By Steve Goreham
Originally published in the August edition of The American Oil & Gas Reporter.
A study published in April by the Fielding School of Public Health at the University of California Los Angeles claims residential natural gas causes dangerous indoor and outdoor air pollution, and proposes to eliminate gas from California homes. But the study, Effects of Residential Gas Appliances on Indoor and Outdoor Air Quality and Public Health in California, lacks accuracy and perspective, as discussed in my paper criticizing the study that was published in June. Natural gas is a low-cost, nonpolluting fuel for heating, cooking, industrial use, and generating electricity.
Indoor Pollution
In the case of indoor pollution, stoves are the only appliances that might be a concern for indoor air in California. California law requires furnaces, water heaters, and other gas appliances to vent exhaust to outside air.
The UCLA study claimed that gas appliances cause harmful indoor pollution but did not develop any new data. Instead, the study used models and hypothetical cooking scenarios to claim that “concentrations of CO and NO2 during cooking events can exceed levels set by national and California-based ambient air quality standards.” Carbon monoxide (CO) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2), if breathed in high concentrations, can be hazardous to health.
However, the UCLA study itself did not find hazardous indoor CO levels from gas stoves. The model results summarized in Table 2-2 of the study did not find that CO levels exceed either California or U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) standards. Modern gas stoves, when professionally installed and maintained, do not pose a carbon monoxide risk for today’s homes.
Nitrogen is not part of natural gas fuel, but NO2 can be created by stove burner flames, which break down nitrogen in the air. The UCLA models projected that if a stove and oven were used simultaneously for two hours of cooking, indoor levels of NO2 could reach 34 parts per billion (ppb), exceeding the California Ambient Air Quality Standard (CAAQS) of 30 ppb.
But it’s not clear that NO2 concentrations of 34 ppb are hazardous to health. The EPA National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) for NO2 is 53 ppb. The EPA states that, for NO2 levels below 50 ppb, “No health impacts are expected for air quality in this range.”
In addition, the studies cited by the UCLA paper did not find evidence that NO2 emissions from gas stoves are unhealthy. For example, UCLA cites Dales (2008), which states: “Whether chronic exposure to low concentrations of nitrogen dioxide from indoor sources increases the risk of respiratory illnesses is unclear.” Contrary to claims by the study, residents should have confidence that modern gas stoves do not pose an indoor air pollution health risk.
Based on only questionable model projections on nitrogen dioxide, with no evidence on carbon monoxide or other indoor pollutants, and with only inconclusive support from the scientific literature, the UCLA paper urges the elimination of all California gas stoves.
Outdoor Pollution
The second part of the UCLA paper claims that gas appliances generate harmful PM2.5 particle pollution. It claims that if California residential appliances were transitioned to electric, the reduction in PM2.5 emissions would result in 354 fewer deaths and reduce health costs by approximately $3.5 billion each year.
The EPA classifies PM2.5 as particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter, smaller than the eye can see. For several years, the EPA has warned that inhalation of small particles is associated with premature death. The agency warns that death may occur within a few hours of inhalation of PM2.5, or may be caused by long-term inhalation over decades.
In 2013, EPA Policy Advisor Amanda Brown stated that between 130,000 and 320,000 Americans died prematurely in 2005 due to particle pollution, or between 6 and 15 percent of total US deaths, an incredible claim.
The EPA claims that particle pollution triggers heart failure, respiratory failure, and other causes of mortality. If a senior citizen dies on his 70th birthday, and a coroner determines heart failure to be the cause of death, the EPA may regard this death as “premature” and caused by particle pollution.
Today, our nation’s air is remarkably clean. Health incidents from serious air pollution are rare. The EPA’s six criteria air pollutants, lead, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, ozone, and particulates, are down a combined 77 percent in 2019 compared to 1980. These improvements in air quality have been achieved with U.S. residents using over 50 percent more natural gas today than in 1980. PM2.5 pollution is typically below the EPA national standard of 12 micrograms per cubic meter, down 43 percent since 2000.
