By Roger Donway — February 11, 2022
Ed. This piece is adapted from a LinkedIn post by Steve Everley, a communications advisor in the field of energy.
A study last month generated some scary headlines about the supposed “health risks” of your gas stove – an appliance that most homeowners prefer (and for good reason).
If you were frightened, take a deep breath. You were misled.
First of all, the headlines that the study generated were alarming. Things like:
“Gas stoves are a threat to health and have larger climate impact than previously known, study shows” (CNN)
“Gas stoves in kitchens pose a risk to public health and the planet, research finds” (Washington Post)
“Stanford scientists find the climate and health impacts of natural gas stoves are greater than previously thought” (official release)
But it gets worse.
One of the researchers said in the press release announcing the study that you should replace your gas stove with an electric one: “Why not reduce the risk entirely? Switching to electric stoves will cut greenhouse gas emissions and indoor air pollution,” said Dr. Rob Jackson, a Stanford professor and study coauthor.
Dr. Jackson also told the Washington Post that it’s a “good idea” to replace your gas stove with electric, although he did issue the caveat “if you have the financial ability to do so.” Probably wise, because electric is more expensive than gas, often considerably so.
But here’s the best (worst) part: After weeks of those scary headlines proliferating, the lead author of that study—in a comment buried deep in a story published February 10 in Popular Mechanics—said: Actually, replacing your perfectly fine gas stove is “not the right response at this time.”
“We don’t want people to go out and completely ditch a perfectly good gas stove,” lead author Eric Lebel said.
Wait, what?!
After weeks of reports that your gas stove was secretly hurting you and your family, we find out that you just need to ensure proper ventilation (which is true regardless of whether you use gas or electric, by the way).
But the damage was already done. Google “gas stoves and health” and you’ll find endless headlines about that study that could frighten working families into making costly replacements that they both can’t afford and don’t need to make.
Meanwhile, another expert told a separate media outlet that the researchers had encased the kitchens in a Mylar tent to “trap and concentrate the emissions, and then measure the concentration.” No one cooks in a kitchen like that! He said it would “incorrect” to draw any health conclusions from the paper.
If you like electric appliances, that’s great. A lot of people do, and having that optionality is key for affordability.
But this isn’t zero sum. Gas appliances are safe. If your house has gas appliances, you are safe—and you are probably saving a fair amount of money too.
Hopefully, journalists, we can all agree that the next time a study makes a claim about how gas appliances are supposedly harmful to your health, an appropriate level of scrutiny will be applied at the time of, and in the same article as, the announcement itself.
Let’s see them repeat this “Study”, with an open, wood burning or dung fire.
I think they already did. It was something like 1-2 million premature deaths/year due to indoor pollution.
The annual number of deaths due to weather events pales in comparison!
Yet I haven’t seen Greta and Gore on stage calling for natural gas hookups to save the lives of poor farmers in Asia and Africa.
Pillage
It is not your fault, because what you have access to is so defective. But, these “premature deaths” do not involve body counts.
The correct way to state it is like this:
The Global Burden of Disease modelling by the IHME attributes indoor air pollution (IAP) from all sources to be a contributing factor in the premature deaths of 4.3m people per year. The confidence in these numbers are hilarious. It reads like “0-440,000 estimated to have suffered a shooting of their life.” By what? 15 minutes? That is your “premature death”. Nikhil Desai calls it “killing people with numbers”.
“Premature” means the people died before the age of 86. If a person dies at 85 they are said to have died prematurely. That 12 months has to be accounted for by “attribution” which is to say, a “just so story”. There attributions, ~175 in number from car accidents to skin cancer to suicide to hang nails, are each given a ” weight”. One of them is “IAP” even there is no cohort-based population risk profile for anyone. It is all estimated.
Climate modelers, step aside. These attribution models are stacked *six layers deep* before they come up with these numbers which are then mis-cited.
providing a tad of education and maybe some FLUES to prevent indoor smoke would be another easier option too?
The article here stresses the health aspects. Don’t know if the original paper did but certainly the media around the world, including the Guardian here in the UK, concentrated on the estimated methane emissions from households in the US having a climate impact equal to driving about half a million ICEV cars for a year. (They studied 53 homes and extrapolated out to the 40 plus million homes in the US that cook with gas)
You know as well as I do that if a stove has “methane emissions”, it has a faulty fixture somewhere and needs to be repaired or replaced ASAP. Just because the burner is shut off, that does NOT mean gas is not leaking in the inflow lines.
