Science 2.0

The EPA is requesting public comment on a biological evaluation of three seed treatment pesticides, called neonicotinoids. Neonicotinoids were created in the 1990s to require less mass spraying and possible damage to the environment. They are seed treatments, so they protect plants when they are most vulnerable to pests and that means less strain on the environment with spraying.The sounds great, but so does limiting them when you read "each of these chemicals is likely to adversely affect certain listed species or their designated critical habitats" because that reads authoritative.

A new survey has good news for the alternative-to-cattle market, Beyond Burgers and the like; 54 percent of surveyed Americans claim they have tried it and 70 percent of those thought it okay.(1)  Burger King is a game changer on that, and over 40 percent reported buying it there. That all sounds great, but there is a confounder. The survey of 30,700 conflates lab-grown meat and vegetable patties, which have gigantic differences among consumer beliefs. That said, it still has some good news for companies in that space.

A new study statistically correlates wildfire smoke to pre-term birth risk. There are a number of confounders in that, of course, like that exposure to wildfires creates a great deal of stress and often hurried actions and those are huge factors, but they instead dredged up a link to something that makes little sense - air quality far from fires. And since they came up with a suitably cosmic number - 7,000 extra preterm births in just 5 years! - it is sure to get attention in a state where everyone hyperventilates over everything.

At the turn of the century, if you denied global warming or believed that vaccines cause autism, it was easy to know which political party you were in. When it came to acceptance of evolution, things were muddier. Though more Democrats than Republicans accepted evolution the margin was single digits and over half of all people didn't know what to make of it or flat out denied it.(1)

I am not running for President so I don't have any need to cater to Iowa corn farmers and voters, as former Vice-President Al Gore admitted he was doing when he broke a tie in the Senate and forced ethanol mandates on Americans.

A reader sent me an email asking about chewing gum and if it was really made of plastic and my first thought was 'Why ask me? Do what scientists do and go to Google, skip the first 10 entries, which will all be gamed by SEO experts at anti-science groups like Ecowatch, and then you will find the answer' but I was hooked when I saw the article linked was in The Economist.

Subway Brand Ambassador and soccer star Megan Rapinoe kneeled during the national anthem at the Tokyo Olympics and Twitter did what Twitter was designed to do and went into spasms, despite that being about as edgy and controversial as endorsing clean water in 2021. Subway still had reason to worry. How will it affect sandwiches?  That is what they need to know, because selling sandwiches to 2 Democrats and 2 Republicans is better than selling sandwiches to 2 Democrats, no matter how you spin the math.

We have shown diseases can be eliminated, like polio and smallpox, but can you eliminate something like COVID-19?Coronavirus was only recognized as distinct from the common cold in the 1960s so it's impossible to know what impact it had throughout history and was just called flu or something else. COVID-19 was the third coronavirus pandemic of this century and we didn't worry about eradicating SARS and MERS, it was just important than the pandemic would stop.Yet COVID-19 and the media attention it brought has thrown out the virology rulebook; some epidemiologists are overruling scientists and declaring everyone needs to wear masks until it is eradicated, but is that even possible?

The international Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in France was once one of the most respected epidemiology groups in the world. Today, their reputation is in a shambles.They'd like to fix that, and to humanize their group they have created one of those 'get to know us' things. It's a fine publicity stunt but it does not mask the real problem; they do not want to inform public health, they no longer find carcinogens - they manufacture them.

If you were born prior to 1980, you likely had a parent say that you needed to eat your dinner because people were starving in Africa.And it was true. The Malthusian boom and bust lamented by Paul Ehrlich, John Holdren, and other doomsday prophets in the 1970s had gripped journalists and therefore popular culture.(1)Yet beginning in 1980 scientists began to run the table on breakthroughs that have headed off starvation. Now no progressive seriously discusses mandatory sterilization or abortion and a Planetary Regime to enforce them the way Ehrlich and Holdren did in "Ecoscience"; the worry instead is that everyone is getting too fat thanks to science making it possible to grow food so affordably.

I have a pocket watch from the late 1800s. Why or how anyone carried this thing comfortably is a mystery. It is bulky and heavy. I can't have been alone because within just a few decades there was a wave of optimization that can best be compared to cell phones; even low-cost watches became small, light, and they kept great time. A pocket watch from the 1930s or '40s can often be found on my person, never the big heavy thing.I don't like dainty coffee cups or a salad fork and I like a heavy blanket. Though recent trends had been toward smaller and lighter, I am not alone in preferring heft. People have started to love weighty stuff again.

Though we're at the tail end of the third coronavirus pandemic of the last 18 years, and a billion people in the world still use wood and dung for energy, and some people still starve, things are better than ever before. The mountains and valleys of feast and famine have tapered into gentle hills and science has made it possible for previously inhospitable regions to grow food.  That has meant prosperity. A decade ago the World Health Organisation set targets for income among the poorest, and those targets were met far ahead of schedule.