Twelve micrograms per cubic meter is not very much. Dr. James Enstrom, a retired researcher from the UCLA School of Public Health, points out that a person breathing in 12 micrograms of small particles per cubic meter of air would inhale less than 5 grams, or less than one teaspoon full, of these microscopic particles over an 80-year lifespan. The EPA’s assertion that this tiny dose of particles causes premature death is not credible.
How do the EPA, the California Air Resources Board (CARB), and other organizations conclude that thousands of Americans die prematurely each year from particle pollution? No coroner ever attributes a cause of death to small particles. Instead, the EPA relies on epidemiological observational studies that find statistical associations between particle pollution and death.
Epidemiological studies look for associations between exposure to an agent and appearance of disease in a population. An example is the Doll and Hill study in the 1950s that found that cigarette smoking caused lung cancer in a population of 41,000 British medical doctors. The EPA has concluded that associations found in epidemiological studies show that inhalation of small particles causes premature death.
The Harvard Six Cities study of 1993 and the American Cancer Society study of 1995 are two of the studies that form the basis of EPA small particle science. These studies found an increase in relative risk of less than 20 percent (RR=1.2). An increase in death rates of less than 20 percent is almost statistically indistinguishable from zero. In comparison, the Doll and Hill study found smokers had 10 times the rate of lung cancer of non-smokers, a relative risk of RR=10. The weak association (small relative risk) between death and particle pollution that the EPA judges to be causal could be due to other factors in measured populations, or even random chance.
Other studies have found no causal association between small particle pollution and death. For example, Cox (2017) analyzed small particles and death of persons 75 years or older in Boston and Los Angeles during periods from 2007 to 2013. The study found that ambient PM2.5 concentrations did not predict average elderly mortality rates in either Boston or Los Angeles.
The underlying data from the Harvard Six Cities study and the American Cancer Society study have never been released. As a result, other scientists are not able to replicate and verify the results of these studies.
The EPA recently issued a Supplemental Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM), titled “Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science.” This proposed rule is a follow-on effort from a 2018 NPRM intended to base regulatory policy on scientific studies which release their underlying data for reanalysis and critique. This is certainly needed in the case of epidemiological studies claiming associations between low levels of particle pollution and death.
The UCLA paper projects that, if gas appliances were replaced by electric appliances in California buildings, then outdoor levels of PM2.5 would be reduced by 0.11 micrograms per cubic meter. But airborne particulate pollution is dominated by other sources of particles.
On January 1, 2018, California legalized the recreational use of marijuana. A person who smokes a single marijuana joint or a single tobacco cigarette inhales more particles than breathing a year’s worth of particles in California air. In just two days, the 2017 Napa Valley fire produced an estimated 10,000 tons of PM2.5, the amount emitted by California’s 35 million vehicles in a year.
Eliminating gas appliances from 13 million residences would reduce California outdoor airborne particle pollution by less than one percent. Such a small change in air quality could not be detected by any measurement system.
Climate Concerns and Rising Energy Costs for California Homes
It appears that the real goal of the UCLA paper is to support climate change policies with arguments about projected improvements in air quality and illusory health benefits. The paper states that natural gas is primarily methane, “a potent greenhouse gas” and that “buildings are responsible for an estimated 25 percent of GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions in California.”
But California gas appliances are an insignificant part of world energy usage, only 0.33 percent of world natural gas consumption. If all California residential appliances were converted from gas to electric, the effect on global gas usage and global greenhouse gas emissions would be negligible.
While gas and electric appliances both have advantages, usage shows that California residents overwhelmingly prefer gas. Gas stoves offer better temperature control than electric stoves. Consumer Affairs Research points out that gas dryers use 30 percent less energy than electric dryers. Gas water heaters heat water twice as fast as electric water heaters.
But the biggest advantage of gas appliances is lower cost of operation. Think Energy reports that homeowners can save $1,000 to $2,000 annually with a gas furnace compared to an electric furnace. Water heater savings can be $200 annually, and dryer and stove savings can each be $100 annually, when using gas instead of electric.
On September 10, 2018, then California Governor Jerry Brown signed Senate Bill 100, mandating that the state obtain 100 percent of its electricity from “clean energy sources” by 2045. But Californians will experience the shock of rapidly rising electricity prices as more renewable energy is added to the power system.