The real extrapolation was the attributed health impact. The climate impact extrapolation is poppy cock. It is not even a spit in the ocean.
OH, I can cook on a wood-fired stove if I have to. I can also cook in what used to be called a camp fire. Learned all this when I was 9 years old. Not so hard at all, and kind of cozy when the weather is cold and you’re camping out in the back pasture, but not a lot of fun when there is snow blowing in through the flaps of that rather flimsy tent.
But this???? “We don’t want people to go out and completely ditch a perfectly good gas stove,” lead author Eric Lebel said. – article
Well, gee whiz, that is just so SWEET of him, ain’t it??? But he’s absolutely right. There is no reason on this Green Earth to get rid of a perfectly good gas stove. If emissions are the issue, I doubt that my kitchen stove alone produces enough emissions of any kind to do anything other than exist, if they do that at all.
Gas is a natural byproduct of decay of plant and animal matter, especially when it involves the consumption of beans which, when soaked and cooked properly and added to a pot of chicken broth, chopped ham, chopped onions, chopped carrots and chopped celery, will most likely produce enough gas afterwards by the consumers of this delightful concoction to fire up a gas-fired stove for about a week. That kind of settles that question, doesn’t it? Oh, and I suggest a good-sized pan of cornbread and plenty of butter to go with it, fresh from the GAS-FIRED oven. And add a platter of sliced tomatoes, sliced cucumbers, sliced zucchinis, some pickles and a few baby green onions with tails.
And furthermore, gas is simply a byproduct of metabolic processes such as digestion, and my question would be obvious: are we supposed to get rid of f–ting cows and belching hogs, too? Is There going to be a ban on bogs and swamps, which are bastions and storage centers for natural gas produce by natural decay processes from natural plants which die a natural death and become part of the natural landscape.
The point is, as I think the author is trying to make clear while he tries to please everyone – the point is that natural gas is a beneficial gas that has many, many uses and does no harm. My gas stove is almost 30 years old, cooks just fine and cooks those bacon strips up nice and crispy along with scrambled eggs (w/cheese and onions) and toasted muffins w/butter and jam.
Damn, I gained 3 lbs. reading that.
Thank you!!
I believe the new assault on methane as the gas-de-jour is indeed planned to end the life of all cows and pigs. While that is naturally occurring (eventually) when it is not, we eat them afterwards.
yeah like billions of decent fridges aircons in homes n cars got trashed thanks to the scare on cfc and ozone…hardly enviro friendly was it all that metal in landfill along with many of the NOT degassed applainces
morons in charge and idiots followed
A Mylar tent?
Good experimental design has gone out of fashion
Don’t climate modelers encase the Earth in a greenhouse gas tent? At least these “researchers” are consistent in their design theory.
They probably had to enclose it to get a measurable CO and/or NOx concentration. Otherwise they wouldn’t have a publishable result. Modern confirmation science is tricky.
They constructed their “experiment” to give the resultd they wanted. Just like most climate studies.
Does the good doctor work for Big Appliance?
That’s called cooking the books.
Could have been a recipe for disaster.
Another funny one
Now that is funny.
Another half baked idea from modern acedemia.
Three times a charm.
It appears that almost every University and their Main Stream Media enablers will cook up anything to get noticed and funded. When will the clarification appear on CNN or Washington Post? Don’t wait for it.
Acedemia has been come completely corrupted by the green gravy train. It is paid for by tax payers who currently have no choice. They need to lose their tax free status. May they all melt a pot holder on their electric glass stove tops….
Academia has been completely corrupted by the GOVERNMENT gravy train. Recently that gravy train has demanded adherence to the green gospel. In the future it will demand obedience to some other scam.
It already demanded obedience to the mRNA shot mandate and genuflection to holy Covid.
Arguably, more people have died over the last 18 months in that worship service than have died during 30 years of AGW economic starvation of the poor. Arguably, but maybe not.
Right you are. Keep the police; defund the universities.
That may sound radical, but it’s actually much more moderate that the Ensign Ripley approach advocated by W. M. Briggs:
The some of the authors are at Stanford University on the San Francisco Peninsula. May they experience the joy of cooking on their electric stoves when the next brown or black due to the relentless addition of weather-dependent generation destabilizing the CA grid out hits the area. I will enjoy cooking on my gas range which is nearby. I will have to use a bbq igniter since the spark igniters on our range will be AWOL.
