During the COVID-19 pandemic, the American public fell back in love with science. In the first 19 years of this century, Californians denied vaccines to such an extent a law had to be passed to prevent coastal parents from creating a Whooping Cough pandemic. Every building had cancer warnings somewhere - even oncology wards in hospitals warned cancer patients they might get cancer by visiting their doctor - and Non-GMO Project rock salt(!) took off.

That has now changed.(1) For most of the country, Purell, Clorox, and Lysol replaced bottles of useless green-labeled goop that claimed to be natural alternatives. People wanted what worked.

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.