paint it as though it’s an argument between Breitbart and Buzzfeed when it’s an argument between a snarky Breitbart blogger and the entire world’s scientific community, and the overwhelming body of scientific evidence.”

Sobel said the articles “grossly misinterpret” a few accurate details, for instance that El Niño and La Niña systems play a large role in single-year fluctuations. “The temperature goes up for a couple of years and we have the largest year on record, then it goes down and it reaches a level that’s still well above 20th-century historical averages,” he said. “That in no way disproves anything about the causes of the long-term temperature trends.”

The House Science Committee is really taking a page from Donald Trump by using social media to propagate lies. However, it isn’t a new thing they are doing. Republicans love to take over government departments in order to defund and abuse those posts until no one believes in those government jobs as having any civil worth.

I have read recently several people claiming that you are wasting your money on vitamins and alternative medicine doesn’t work.

I start my story 28 years ago.  I had just gone to the dentist and he told me I was going to have my gums cut back as the gaps had grown too large and that was all they could do in those days.  I went to work and was complaining to my work partner and he left to his van and came back with a bottle of CO-Q10.  He told me he couldn’t let the dentist to that to me and that the first bottle was free.

Within a week my gums started to bleed less and the constant pain was less.  A month later I went to my next dentist appointment he was going to start the procedure to cut back my gums.  He took one look at my mouth and instantly wanted to know what I had done as he had never seen anyone's mouth heal as much as mine and I no longer needed the procedure.

I have since learned that until around 50 your body produces Q10.  Your body stores Q10 in your gums and in your heart.  It starts to take from your gums first, then your heart. 

I don’t take any other vitamins, but I do take on occasion some Chinese herbs.  I have one that in the case I get a cold, it keep it from going down into my chest.  I have had stomach pain all my life and when it happens I have some Chinese herbs to take the pain away.  I also have a tincture for immediate stomach relief.

My body makes lots of mucus and I woke up sick every morning for years until I started working for an acupuncturist and he turned me on to special Chinese herbal mixture I cooked.  Within a week I was no longer sick in the morning and I could breath better.  I have since replaced that with an American herb tincture that grows here in the northwest.  I can take deep breaths without coughing for the first time since catching Valley Fever as a child.

Being a seamstress and secretary all my life I started having shooting pain up my right arm.  I could no longer open jars and even squeezing a sponge send sharp pain up my arm.  I started acupuncture, the first week I didn’t notice much the second week my arm turned into a rock and I had never felt such pain.  If my acupuncture hadn’t come free with my job, I might not have gone back, but I did and complained of the increased pain.  She put about a dozen needles in my forearm and hand and the needles jumped almost the entire hour.  Slowly over the evening my arm started feeling better and by the next morning I couldn’t believe how much pain was gone.  It took about 2 months of once a week to return total use of my hand.

That was 5 years ago, I can now open jars and my strength returned to my hand.  Twice in the last 5 years have thought I felt some pain in my hand and had a couple refresher treatments.

My free rescued cats from Catalina Island came with kitty herpes.  I was having to buy and put in his eyes medicine every day to save his eyes.  My vet suggested that I try L-Lysine as he had heard good things.  At 1000 milligrams a day and my female started to heal, but it took 1500 a day to keep my male in good health.  At the time they were in constant care of the vet as I was concerned about the amount of L-Lysine, he assured me they were fine.  My male was eaten by a coyote a few years ago, but my female who is now 12 just had a vet appointment and they were impressed how healthy she is. She still gets her L-Lysine, I open caps and mix them with meat baby food.  Yes, she is spoiled.

But my point alternative medicine is good for us and our pets.

Arctic sea ice extent, area and volume has collapsed to record low levels for November as warm Atlantic ocean water has pushed into Arctic seas that used to be ice covered. Sea ice cover is also low on the Pacific side.

The warm Arctic sea water has allowed warm storms to inject huge amounts of heat over the north pole raising surface temperatures to above freezing in areas that are normally twenty degrees below zero Fahrenheit. Temperatures today are 50ºF above normal near the pole.