Now can just clarify some English, please.
Is the stove what we call here in the UK a hob?
In our kitchens we have a cooker, or stove, that has a hob on the top with an oven underneath.
My 4 plate hob, with 3 different sized burners, is gas and the oven, used for roasting, is electric.
So I have the best of both worlds.
Stove equals burners on top and oven underneath
That is referred to as a dual fuel range.
Or a dual fuel cooker in England.
Back when I were a lad, we called ’em stoves
Young ‘uns call ’em cookers these days, just a new-fangled name for an old-fangled stove
U also have cars with boots and bonnets and wear jumpers and drive on the wrong side of the road and fill up with petrol instead of gasoline like normal folks.
Are we going back a few posts to defining ‘normal’ then? Hehe.
between uk and aus who both use those terms for the above (but aus does use hood for cars too) reckon we outnumber you;-)
Wait until he finds out about the difference between “pissed” in the UK and pissed in America.
dunno power out there goes the roast, and gas ovens seem to do better roasts n biscuits etc especially fanforceds
Nice to completely replace gas with electricity in aces like CA with unexpected and long blackouts: no food preparation, no warm bath… My choice would go to a “hybrid”: some cooking plates, some gas burners, and gas water heating. Gas is reliable, only earthquackes can disrupt the supply (but they also disrupt electricity: earthquackes are actual catastrophes, emergencies, not ditto “climat”)
Yes, agreed, especially if electricity generation is by gas turbine like we have here in Alberta, much more efficient thermally to pipe gas into the house for heat, water heater and cooking
If efficiency matters, that is the best
In a perfect world our grid will be nuclear powered, saving the gas for those other purposes
You forgot the ™ after “Climat”. It should also be used after Climate Science™.
Thanks. Took note.
” … you just need to ensure proper ventilation (which is true regardless of whether you use gas or electric, by the way).”
For what purpose would proper ventilation be necessary when operating an electric stove?
Because cooking generates noxious gases.
Most electric cooking in homes uses recirculating venting, meaning the air is sucked through a filter and sent back out into the room. The purpose is to remove smoke and oil particles not noxious gases.
Most? Every home I’ve ever owned has vented outside. Admittedly a small sample size, but I question the “most”.
The house I grew up in was vented to the outside. All the homes and apartments I’ve lived in since were of the recirculating type.
Most of the hoods and over the range microwave with ventilation we sell and install are recirculating. In Sarasota County FL all gas ranges MUST be vented to the outside but not electric ranges.
And there is the answer right there. The regulations are already put together to address this (minor) issue.
At least Stanford does a (half-ass) study. If it was Penn State they would simply show that, since the gas range needs to be vented to the exterior, it is very very bad.
The sole purpose of recirculating venting is to reduce work and increase profit for the builder.
That is just stupid.
As I asked, to what purpose, not under what conditions. This story was generated by the assertion that a stove just sitting there was harmful. The whine was that the room was mylar tented to concentrate whatever ng might leak and used to mock their claim of “health risks” and sarcastically comment about being frightened.
Gas stoves must always have proper ventilation for leaks, for flames going out with the gas still on, for the fact it consumes the oxygen in the room and produces co2. Electric does none of those things and for that reason does not need ventilation.
You preferences for cooking might desire it as might your own fears for your health, but needing to “ensure” it, not for just the one but for both, is patently ridiculous and insistence on it for the reason here and as for the ones I’ve read below, does nothing beyond convincing me of Jefferson’s preference for the opinion of the ploughman over that of the professor.
To evacuate cooking fumes and water vapour.
Especially cooking fumes from frying:
“Constituents of cooking fumes
Cooking, in particular frying, generates substantial amounts of airborne particulate matter (PM), which includes ultrafine particles (UFP) and fine PM (PM2.5), and is a major contributor to their indoor levels. In addition, particles created during cooking have organic substances adsorbed on their surface. These include polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and heterocyclic amines. Certain gaseous pollutants such as formaldehyde (IARC, 2006), acetaldehyde (IARC, 1999), acrylamide (IARC, 1994) and acrolein (IARC, 1995) are also produced during cooking.”
See the link I gave in my post of a few minutes ago to “HIGH-TEMPERATURE FRYING – IARC Publications”
Joe P:
I was a participant in the IARC process resulting in the high-temperature frying publication you mention. The backstory is of interest.
