grampa's SUNNY science vs today's GRIM realities

Grampa's science is still judged only one safe enough for kids

If you want to build the world's longest, straightest, airport runway all you need to succeed , on time and under budget, is still just GRAMPA's SCIENCE.

The science from back before the 1890s , the kind of science 21st century high school administrators still think is the only one safe enough to teach children.

Good old, solid, commonsensical, white protestant ANGLO SAXON science : the Holy Trinity of Newton, Dalton and Darwin.

Science when Science, by God ! , was like a religion, a faith.

A positive, outwardly-looking, optimist, can-do, religious fervour, type of science.

Science so intuitive and commonsensical you almost didn't need some fancy-assed professor to teach it , merely have a fellow from your own church, with a BSc and a great game of golf .

Someone who could confirm your childhood scientific insights for you.

None of that dour, new-fangled, complicated, so called "jew boy" science.

The science so tough that high school principals think it should only be used by adults : science rated PG-18.

That counter-intutitive science of relativity cum quantum physics, green chemistry and horizontal gene transfer oriented biology.

Yep, science like grampa's can still build great runways.

But - if you let it build your GPS for you --- by using good old newton's laws --- your airplane would crash and burn about 15 yards beyond the runway.

New science does many things much more accurately than the old science of 150 or more years back.

That is only natural : we don't much use horse and buggies to get people to emergency departments anymore : we use helicopters.

Today we face new - unparalleled - problems, a whole new reality and we must use the newest and the best science to help prevent the airliner Earth from crashing and burning 15 yards beyond the runway.

Grampa's science is simple enough for kids - yes , it truly is simple.

Libertarian bureaucrats in advocacy think tanks, the ones that are "skeptic"   big deniers of climate change, are along with high school principals, among the world's most strident believers in the comfortable old simple science from back before the 1890s and the "Great Schism in Science".

Bu, unfortunately, our problems today are complicated and like it or not, we need complicated science to help solve them.

Child-like problems (designing yet another routine runway) only require the sweet, gentle medicine intended for children.

But grown-up sized problems requires grown-up science, bitter-tasting as that might be .....