But that’s not all. The  lack of sea ice has dramatically affected the northern hemisphere’s atmospheric circulation for months. The heat this fall has formed a warm dome over the Arctic ocean and provided moisture for deep, early Siberian snow. A record deep Siberian snow pack for October pushed south of normal developing a deep pool of cold air over central Siberia.

The much larger than normal temperature contrasts (gradients) across Central Eurasia have intensified the polar jet stream across Asia and the north Pacific Ocean. This is a predicted consequence of intense early snowfall in Siberia associated with warm water entering the Arctic seas. This fall has had all time record minimum sea ice extent in the seas north of Eurasia and this unprecedented weather pattern is the atmospheric response to these warm waters so deep into the Arctic.

Intense atmospheric waves, associated with intense storms have whipped across both the Pacific and Atlantic. When intense storms approached the Arctic from both the Pacific and Atlantic in late October the stratospheric polar vortex was pinched from both sides, a 2 wave pattern, and split in two.

This stratospheric polar vortex split is unprecedented for so early in the Arctic winter season as far as I know. The stratospheric polar vortex is now unstable and may undergo a major midwinter warming in the next ten days. It may be the earliest major midwinter warming ever seen.

There may be a silver lining in this disturbing news. The strong jet stream that is locking in across the Pacific because of the cold pool that has formed under the Aleutians in response to the repeated intense cold storms is breaking down the La Niña weather pattern that would have extended the drought in California. An intense jet stream across the Pacific usually brings heavy mid-winter rains to California and the Pacific northwest.

Please note that I am a geochemist who has been involved in climate research related to nuclear waste disposal safety assessment but I am not an expert in atmospheric sciences. Because stratospheric processes involve very complex physics I must carefully review the work of experts to insure my writing is based on science, not my pet theories. In the process of reviewing recent research to support my writing I discovered the pioneering work of Dr. Judah Cohen at AER corporation. His recent blog post on the Arctic oscillation www.aer.com/… confirmed my observations and went much deeper into the subject than I can.

Much of his post is highly technical but here is the good news that rains might come to California despite NOAA’s forecast of a weak La Niña, a pattern that usually is associated with dry weather in California.

SSTs/El Niño/Southern Oscillation

Equatorial Pacific sea surface temperatures (SSTs) continue to be weakly cooler than average (Figure 14) and most winter ENSO forecasts are for weak La Niña conditions. La Niña conditions favor a negative Pacific/North American (PNA) pattern that produces cold anomalies in the northwestern US and warm anomalies in the Southeastern US.   But the big story of late has been the rapidly cooling SSTs across the mid-latitudes of the North Pacific.  These cool waters seem to be a result of the very cold temperatures that developed across Siberia this October.  The cold air across Siberia both being advected out across the North Pacific and strengthening the westerlies across the North Pacific have dramatically cooled SSTs in the North Pacific.  This seems analogous to the winters of 2013/14 and 2014/15 when cold temperatures in Canada cooled North Atlantic SSTS and strengthened the Jet Stream to record speeds as it headed towards Europe.  This dramatic cooling of SSTs demonstrates we are more confident that the atmosphere forces SSTs than SSTs force the atmosphere in the mid-latitudes.  Warmer than normal SSTs to the north near Alaska and colder than normal SSTs across the mid-latitudes, could favor a southward shift the in the Jet Stream across the North Pacific this winter.  The cool waters across the mid-latitudes could help strengthen the Aleutians low further south opposite to what might be expected during La Niña.

And the weak polar vortex could lead to intense cold air outbreaks over the northern hemisphere continents in midwinter. The Climate Prediction Center’s forecast of a warm winter across the southern states may be disrupted by intense cold outbreaks because the weak polar vortex will be unable to keep the cold air locked up in the northern climes. The Arctic ocean may experience unprecedented heat at the same time that brutal cold builds over Siberia. Where that brutally cold Siberian air goes will determine who gets the cold winter.