Wind and solar cannot replace traditional coal, natural gas, and nuclear power plants if continuity in the supply of electricity is to be maintained. Wind and solar are intermittent generators. Wind output varies greatly from high output to zero, depending upon weather conditions. Solar output is only available about six hours each day when the sun is overhead and disappears completely on cloudy days or after a snowfall. Hydro power can replace traditional plant output, but even this source is insufficient in years of low snow runoff or drought.
Because of intermittency, utilities can only count on about 10 percent of the nameplate capacity of a wind or solar facility as an addition to power system capacity. For example, wind output in March, 2014, for the state of Texas varied from over 8,000 megawatts to under 500 megawatts in a few hours.
To try to achieve “deep decarbonization,” California will need to keep 90 percent of traditional power plants as backup while adding increasing amounts of wind and solar. Traditional power plants will be run inefficiently at low utilization with priority given to renewables. Total system capacity must double and triple as 100 percent renewable output is approached.
A 2016 study by Brick and Thernstrom projected that California’s power capacity would need to rise from 53.6 gigawatts (GW) to 90.5 GW at 50 percent renewable output. Capacity would need rise to 123.6 GW to achieve 80 percent renewable output.
As a result of rising system capacity, Brick and Thernstrom concluded that, to achieve 50 percent renewable penetration, wholesale electricity prices would need to rise from 5.2 cents per kilowatt-hour (cents/kW-hr) to 9.6 cents/kW-hr. For 80 percent renewable penetration, prices would rise to 14 cents/kW-hr, approaching a tripling of wholesale electricity prices.
Green energy advocates recognize renewable intermittency and propose grid-scale batteries to solve the problem. They claim that large-scale commercial batteries will be able to store power during high levels of renewable output and then deliver power to the grid when wind and solar output is low.
But batteries are not a sufficient answer because of the large seasonal variation in renewable output. Wind and solar output in California in December and January is less than half of summer output. Today’s commercial batteries are rated to deliver stored electricity for only two hours or ten hours. No batteries exist that can store electricity in the summer and then deliver in the winter when renewable output is very low.
In 2019, California residential electricity prices were 19 cents per kilowatt-hour, 47 percent higher than the national average. California rates increased 30.4 percent over the last decade, rising more than twice as fast as national prices. In addition, California mandates for 100 percent renewable energy will double or triple electricity prices in the next two decades.
More than 30 cities covering almost 10 percent of California population now prohibit gas appliances in new housing. The elimination of gas appliances and rising electricity prices will cause a painful loss of standard of living, particularly in low-income households.
“The UCLA study is a disservice to the hardworking people who are trying to make ends meet during these tough times,” said Jim Nathanson, Executive Director for The Empowerment Alliance. “Low cost, abundant, domestic natural gas not only helps American families stretch their household budgets when it comes to more efficient appliances but creates American jobs and bolsters national security.”
Removing gas from California homes will not measurably improve either indoor or outdoor air quality. Nor will it measurably reduce global warming. But residents will lose the flexibility, efficiency, and low-cost operation of gas appliances. In addition, homeowners will be exposed to the full measure of rising state electricity prices. California residents should reject bans on gas appliances.
Steve Goreham is a speaker on the environment, business, and public policy and author of the book Outside the Green Box: Rethinking Sustainable Development.
Let Kalifornia use less natural gas. That just leaves more for the rest of us. In a fair trade, I’ll let Kalifornia pass a law to have the wind from here blow over there. That will fix it.
What’s to be done when the electricity fails?
“Let them eat sushi.”
While I do live in CA, fortunately I’m not one of them. I changed over to gas cook top 30 yrs ago.
Unfortunately they resent my intelligence and want to force me to join them.
Rocketscientist, changing to gas cook top is not enough, they want you to change to gas from buffalo chips for cooking. It’s natural, you know, and somehow pure, and it will give a special “smokey” flavor to your food. Sorry.
Ron, I think you scrambled that a bit, still get the point. Having used animal dung for fires(yes, US Army survival training does occasionally go overboard)I will stick with gas, then wood, to do my cooking and heating.