At the time, the IARC was planning to focus on cooking oils as the carcinogenic carrier. That was based on studies comparing gas stoves to electric stoves, the latter considered (at that time) to be a “control” emitting little PM2.5. I argued that it was NOT a control, since electric stoves emit about as many ultrafine particles as gas stoves, although the mechanism is different.
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.6b03248
I went home from the meeting in Lyon thinking that I had failed to make my point, (there was much opposition) but when the publication appeared the mistaken identification of cooking oils as the agent had been dropped, and high-temperature frying (produced by both gas and electric stoves) had become the carcinogenic agent.
High temperature frying inside is messy, fine grease floating through the air coating everything that then captures dust.
The term is “Mung”
So I do high temp frying outside on gas grill or big green egg, getting that char crust onto a beautiful ribeye is a wonderful thing.
As a kid I had a neighbor that was about 6 years older. (He was a smart guy; ended up being a State level contract arbitrator of some sort.)
He tapped a bunch of big leaf maples on his property and (while in an altered state) tried to cook it down in his moms kitchen. No amount of ventilation could have saved that kitchen ceiling.
Thanks, Joe. I took a peek at the link and can appreciate the research and the results but I think we are moving goalposts wrt to the subject of the post now. And even allowing for that, the need to ensure proper ventilation (as nebulous as that is), I propose that that is necessary only under the circumstance of frying which has been inserted in this subject.
And since I am not as familiar with the extensive research of IARC’s as you seem to be, can you give me a rough idea as to the differential risk of those dangerous chemicals when exposed via the air versus when they coat the steak eaten? Or do they not coat the steak at all?
Ventilation is necessary for both for aesthetic reasons (cooking smells, smoke from burned foods, fish, kitchen garbage, etc) and health (good ventilation is always good for everyone, given the emission of volatile chemicals from ordinary construction materials and home furnishings, radon accumulation, microbes, etc.)
After energy Nazis in the 1970s convinced everyone to completely button up their homes and workplaces to “save energy”, it was soon discovered that that was very unhealthy.
Also, depending on the size of the Mylar tent, the cook will have a hard time breathing after enough time. He or she will last longer in the electrified kitchen, though.
so you don’t pass out from anoxia while your hot dogs are boiling
Watched too many training videos dealing with the consequences of being careless when digging around gas lines to ever feel really safe with a gas appliance.
Also I blame Hollywood. They really love their gas explosions.
Here’s a hint for you: don’t go digging around buried 220 VAC lines either.
By the way, electrocution and electrical fires causes an average of 4,400 deaths in homes in the USA each year , not including workplace deaths (another 4,000 per year).
The number of deaths caused by natural gas in homes each year in the US is 17.
I never mess with electricity and gas, they can kill you if you’re not careful
You are of course right. My phobia is not based on facts, just what I’ve been exposed to in the form of training films and Hollywood’s love of blowing stuff up real good.
Remember they are the ones who have convinced the public that crashed cars almost always blow up in a big ball of flames. Often right after the hero has dragged someone out of it.
Have you ever made an argument on another site about the fire danger of E-cars only to have someone snark back that “Of course Gas cars never catch fire.”
The Mythbusters show tried to blow up a car by shooting a bullet into the gas tank like in the movies. They eventually used a small bomb to blow up the car (need to keep the ratings up).
It is amazing the number of people that have a phobia about gas appliances in their homes. Some people reportedly won’t look at a home that just has gas heat, which is pretty common in the Northern USA.
Gas heat is the best
Electric baseboard heating is awful
Dry like dust is what it does to the air
I’ve had both gas & electric (& coal) . I’ll take gas over elec every time if I have the choice. IMO gas stoves are a lot faster to cook with & y’ can keep an even heat with them. Elec not so much. Electric heat is a lot different also, much drier an cooler also, one of the reasons I don’t like heat pumps. always have to wear a sweater or light jacket in the winter.
‘IMO gas stoves are a lot faster to cook with & y’ can keep an even heat with them”
Electric induction hobs are superb – just as fast as gas but more controllable.
I don’t know where you get the idea electric is dry …. my condo in Fernie BC is electric baseboard heating and it works fine and is dirt cheap (BC power) and humidity depends on your cooking, showering etc but most units have a problem with too much humidity (in winter)) not too little.