My history in this group, DKU, has been as a caretaker and happened only because I just tried to carry this group over from DK3-DK4, and now that we’re in DK5, perhaps there are some faculty, ex-faculty. researchers, or interested fellow travelers who may wish to be connected, as others who perhaps got lost as other DK fractures occurred like defections to FDL, caucus99, etc.

SO THIS IS A CALL FOR PARTICIPATION BECAUSE ONE HASN’T HAPPENED IN YEARS so please send kosmail if you’re interested

No, I don’t have an interest in being a boss of this... (Kos would be our ex officio Chancellor/President anyway),

I just hope that like-minded retired, employed, unemployed, and underemployed faculty might be interested in networking and participating in what could be some interesting projects… 

for example some sample areas but not an exhaustive list:

• build an MOOC or LMS for STEM fields or social analysis that could be useful to explain TPP or the emerging ethno-nationalism in the US, or
• build course or teach-in materials in advance of the next US war, climate denialism, or the next OWS-style action or
• develop anti-capitalist or anti-neoliberal teaching materials that explain the next financial collapse or
• provide more survival materials for undergraduates who are fearful of whitelash stupidity on their campuses or
• bringing some useful clearinghouse career development resources for the expected personnel purges in higher education and strategies including labor activism, LGBTQ safe space, or POC, or
• new technologies or skills, teaching coding, linux advice, software reviews, and suggestions, etc. or
• all higher-ed fields credit/non-credit teaching are welcome, if you have composition, math, welding skills, CNC, agriculture, science/technology, medicine, allied health etc… please come on by… or
• whatever you want to bring to the table, test out some ideas, suggest new teaching approaches, or
• commiserate on local campus problems that some other groups like DK’s Teacher’s Lounge have considered that’s away from the usual higher ed feeding frenzy at CHE or IHE

I disappeared for a few days after the election of a man who espoused racism, xenophobia and misogyny as the reasons to vote for him. His actual policy proposals were threadbare and, if he really believed them, we are looking a historical dismantling of all that is special about the USA. It’s hard to choose what scares me most about this sexual predator’s policies, but the antiscience Donald Trump ranks pretty much at or near the top.

Generally, the Republican party is quite antiscience. Republicans deny climate change. Republicans deny evolution, while Trump’s running mate, Mike Pence, is hypercritical of evolution. And of course, Republicans have shown themselves to be vaccine deniers. There’s a lot more, but many of us consider those topics to be in the top 5 list of science denial. Frankly, if someone said that Trump believed in alien visitations and Sasquatch, and he was sending tax money to investigate them thoroughly, I wouldn’t be surprised.

On a broader level, a Trump administration will probably gut science research by cutting funding to National Institutes of Health and NASA programs in basic scientific research. There are probably areas, where Trump will appoint directors who are opposed to the years of science that form a basis of policy.

Despite the press tacitly being in bed with Trump, never really investigating him, Hillary Clinton won the election based on the popular vote, with a several hundred thousand vote lead over Trump. I think most Americans wanted a President who supported science. Sadly, Trump won the election because the USA uses an antiquated and anachronistic method to actually choose the president. A method that is based on needs of 250 years ago and on the negotiations required to get slave holding states to agree to the new Union. But, I’m not a political scientist, and the arguments for and against the Electoral College system of voting would be far beyond what are topics for this website.

Let’s just look at the antiscience Donald Trump, sticking to the key issues of climate change, evolution, and vaccines.

Antiscience Donald Trump and evolution

First of all, Trump himself has not clearly articulated an opinion about science, but there are more than enough clues where he is going. Given Trump’s distinct lack of intellectual curiosity about almost anything but a woman’s genitals, he probably couldn’t explain the difference between biological evolution and young earth creationism. According to Hemant Mehta,

In other words, Trump panders to the right wing evangelical vote by claiming he supports it, but then also supports a theistic evolution, which is not supported by science and which attempts to reconcile religious beliefs with the scientific fact of evolution. Most scientist reject theistic evolution as science, but I guess on the scale of scientific evolution to pseudoscientific creationism, it sits somewhere in the middle.