Ron’s right: cooking with dried buffalo dung is far superior to using natural gas, and hard to find, too, unless you know someone who raises bison for the sole purpose of marketing dried manure. Usually, you put it on your garden to fertilize the cucumbers and radishes, but – well, reverting to the past has its allure…. that is, until real cold weather sets in, the wind howls through the small gaps between the door and the door jamb, and the window panes rattle because no one remembered to check the frames on them for security from hard winds.
No offense meant to anyone who lives in California, but being able to cook with a stove that can be lit with a match if the power goes out has its advantages. And I’ve been through 4 of those episodes already. And people to the far south of me are just climbing out of a 10=day gap in power after a derecho (with 15 tornadoes!) went through their area. 10 days, no power, no working fridge, no lights – no nothing.
Glad I still have my great-grandma’s oil lamps. They need new wicks.
My backup is a wood stove and an outdoor propane grill. And I live on 5he edge of a 1.1 million acre national forest. Plenty of wood
We have tons of expat Californians here in Colorado who fled their state but still think voting the same way will result in a different outcome
NO! Those people will still die. What they are misreporting is statistically premature deaths. What they also manage to avoid reporting is exactly how much longer these 354 hypothetical individuals would lived had they been exposed to zero PM2.5 emissions .
Typically the kind of studies they are referring to say something like 354 people would be expected to live 6 days less due to exposure to PM2.5 emissions.
At that point you may say, OK I’ll accept that trade of living 6 days less as an incontinnent geriatric in exchange for not needing to work 2 hours more each week now to pay for your green scam “clean” unreliables.
Probably a good idea to ban NG appliances because there will be no pipelines to deliver it. No sense having people buy them and have to replace them later with electrical based ones when the NG runs dry.
Last year I bought a house in Sutton NH with primary heating being two unvented propane space heaters. (The town’s records said they were direct vented, likely the only way that was allowed.) I bought a cheap CO2 meter before the home inspection in January, I think it read something like 2,000 ppm. I moved in in March, and we had some near 0°F nights, I think the highest CO2 level I saw was 3,000 ppm.
More to the point, I already had a not-so-cheap CO meter. I have never seen it read something other than 0 ppm, somewhat to my surprise. I even checked it with a smoke-free smoldering toothpick to verify it still worked.
Last fall I replaced them with a mini-split HVAC system on the second floor and a wall mounted direct vent propane space heater on the first floor. It’s worked out well – the upstairs unit keeps the downstairs cool enough too, and the winter heat is surprisingly inexpensive, as monitored by an Emporia power monitor.
I still have a propane range, it puts out a lot of CO2, but no CO. And I still breathe. If I close the bedroom door I’ll have over 1,000 ppm by morning.
While I’m very glad to have the unvented heaters gone, I was surprised at how little trouble they gave me, but even more surprised at what my 40,000 ppm exhalations can do.
If the propane flame is blue, then you have near 100% combustion with not a lot of carbon monoxide and you are safe from CO poisoning. If there is a lot of orange in the flame, then you are getting CO, and if not ventilated properly, then could be a problem. Having a good working CO detector makes sense, just like having a good smoke detector is also a good idea. Most of the people that get cancelled from CO in a home, is from some sort of mechanical damage or restriction to the exhaust, such as on a nat gas water heater or furnace. Sometimes the chimney gets blocked up with snow on top from the day before when it was warm outside and the furnace didn’t run, and then a heavy snowfall blocks the chimney at the top and that is when you can have a bad outcome when it turns cold the next day and the furnace turns on. Or birds build a nest in summer…But with all the millions of installed gas appliances, it is a very small problem, and you only generally hear about it when CO poisoning does people in, or the house goes boom. Very rare. More common to have a fire from defective wiring in an all electric household, but even that is rare.
You will get some NOx and SO2, and there is always the risk of CO if air supply is impeded to some extent. Tight buildings are not good in these regards and vented systems are ultimately safer.
We heated our house in Bruin, PA using two ventless gas heaters and the wood burner for real cold periods, never had any trouble. Then again, 106 year old house was not airtight. I always recommend the ceramic tile type ventless instead of the “open flame” type. Have used both and the ceramic tile type makes more heat and produces no noticeable odor, the open flame is pretty but does produce odor. Both are still rated as safe for residential and commercial applications.