Trusting none of the authors ever venture into a kitchen when high-temperature frying is taking place.
https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjC8Maoy_z1AhXTa8AKHZtABzoQFnoECAMQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fpublications.iarc.fr%2F_publications%2Fmedia%2Fdownload%2F2887%2Fcaae473f264312a90030548ef9c31823f5c7c2a2.pdf&usg=AOvVaw2fC3YxSDvjT5iAgHlM0ZiC
The above link is to “HIGH-TEMPERATURE FRYING – IARC Publications”
Silly question yes, but could ‘Science’ and the attendant ‘Media’ get any more dysfuctional and mendacious?
How long before people really do start tuning out?
What happens if a real threat is coming over the hill and they subsequently ignore it?
Fact is that real threat is actually accelerating on the downslope towards us but, because no money can be made from fixing it, nobody wants to know.
Most people already tune out.
How many people actually replaced their gas stoves with electric as a result of this study? I have not heard of any at all in the media – a good bet is the answer is close to zero.
Researchers with an obvious agenda, ie shrink wrapping a kitchen in Mylar to introduce a zero ventilation scenario that does not exist in the real world, in any actual kitchen.
Par for the warmunist course.
My first ever phone comment! I saw those stupid headlines and knew they were BS instantly. I have been using and installing gas stoves, furnaces, dryers, room heaters and hot water heaters my entire life. Never had or saw a problem that was not operator error. And since these greentards are destroying humanity’s capacity to generate electricity trying to force people into greater dependency on electricity is asinine.
And using gas for home heating and cooking is the most efficient way to use natural gas. More efficient than burning natural gas in a powerplant.
Speaking of alarm I’d be failing in my duty not to warn you all about the importance of being earnest with maintaining your home solar batteries-
Warning about maintaining solar panel batteries after Adelaide house badly damaged in fire – ABC News
This sort of lay ignorance and dereliction should forthwith require formal education and licensing in order to ensure proper regular maintenance is carried out to the letter.
That’s pretty wilde.
You should get an Oscar for that.
Actually the mylar tent, which is known as a temporary total enclosure, is a standard technique to assure the collection of all emission from a source. It has been used for decades in VOC emission testing from coating lines in situations where fugitive emission where expected. It has also been used in field situations, for example when measuring CO2 uptake by trees.
Yes, yes, yes! It’s a tool. Like any other tool, it can be misused by idiots or liars.
My favorite example is Matlab. It is super easy to use.
There is no requirement that you actually understand statistics at all. Of course there’s a small chance that folks like McIntyre and McKittrick will come along and garbage your work … but that usually doesn’t happen.
Statistical analysis by people with no understanding of what the inputs, equations or outputs represent is one of my pet peeves as well.
Matlab and R are the modern equivalents of SPSS (Statistics Package fo sSocial Sciences) , which at least had the virtue of being difficult to use.
But they also forgot to state that ‘cooking is better with gas’
Saw one typical report where the woke crew were calling for a ban on the term ‘natural gas’ to just gas. Natural gas terminology was of course to differentiate it from the former coal gas and those hulking gasometers but stay tuned for the usual suspects to cook up the term Holocaust Gas or some such a la their various climate dooming terms.
Word games are what alarmists do best
In their jargon they’re doubleplusgood at it
Indeed. They do seem to believe in newspeak. For instance they want to excise the word ‘man’ from the vocabulary. They think that, if you refer to a policeman, you’re discouraging girls from a career in law enforcement.
The idea that language controls the way you think is called the Whorf-Sapir Hypothesis. It’s wrong but seems to be an article of faith for the left anyway. They’re not very good at actually following the science, or the evidence, but they are really really good at pseudo-profound bs.
John McWhorter does a wonderful job of debunking Whorf-Sapir.
It’s actually NOT better with gas.
The majority of French cooks in the michelin guide favour electricity.
I can’t go into the details why.
However, gas gives instant heat, and means we can afford to be lazy…usually resulting in overcooking.
One suprising fact, – Butane gives the hottest, followed by propane, but butane is useless at low temps.
Methane-natural gas is suprising in involving more flame to get the same heat. Ask me how I know!
So that’s why we got butane lighters and propane grills.
Hank Hill would be proud.
Butane is the bastard gas.
— Hank Hill
it’s analog versus digital cooking. electric cook tops only have 2 settings. on or off. if we all had 1/2 inch thick stainless pots and pans it wouldn’t be an issue, but we don’t.
this is, of course, referring to the standard resistive heater element electric cooktop. induction models are great. if you don’t have a pace maker. glass tops merely replace some of that 1/2 inch of stainless with a piece of glass, and so are also an improvement.