What’s more problematic are some of the advisors attached to Trump through the transition to taking office. The aforementioned Vice President-elect, Mike Pence, is rabidly anti-evolution. One of Trump’s key advisors is Dr. Ben Carson (yes neurosurgeon) who was a candidate for the Republican nomination to the presidency. Dr. Carson has reiterated his belief in creationism, it is no secret. Carson claims that his creationist beliefs have not been a hindrance to his becoming a physician and surgeon.

Some of the readers here might think, “I don’t like evolution deniers, but it’s not like climate change which is really dangerous.” Except not knowing about evolution is dangerous. Theodosius Dobzhansky once wrote, “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” All of basic medical research relies on intimate knowledge of the power of evolution. We know how to attack viruses and other microbes because we understand how evolution works. We understand DNA and how it relates to diseases and treatments, because of our knowledge of evolution.

If we become a nation of evolution deniers, where creationism is taught as “science,” then the country falls behind in medical innovations that save lives. Ironically, so that our country can still make money on medical research, we’d have to hire foreign skilled researchers and scientists who aren’t ignorant in the fact of evolution.

Finally, though not directly evolution, understanding related facts like the age of the earth and how the earth changes over time, gives a better chance to grasp the fact of anthropogenic climate change. Which leads to the second problem with the antiscience Donald Trump.

Anthropogenic climate change

As bad as the antiscience Donald Trump is about evolution, there is more direct statements from him about anthropogenic climate change, that is, human-caused global warming. According to a Scientific American analysis of the four candidates for President (including Jill Stein and Gary Johnson), Trump’s antiscience views on climate change are pretty clear:

Trump refers to “climate change” in quotation marks, apparently to signal that he still believes—as he has asserted in the past—that human-caused global warming is a hoax. Then he suggests that “our limited financial resources” are best spent on things such as clean water and anti-malaria efforts, without acknowledging the argument that the success of such efforts could be largely influenced by how climate change is addressed.

And then there’s this Tweet from the antiscience Donald Trump:

Or this one:

Or this one:

To be fair, the aforementioned evolution-denier, VP-elect Mike Pence, is at odds with Trump on climate change. It’s pretty upsetting to learn that the right wing anti-gay, anti-evolution, and anti-abortion VP elect is the sane one.

To be even more fair, Trump is no different than the rest of the science denying Neanderthals that make up the Republican Party. Most Republicans and their voters are solidly on the side of climate change denial. Let’s be absolutely clear – climate change is a scientific fact, supported by a huge consensus of the most important scientists and scientific institutions across the world. To refute this consensus, Donald Trump and his Republican lackeys need to provide more than bullshit conspiracy theories and pandering rhetoric. But, that’s how the antiscience Donald Trump lost the election won the majority of electoral votes – pandering to the lowest common intellectual denominator of the electorate.

I guess we could wait until sea level rise destroys the lower elevation parts of the USA. But by then, it will be too late.

Vaccines and vaccination

But there is one more topic, where the antiscience Donald Trump drives this scientist crazy. It’s vaccines, or more precisely, vaccine denial from President-elect Trump that is dangerous in both the short- and long-term. I’ve written several articles about Trump’s antiscience views about vaccination several times before. Trump continues to push the trope that “vaccines cause autism,” despite the overwhelming high quality which clearly states that vaccines and autism are unrelated.

Trump also pushes the false narrative that too many vaccines cause autism:

Again, another belief that’s refuted by real science. I know that Trump lacks the intellection wherewithal to actually uncover facts, but we’re not talking about some potential threat – the real facts are without vaccines, children will be harmed and die from vaccine preventable diseases.