I wish I could remember the celebrity who was quoted as saying: I love humanity, it’s people that I can’t stand.
This reminds me very much of the modern environmentalists.
Peanuts
“I wish I could remember the celebrity who was quoted as saying: I love humanity, it’s people that I can’t stand.” People I can take, those I can pick and chose whom I associate with. Humanity is the idiots out on the road not have a clue where there are at and not prepared for that left or right turn when the are in the far right lane for the left turn or the left turn lane when they figure it a right turn they need to make and somehow you suppose to be happy braking for their error.
It was the unremarkable, almost forgotten “celebrity” Albert Einstein who said it.
I am so glad I left California decades ago. It’s now so much fun to watch the insanity there from far away.
Stay safe and healthy, all.
Regards,
Bob
Brookline MA passed a similar bill, patterned after Berkeley CA, but it was struck down by the state.
https://www.eenews.net/stories/1063617899 starts in small part:
Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey (D) struck down what would have been the East Coast’s first ban on natural gas this week in a victory for fossil fuel groups and other opponents of the regulation.
The ban, passed last fall in the Boston suburb of Brookline as a town bylaw, would have prohibited new residences from installing gas infrastructure for space heating and hot water.
Inspired by similar legislation in Berkeley, Calif., the bylaw was the first and only gas ban to be approved outside the Golden State. Its backers overcame a last-minute campaign by oil and gas interests, which sent representatives to Brookline town meetings and sought to rally local officials against the measure.
But on Tuesday, Healey concluded that the gas ban conflicts with existing state laws, effectively killing it.
Healey, a staunch anti-fossil fuel crusader, wrote that although her office sympathizes with Brookline’s intentions, the ban is at odds with three state laws.
Although I left more recently than you, I, too, find it quite humorous watching the antics of the idiots in Sacramento as they continue to destroy a once great state and economy! It is a special tragicomedy for those of us who remember the good old days when Commifornia had reliable electricity and large swathes of the state didn’t burn up every year!
It is great having an example of socialism and the Dunning-Kruger Effect that can be pointed out for anyone with eyes and a brain to see!
Unfortunately, the exodus from California poisoned Oregon.
With the elections just over the horizon you would think that California would become a “firebox” of reform but the Hollywood mentality entered the schooling system and logical thinking is non existent, if California is an example of the future America there is no hope.
The ruling classes next great leap will be changing the countries name from America to Africa!!!
There’s a flag on the field. Alarmists caught moving the goalposts. Again. Penalty TBD.
Cali has not the electric generation capability to handle August and these morons want to force more load onto the failing grid. Typical.
They’ll just legislate that there needs to be more electricity, that’ll fix it.
That’s apparently what you learn in college these days.
Perhaps they should go for the brass ring and ban ALL indoor cooking. I am willing to bet that the cooking process releases more toxins than any gas flame.
Puritans always take things away for your own good. Especially when it isn’t.
Time to make a “Flashdance” movie for the woke eco-scolds who are dismantling our fantastic society. If the message delivered by “Flashdance” helped kill off Christianity in America … then can we use the same Hollywood tactic to kill off the cancel culturalists?
More proof that the issue is climate action not climate change.
Climate change is just the motivation for climate action. And climate action is a movement against fossil fuels.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/03/23/anti-fossil-fuel-activism-disguised-as-climate-science/
Anti fossil fuel activists wary of climate denialists.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/06/17/climate-change-denial/
Climate denialism research in climate science is more extensive than you may think. We are a pain in the axx for anti fossil fuel activists.
https://wp.me/pTN8Y-cW
This is part of the effort to demonize fire. They have demonized elements in the periodic table, all sorts of chemicals, including some that are a normal part of nature, technology that produces useful energy and work, and human behavior that they do not accept.
The fight against fire will continue. Eventually they will also go after the wheel. After all the Japanese did without it for a very long time. The two concepts, which I consider to be fundamental to human existence, are linked and they want to eliminate them. It is easier to control people when they have no tech, not even wheels, metals, or fire.
Natural gas heating is a good reliable intermediate CO2 reduction step, for several decades, between reliable heating oil and reliable nuclear powered electric heat. The push to using unreliables today in place of natural gas is quite bad foresight.