Don’t get me wrong as I prefer to cook with gas because gas is faster to heat up and infinitely adjustable, but every single electric stove I’ve owned had 4 or more heat level settings. Some even had thermostatic control.
The heat setting on electric is typically on off, the higher the setting the longer each “on” pulse is.
Easier to see with those glass top stoves, burner comes on and off
With the old coil type you don’t see it
Gas is controlled from min to max, constant flow through valve.
I’ve used all, like gas for instant on and off, though electric burner gets hotter
Plus I have 50 plants so they love the gas stove, lovely co2.
I have gas hookup outside for my grill but use propane there anyway because hotter.
You want to cook on electric? You do so. I will continue to cook with gas, wood and charcoal. Oh, and cast-iron. My hand hammered wok and stainless-steel perk coffee pot. Get it? With what and how I choose to.
Indeed, the advantage of instantaneous heat control
The test methodology was to enclose the kitchen in a Mylar tent and measure the emissions, which were found to have been dangerous if a human has been in there.
Perhaps they should repeat that experiment with no cooking going on, but a real human in there. I suspect that just being enclosed in an airtight Mylar tent is pretty dangerous for humans as well….
Did they test for flatulence?
Every time I fire up the stove I think of this comparison, and it brings a warm and fuzzy feeling of satisfaction to my engineer heart:
The flame from the nearly perfect combustion of Natgas transfers heat through convection to the water in the pot, bringing it to a boil. Not too bad.
Alternatively, someone could have burned that same gas, converting the heat to mechanical energy with a loss of about 60% in a turbine. That turbine would have turned a generator to produce electrical current with a loss of I don’t know how much. That energy would have to be transported to my house, with various transformations of voltage, with more loss. Then there’s the conversion to resistive heat and more convection to boil my water.
I know the calculations are incomplete, but they’re just passing thoughts while waiting for the pot to boil!
Now, I could get nuclear electricity if I wanted real efficiency, or electricity from unicorn farts if I lived in California…..
A watched pot takes longer to boil if you need to wait for the coils to heat up.
That being said, a few years back I was staying at the Copped Beach hotel in Reading and they had a little electric coil device for making tea. You would hang this device on the wall of the cup with the heating coil inside and plug it into a wall outlet. It became red hot instantly and heat the water in your cup. The whole thing was quite precarious and to be honest it terrified me. I can’t imagine have that sort of gadget in a hotel room.
Like a charcoal starter,?
In a hotel room?
Seems like open invitation to fire
Last paragraph had to be sarcasm!
Common sense would debunk this. I can burn the gas on-site for heat, or I can use electricity that came from burning gas, traveled through 100s of miles or power line where 40% was lost to attenuation, then traveled into an element where more was lost. Plus, throwing out working appliances that took energy and materials to make us dumb.
I’m in the country and don’t have natural gas, I burn a lot of electricity heating the home and water, it’s not cheap. We put in a propane stove for the cooking benefits, but propane is more expensive than natural gas or electricity.
I think it’s time to flip the script on this claim that citizens that disagree with CAGW are seditious. Realists should form a class action suit to sue the global warming/climate change supporters with sedition. Vet everything out in a court of law in front of a jury. I think it will be the trial of the century and the truth will prevail because the whole CAGW hypothesis is founded on junk science. CO2 is not an evil pollutant but rather a giver of life to our carbon based existence.
But any truly scientific evidence would not be admitted in court, because the folks presenting the evidence (Realists) aren’t recognized as Climate-Science experts.
‘Journalists’ and ‘scrutiny’ in the same sentence? It’ll never catch on.
Everything is harmful to your health and eventually if exposed at high levels you’ll die from it. That includes water and sunshine.
Since the government decided they should be the guardians and purveyors of good health instead of your doctor, it’s no surprise that the lap dog media jump on any “study” and run with it.
Fake news is all about dropping the bomb for attention. They know that once the bomb has been dropped any cleanup to refute the damage to their credibility will be minimal if at all.
Love my gas stove
So do my plants
Never fell for the bullshit
A debate has been going on for decades regarding the relative safety of gas vs electric ranges. Each type has its drawbacks. e.g. an electric stove top burner that’s on less than high gives no visual indication that it’s hot vs a visible flame with gas, thus contact burns are more frequent with electric. But the gas open flame very easily ignites fabric like a loose fitting sleeve – advantage electric. An unnoticed gas leak can result in severe explosions. A poor electrical connection can start a fire. Both types are frequently the source of fires when food is left unattended and ignites – e.g. bacon grease fires.