Oh but it’s so much worse. The anti-vaccine cult thinks it helped elect Trump (I don’t think exit polls ask about vaccines, so I doubt there is real information anywhere). As I wrote prior to the election Trump met with world’s greatest scientific fraud, Andrew Wakefield to discuss vaccines. The Trump-Wakefield bromance lead to this statement from Mr. Wakefield,

With that support, the antivaccine gang is demanding payback from Trump. The eloquent Orac outlined several demands that the vaccine deniers are insisting be pushed their way:

Another, much smaller, group of supporters who think they can get something from the Trump administration after January 20, 2017 are antivaxers. As I’ve mentioned before, in general, antivaxers leaned heavily towards Trump, thanks to Donald Trump’s long, sordid history of antivaccine statements in interviews and on Twitter. I’ve documented them before on multiple occasions going back to 2007, which is the first time I learned of Trump’s antivaccine proclivities, leading me to frequently observe that, given Trump’s well-known history of flip-flopping and taking multiple sides of any issue based on convenience, his antivaccine views are quite possibly the one set of beliefs that he’s been utterly consistent about for at least a decade.

Orac details the all the antivaccine nonsense of Donald Trump (linked above), so I’ll be lazy to not repeat them. However, I cannot let go of a blog post by the reprehensible and disgraceful Levi Quackenboss (nom de plume of a well-known antivaccine creep), which has the temerity to outline a list of demands of Donald Trump. She makes the following list of demands:

1. Drain the swamp we call the CDC.
2. Get Dr. Ben Carson to man up about autism.
3. Nominate a US Surgeon General who understands that autism is an illness.
4. Publicly acknowledge the CDC Whistleblower investigation.
5. Dilute the CDC vaccination schedule back to one that is reasonable.
6. Make your (Trump’s) personal stance against vaccine mandates known.
7. Work toward legislation to ban pharmaceutical campaign donations to Congressmen.
8. Create an Autism Prevention Program.
9. See that we amend the National Vaccine Compensation Program.
10. Pardon Julian Assange and Edward Snowden.

Wow, that’s some list of demands. Let’s look at them.

1. The CDC is made up of public servants who study and research the sciences of epidemiology, public health, immunology, infectious diseases, and human health to better the lives of all of mankind. They are often the first responders to outbreaks of diseases across the world. Calling it a swamp and draining it of all money will cause undue harm to our planet. Levi Quackenboss, who has all of the intellectual capacity of her hero, the antiscience Donald Trump, would rather kill human beings by destroying the CDC than thinking about all the good the CDC does. But why should I expect any different from unscientific vaccine denier. The CDC is one of the great American governmental entities whose successes are important to the world. The scientists, physicians and technicians there have given their professional lives to protecting humans. Quackenboss can take her quackery elsewhere.
2. Surprising, Dr. Ben Carson says there is no evidence that vaccines are related to autism. And the science supports him nearly 100%. In other words, as far as I can tell, on this particular point, Dr. Carson has “manned up” about autism and vaccines.
3. Whether someone wants to change terminology about autism spectrum disorder, whether it’s an “illness” or a “mental disorder” is irrelevant, as long as we recognize it is not caused by vaccines. I doubt a Surgeon General who denies vaccines will be appointed and approved by the Senate. He or she would deserve and get no respect from the world at large if they were a denier.
4. Does Quackenboss mean the ridiculed and mocked CDC whistleblower? This story has been debunked so many times, that it’s in the same league as “evolution is just a theory” in denying real science. As Orac describes this nonsense, “The “CDC whistleblower” phenomenon is nothing but one big conspiracy theory based on a highly incompetent “reanalysis” of a single study and the angry actions of a single disgruntled CDC employee named William Thompson.” Let’s be clear for the 47th time – vaccines do not cause autism.
5. The current vaccine schedule was determined by scientific research. And Quackenboss wants to stuff the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, the CDC committee that decides on which vaccines are to be required along with the schedule, with famed vaccine deniers, like Bob Sears.
6. Well, I think Trump has done that through his unfettered use of Twitter. However, who knows what Trump really believes. He may have just pandered to the vaccine deniers to get more votes. Who knows?
7. I might agree with this one. But it should include banning of all corporate contributions, but I doubt that will happen. And as far as I know, Big Pharma loves Republicans and Democrats, so there will not be much of an effort here.
8. Quackenboss doesn’t want to really have an “Autism Prevention Program,” she wants a “Vaccines Cause Autism” program. After the boatloads of billions of dollars spent on this particular question, and finding no links between vaccines and autism, this seems to be a huge waste of time.
9. She wants to “fix” the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. Digested down to its essential components, Quackenboss wants the court to remove all rules of scientific evidence, “trust” the parents beliefs, and pay out tons of money. Uh no.
10. Julian Assange and Edward Snowden are not relevant to vaccines. But I guess she thinks they’re heroes by helping the Soviet Union Czarists Russians to influence the 2016 election. I guess getting the antiscience Donal Trump elected is so important that ex-communists and anarchists are just fine by her accounting.