Banning NG appliances is good – just look at the number of people who have died from excessive CO2 poisoning from the fumes of the NG appliances.
I sure someone can find the data at the CDC
sarc
Nearly every kitchen in the UK has an extraction hood these days to expel cooking smells, no idea about California.
If gas rings/cookers were a real issue then the solution would be to change the building codes to include a mandatory extraction hood and minimum background ventilation levels. No ban required.
My god how did life expectancy increase so much when all this pollution was killing us all these years!
I bet none of the “models of the cooking scenarios” included an extraction fan…
The unfortunate part is that because of energy codes, most “ventilators” for range tops in newer homes don’t actually vent to the outside. They recirculate the air through a mesh filter (to catch the grease) and an activated carbon filter (to reduce odors).
Better check your building codes. In my area all gas appliances MUST be vented to the outside.
Depends,microwave Hoods need not be vented to exterior
John,
If they are over a gas range, they must be vented to the outside. But as I said, that is required in my area, building codes may be different in other places.
When installing gas stoves/burners local codes require proper ventilation. You add up all the BTUs of the stove top, divide by 100 and get the minimum CFM ventilation needed. Most codes will require make up air if the CFM is over 600. The size of the duct work is dependent on the CFM maximums for that hood. Also, depending on the length of the run, a second fan might be needed in the duct work to completely remove the air to the outside.
When people purchase gas stoves from us, we calculate the hood ventilation needed and recommend hoods with the proper minimum CFM fans. Connection of the appliance must be done by a gas company and a licensed HVAC contractor handles any duct work adjustments and/or installation of make up air if needed.
When installed and used properly, there is no worry about inside air problems with gas appliances.
Bingo – a much more elegant statement of my first thought. The whole problem with having to have makeup air is due to the funny notion that houses should be sealed, and then an heat/air exchanger added. Personally I prefer my windows not to fog by having the house not tight. The hood over my gas stove is there so we do not have to smell last night’s dinner tomorrow, and to reduce the grime on the kitchen ceiling.
Gas is cheap reliable and clean. therefore it has to go…
Do not vote Democrat.
TG McCoy,
You are obviously not a member of the Sandy the Bartender School of Economics! Why pay for something inexpensive like natural gas when you can spend more for electricity to do the same job? That’s why she’s so enamored of the Green Raw Deal; it necessarily makes electricity rates sky rocket!
All part of the new indulgences required by the Global Church of Climatology; the more you pay for your energy and the less reliable it is, the better person you are. Think of how special all those SJWs in SF and LA will feel as they hunker down in their candlelit abodes waiting for the sun to come up and bring their power back! I’m sure many of them will get the Matthews thrill reaction running up their leg at the thought of how noble they and their friends are!
Someone ought to come up with a simple, portable fire pit so these brainiacs can get get completely reborn by cooking over a wood or dung fire! I can see them out on their balconies and back decks; looking at their neighbors with that oh-so-superior glint in their eyes!
They didn’t mention another product from natgas combustion — the very dangerous di-hydrogen monoxide — known to cause death in large amounts. Over 3500 people die annually in the US because their lungs have been saturated by this deadly compound.
For those that can least afford expensive energy, the move away from natural gas to more expensive electricity will be more financially devastating.
Interestingly, California wants people and businesses to use MORE electricity at the same time the state is shuttering more and more power plants with no plans to replace that shuttered capacity with intermittent wind or solar.
California has been unable to generate enough for its own needs and had to import 32 percent in 2019 of its power from the Southwest and Northwest states. California’s “dysfunctional energy policy hope” is that the neighboring states will be able to generate enough to replace the shuttered CA plants.
We used to have a gas cooktop, moved, and had no gas, so switched to an induction cooktop and wouldn’t go back to gas even if it was available to cook with
The point about gas is it is cheap and affordable… for those less well off
Plus it has the advantage of being unaffected by power cuts, if the power goes out you can still cook and heat water. Induction hob, not so much.
Just a word to the wise. If you buy an induction range/cooktop, be sure to buy an extended warranty. Induction ranges/cooktops are expensive and expensive to repair.
