How to recognize when you are being manipulated

How to recognize when you are being manipulated

el gato malo on Twitter: “does anyone else marvel at the speed with which “the new fear” is suddenly and monolithically on the lips of influencers? 3 days ago, this issue did not exist. suddenly governments and pundits around the globe are laser focused on it with unified talking points. #Curious https://t.co/1H9BkJUu6G” / Twitter

The “gas stoves cause asthma” meme erupted with the nearly simultaneous publication of a paper claiming that 1 in 8 asthma cases are caused by natural gas cooking stoves. The authors declared no conflicts of interest even though one organization’s mission is to electrify America, and another has a similar background to end gas usage and electrify everything.

The study appears to be pretty poor – as some have noted, two U.S. states have long banned gas stoves and those states have the same rates of asthma as those with gas stoves.

I understand no one knows what causes asthma to occur (I have exercise induced asthma). There is not a clear biological basis for why gas stoves would cause asthma. The study did not consider whether children were present in the kitchen or home during cooking or what the ventilation level was. For example, I grew up in California – as a child I was generally not in the kitchen while cooking was underway. Additionally, California is a warm state during much of the year – and windows may have been open for cooling and ventilation. Did this asthma association vary between cold states and warm states?

Based on this one, not very good study, the CPSC suddenly proposes banning gas stoves.

Some say this is an end run around restrictions on the EPA. The EPA wants to ban gas stoves because of the climate, but does not have the authority to do so. Thus, they punted to the CPSC to use a poor quality study to ban them on sexed up health reasons. This proposal appears to have been concocted by technocrats, organizations that will profit from electrification of everything, and promulgated into prominence by public relations operatives coaching reporters on what to write.

Crazy stuff – I don’t have time to read the study – and would never trust a PR -spun news article about the topic. It’s bizarre that this came out of nowhere and within days is the talk of the land and subject to banning. Gas (and wood stoves!) have been used since the 19th century.

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