Levi Quackenass can ask for whatever she wants, but I doubt it will get much of a hearing. Donald Trump and his Republican Party (it’s really his) will overreach in other areas, like selling off public lands, repealing Obamacare, denying climate change, and pushing religion into schools. It protects their base of support.

Of course, Quackendork isn’t the only one pushing Trump about vaccines. Dr. Rachael Ross, one of those TV doctors known more for their on-air presence rather than actual medical knowledge, recently wrote on Facebook, “Well, back to business…So Mr. Trump, can we discuss this vaccine schedule?”

Antivaccine voters are a tiny minority, probably less than 5%. And they’re mostly crackpots, probably too few for even Donald Trump and his crowd of crackpots to consider. But who knows, Trump’s well known lack of intellectual prowess might get distracted by it for a minute, and suddenly, it’s policy.

TL;DR version

I do worry that Trump could name heads of the CDC, NIH and HHS that are not as pro-science as we would like. And despite all the whining about Big Pharma, the US leadership in medical devices, pharmaceuticals and equipment means a lot to the US economy. If we don’t fund science at the rate that we have in the near past (which is way down from pre-Reagan days), we will fall behind Japan, Europe and other areas in this critical technology.

There’s a lot of reasons to loathe Donald Trump. His nefarious activities and mistreatment of women are near the top. His pandering to racists and xenophobes are others. His lack of intellectual curiosity and broad experience with national and international issues is scary. His lack of temperament to deal with the intense pressures of the presidency gives me an existential fear of the future.

But as a scientist, his tradition and comments that indicate a deep-seated disdain for science and scientific thinking will bring great harm to this nation and its people. And the damage to science can last generations, even if the Democrats get their act together (wouldn’t bet on it) and block him from his most outrageous decisions. Science matters to our country, and I fear that Donald Trump will be a great enemy to technology and science.

A new study out of Purdue University says that banning GMO crops around the world would raise the costs of food while also lifting the amount of carbon dioxide we put into the atmosphere.

Using a model to assess the economic and environmental value of GMO crops, agricultural economists found that replacing GMO corn, soybeans and cotton with conventionally bred varieties worldwide would cause a 0.27 to 2.2 percent increase in food costs, depending on the region, with poorer countries hit hardest. According to the study, published Oct. 27 in the Journal of Environmental Protection, a ban on GMOs would also trigger negative environmental consequences: The conversion of pastures and forests to cropland - to compensate for conventional crops' lower productivity - would release substantial amounts of stored carbon to the atmosphere.

What will be even more dismaying to anti-GMO advocates is that if other countries revved up their GMO productions, it would be beneficial to our globe’s emissions issues.

Conversely, if countries that already plant GMOs expanded their use of genetically modified crops to match the rate of GMO planting in the United States, global greenhouse gas emissions would fall by the equivalent of 0.2 billion tons of carbon dioxide and would allow 0.8 million hectares of cropland (about 2 million acres) to return to forests and pastures.

Interestingly, if there was a global ban on GMOs, the United States’ economy would benefit since rising food prices benefit countries that can export food. On the hurting end of that model? China.