California is a kind of insane asylum. Almost everything I buy—really—has a California warning about causing cancer. Guess what? Life itself causes cancer, so maybe babies should be tattooed with a warning.
The problem is that California also spreads its insanity. When people flee the state they’ve ruined, they don’t blame the disaster on themselves and how they vote, so they moved to sane states and then begin voting as they did in their asylum—spreading the insanity virus across the country.
My son’s new “anti-cancer” firefighting gear has a Prop 65 label “…known to the State of California to cause cancer”
Whoa there, M_S_,
Many of us political refugees from Commifornia are quite conservative, thank you very much! We left the state because we wanted to be amongst our own and live in the liberty promised in our nation’s founding documents! In order to get me to vote for a liberal or DemoKKKrat you’d have to pry my gun from my cold, dead fingers!
When it comes to warning labels, though, I agree with you completely! Maybe Commifornia should have it’s own warning label on every road entering the state: WARNING!! Large government bureaucracies like those in California can cause illness, insanity and even death! Enter with caution!
Kamala Harris has proposed mandatory gun buy-backs.
MarkW,
I’ll be sure to send her the location of the lake where I had that boating accident and let her try and recover them. Do you think I would still qualify for any money for what they find?
the study used models and hypothetical cooking scenarios
In other words, they made it all up.
All in all, pretty desperate stuff.
So you think natural gas is bad? When I was a lad – over 60 years ago – we all used COAL gas. That could easily poison you without bothering to light it. But we survived. My mother, who never cooked with anything else, died at 93.
From what I understand, the ideal setup for stoves is dual-fuel: gas for the cooktop, and electric for the oven. It’s expensive though, not just for the stoves themselves, but because it usually involves adding either a gas, or an electric hookup. We have gas, so that’s what we use. Just as well because my wife has used electric stove-tops before, and hates them.
The reason for having a hood for the stove has always been for removal of any smoke and/or any strong and/or unpleasant odors, which of course can be caused by any type of stove. Tacking on removal of CO and NO2 now as an additional use in the case of gas, is laughably absurd. In our case, there isn’t room for a hood above our stove, so we have to do without. You cope. Try not to produce smoke to begin with, but if it becomes a problem, set up a fan in a window blowing out, and maybe crack another window open for cross-ventilation. Boom. Done.
Personally, I prefer electric stove tops. It’s nearly impossible to get a gas flame low enough to make a pot of rice barely simmer. However, many prefer gas.
My Wolf has no problem simmering at very low level. It can simmer melted cheddar without burning. Some gas burners adjust quite coarsely and are difficult to modulate.
Ric,
Most modern gas cooktops and ranges have several different sizes of burners for all your cooking needs. I even use gas for my BBQ and smoker after reading twenty or thirty years ago about a study out of Lawrence Livermore Labratory that found high levels of carcinogens in meats cooked over charcoal. If I want more flavor I add wood chunks or chips to my liking; ever had smoked prime rib?
Yes, that’s the real reason, but they’ve added the air quality propaganda, because more than a few of these policy wonks know that methane’s real potency is essentially zero, and a secondary reason will eventually have to carry the day. Just like Freon and the Ozone hole, and 2nd hand smoke .
“… a person breathing in 12 micrograms of small particles per cubic meter of air would inhale less than 5 grams, …, of these microscopic particles over an 80-year lifespan.”
Something that isn’t addressed is what happens to the inhaled particles. Probably, some get stuck in the lungs, which is the concern. But, what percentage? If it is only a small percentage, then it is another case of a tempest in a tea cup. What happens to those that don’t get exhaled? Do they really have a significant impact on lung capacity? Is it greater than all the other dust that one inhales over their lifetime? It seems to me that the environmentalists that routinely get their panties in a wad are reacting to poor and incomplete science.
Will B.B.Q’s Have to be electrically powered Too.
Of course. And they will finally get around to making sure that you show up at the local community center on your 65th birthday for your euthanization.
Probably, but once Cali outlaws meat who is really going to care?
Steve Goreham,
Very fine article. You are a pro.
OK, let me get this straight…rolling blackouts, insufficient baseline electricity to meet needs, so we will ban gas appliances and increase use of electricity? Sounds like a lunatic.