Both appliance types are still quite safe when properly installed, maintained and used. Many cooks seem to strongly prefer gas due to the claim of better temperature control and speed of heating. But recently electric induction type cook tops have been gaining favor. In my view it comes down to personal preference. Neither type has been demonstrated to be a serious problem for indoor air quality outside of the anti fossil-fuel activist cadre.
In my region this was click bait many times over and probably will again in the near future. Seems that there is no end of these types; thought it might slow down after COP 26 but the eco horse has the bit in its mouth. If my gas stove has any leaks I would smell it due to the stink added to our supply.
I’m halfway through an unending kitchen renovation that includes the installation of a brand new gas stove. All the scary “cooking with gas is dangerous” articles seemed like bunk to me. I guess I’ll know for sure once my new gas cooker is up and running. If I get sick and die from the gas stove, I’ll be sure to post the details here. 😉
A Mylar tent? Oh no, the insult to Gaia! Don’t they know that mylar is made up of two compounds, dimethyl terephthalate (C10H10O4) and ethylene glycol (C2H6O2)? Look at the big C in the front of both formulas. They are CARBON based. The horror.
As a chemical scientist, seeing these articles and commentaries about gas stoves appearing over the last few months, I got the real sense of “concerted, deliberate campaign that is not in any way coincidental with the full blown campaign against gas use for power generation”, and ground my teeth in rage as falsehood after exaggeration after non-sequitur was linked together as “evidence”. This is a second front to sow fear in the general public, very much like the risible “microplastics are lethal” nonsense that is designed to vilify plastics manufacture and use. These fake studies are frequent, well-funded and relentlessly on message and, like dozens of fake activist-trumpeted climate trends that are the opposite to the truth, unable to be refuted if you are not in a science field and read the literature. It’s difficult to know how the truth is going to win out here, I’m becoming very pessimistic.
As a pro working in this field, I can *assure* you that electric stoves are likely to produce higher concentrations of PM2.5 and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) and volatile organic compounds (VOC) in a typical kitchen than a gas stove.
The reason was given in the text: ventilation. When you have a gas stove you have to vent the hood outside. If it is very fancy it has a heat exchanger but usually they don’t.
Cooking produces a *lot* of emissions from the food – particularly frying, stir frying, roasting, baking and broiling. How many times have you set off your smoke detector in the kitchen?
When people put in an electric stove they assume “it is clean cooking” and therefore there is no need to vent the fumes outside. Many over-stove vent fans are nothing more than a recycling vent hood with a crappy filter designed to collect condensed fats are oils. Very few filters trap much PM and certainly almost none of the PM2.5. They suck it up and blow it over your head into the room.
So the layman fitting his kitchen with equipment may be lulled into thinking a recirculator is acceptable instead of an external vent.
I am willing to bet that inside their “stove envelope” no cooking tool place. True or not? A pot of burning beans is a helluva lot worse than any stove or fuel.
For our European readers, you would be interested to know that American gas stoves are only allowed to produce 40% of the carbon monoxide of an EU-compliant stove.
The gas stove is an amazing tool to fight climate change. We’re told that methane is what, 40x more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2. Here we have an appliance then that converts this much more potent methane gas into much less troublesome CO2, and cooks your food at the same time! Everyone should have to use gas stoves so we can convert more methane and save the planet!
after huge storms and winds in Vic aus the other week..the people with GAS could cook dinner and heat water for the 16hrs or so our power went off , even though we have to buy expensive LPG (compared to towngas) the mains power kept going on and off for a further 24 hrs intermittently. so it was heat kettles fill the thermos and keep the fridge shut! many of our homes run on rainwater so if the powers off so is ALL our water too.
I encased my garage in a Mylar tent to trap to concentrate the emissions and then measured the concentration and came to the conclusion all ICE cars should be banned immediately and scrapped. And with the alarming dearth of electric tow trucks we should use horses to pull those ICE cars to the junkyard.
that could frighten
working familiesidiotic suburban wine moms. FIFYEven if you believe that carbon is an urgent problem (I don’t), going electric is self defeating.
A high proportion of electricity still comes from gas, so instead of heating your food with 100% of the heat available from the gas you propose burning it in a power station, losing a lot of the heat up the chimney, lose more in transmission and heat your food with what’s left?
Eh?