I CAN think of one good argument on banning gas pipelines for residential use – Earthquakes. Gas leaks after a major earthquake are really dangerous. But then so are downed power lines I guess.
Storing gas for emergency use inside of strong steel containers makes sense to – but not if you can’t use it.
I hate electricity. Gas cooks better, hests better and dries clothes better. Period. End of discussion.
These charlatans are worried about the CO and NO2 related deaths caused by frying an egg on a gas stove top. i.e. none at all.
But apparently, these caring folks don’t give a damn about the millions who die every year due to indoor cooking with dung, wood, etc.
Why can’t they do something useful and work on solutions to address that problem instead of making stuff up?
California’s Energy and Electricity Decline is Their Own Choice:
Here are some highlights from the governor’s August 20 guidelines for electricity :
* Set your thermostat to 78° or higher between 3 and 10 P.M.
* Refrain from major appliance use between 3 and 10 P.M.
* Postpone using major appliances like the oven, dishwasher, clothes washer, and dryer until cooler times of the day to avoid heating up your home.
* Run your dishwasher and clothes washer only when full. Wait until after 9 p.m. to use these and other major appliances.
* When possible, wash clothes in cold water. About 90 percent of the energy used in a clothes washer goes to water heating.
Fact of Modern Life: When a country or an advanced states like California cannot deliver the basics of water and electricity, one could pronounce them a failed nation-state. And all of this environmental and economic disruption was avoidable.
Steve Gorman shows the folly of CA latest anti-fossil fuel efforts involving the change over from natural gas to electricity in buildings. Steve’s arguments against these efforts is comprehensive and damning. In fact, the natural gas to electricity initiative in CA may be emblematic of a high-minded, wrong-headedness.
* Refrain from major appliance use between 3 and 10 P.M.
No housework during the week.
So, you can have a shower any time of day?
About 100% of the energy used in a shower goes to heating water. Ditto making a cup of coffee. Consider using your clothes washer to make a cup of coffee. Do try to find a good use for the remaining 10% of the energy.
“They claim that large-scale commercial batteries will be able to store power during high levels of renewable output” As noted in the article no battery system exists today to do what the environmentalist claim can be done. Also, did anyone remember that installed capacity needs to factor in the ability to meet the minute by minute demand for electricity as well as have excess capacity to charge those batteries. That is a lot of additional capacity just to make their system viable. This whole idea is so flawed it is not even worth doing. Period. Let folks put solar on their roofs to cut down on cost of electricity but maintain the current system to handle the normal base load.
Gas is banned. Electricity is blacked out. Don’t worry, the Weber Kettle is the best cooker ever. You will need charcoal, but I assume you can pick it up from forest fire sites all over then state.
If you want I will post my Chicken Marinade recipe.
Don’t worry, be happy. Giai loves you.
Gaia. Surely she will strike me down for that blunder.
Do not ever underestimate the absolute lunacy of California politicians. For some time California has been a one party state. Therefore the looneys can push through almost anything that makes them feel good.
California imports over 30% of its electricity today. In less than 4 years Diablo Canyon will shut down both reactors. After that occurs California will import over 40% of its electricity. With new houses having only electricity for HVAC hot water, cooking and drying clothes combined with a hoped for massive increase in EVs, the logical question is where will the power come from? It appears that our one party state politicians can not formulate the question.
So the world’s fifth largest economy, and a state with an always expanding population thanks to immigration triggered by the desire of diverse peoples to achieve the California dream as shown on Baywatch, has mandated the end of fossil fuel power generation by 2045? That seems rather foolish. I guess they plan to import most of their juice from neighboring States with a more flexible attitude to climate change emissions.
Demon rats strike again.
But there are technologies of internal combustion of gas inside the gas cooker.
https://solgaz.eu/en/flameless-gas-hobs/
As of now they exhaust inside the house, but it is fully possible to design them in a way to exhaust into a chimney.
Can anyone imagine Arizona or Nevada power companies signing a contract with California to provide power AS NEEDED? They would have to go to their own state CPUC to raise rates to build, operate, and maintain excess power capacity FOR CALIFORNIA that would not be available to their own state.