The CPSC is on a mission that has nothing to do with safety | Hacker News Reader

The CPSC is on a mission that has nothing to do with safety

cremieux.substack.com

92 pointsbarry-cotter211 comments

It is so bizarre to me that people are acting as if they've never heard that gas stoves are terrible for your health. I've known this for years! I've seen reports and anecdotes and buzzfeed-style articles a couple of times a year since at least before the pandemic. I assumed the things would be outlawed for new construction years ago, and phased out over time, except in the sense that some people still burn coal for heat in the northeastern US, so "phased out" clearly means little.

It's just weird to me that people seem shocked, and weirder still that people reject the idea as preposterous. I mean, we live in a country which had lead in paint and gasoline making a notable dent in the population for decades. We lay pipes to deliver a flammable gas to houses to which a noxious smell has been added so that we might notice if we're being poisoned by it.

What about this does not seem outlandish?

I grew up with gas stoves off and on, but I don't have one now. When I want to cook with fire, I use the propane grill on the patio. I'll be the first to admit it's not as nice to warm up tortillas on a flat electric surface as it was on either a gas burner or even an electric coil, but that's a minor thing.

There's journal articles going back 20 years that discuss indoor NO2, but from these comments you'd think that a cabal met last week to implement their new world order of a gas stove-less society.

And no one is even talking about outdoor gas grills or natural gas heaters, because those are ventilated. CPSC is asking, why not natural gas stoves? Why don't we require these to be safe? This seems completely logical to me.

There's even people who are asking if the feds are going to take their gas stoves by way of natural gas ban. Like, no one has busted down my grandparents' house to confiscate their lead paint walls in their basement. I feel like I'm going crazy.

Indeed, it's a bizarre over-politicization, and people don't seem to recognize how they're escalating rhetoric needlessly. Most of this seemingly because of a tweet by a member of the US Congress. Very strange.

> Why don't we require these to be safe?

As the article makes clear, there is not evidence that they are unsafe.

> no one has busted down my grandparents' house to confiscate their lead paint walls in their basement.

Can you not see that it is much easier to seize a stove than to seize lead paint on walls?

Cities have already begun outlawing gas appliances in new construction. People who are concerned about the CPSC rumblings are justifiably worried. If you don't like a city's rules, you can move. But if the CPSC takes action, you can't just move to another city.

> As the article makes clear, there is not evidence that they are unsafe.

I admit I did not read past the third or so paragraph, when it was clear the author didn’t understand PR vs OR, despite their lengthy explanation. I have little hope that the rest of the article becomes magically well informed.

> Cities have already begun outlawing gas appliances in new construction. People who are concerned about the CPSC rumblings are justifiably worried.

Okay but even you have to be able to see that outlawing in new construction is not the same as the feds confiscating your existing stove right? No one busted down my door to take by Bucky balls when they got banned. Lawn darts? Lead children’s toys? Because the CPSC only regulates what is sold in the US. Not what people own. This is a complete overreaction.

The notion they’d ban new sales is a little more plausible, but still not realistic when there’s a thousand things we can do to make these things safe. There’s currently no emissions standards for gas stoves. Builders are allowed to build poor or no ventilation in new homes. There’s no warning labels. If we can make magnetic desk toys safer for sale after a direct DEATH and numerous injuries, we can definitely require ventilation of a stove.

It would also be "easier" to seize incandescent light bulbs, but no one has done that either, despite the Gestapo fantasies some people get off on peddling...

I don't think anyone fantasized about people seizing their lightbulbs. But given their finite life, it doesn't take long until you have to replace them.

Stoves last much longer, but if parts are not available it has the same effect over time.

I don't know why there are people here saying this would never happen. NY Gov Hochul literally just proposed legislation that will ban gas stoves in new construction. It will also eventually block putting it into existing buildings. If you can't see where this is going you have your eyes closed.

Because "literally just proposed legislation that will ban gas stoves in new construction" is the standard way that laws phase out out-dated or dangerous commodities, like no cars sold without catalytic converters sold after 1975, or no new construction with ungrounded outlets since 1962.

No feds are going into houses ripping out ungrounded wiring. To suggest that they'd do the same for gas stoves is just spreading stupid FUD.

And once there is a causal link between gas stoves and health outcomes, then it would make sense to take those steps. For now, it's all associational studies, which HNers usually see through.

It's not just an "associational study" because there is a clear proposed mechanism, in this case the known affect of nitrogen oxides on lungs.

A correlation plus a well-understood mechanism isn't simply a correlation, it's evidence of a hypothesis.

Yes, an unproven hypothesis.

> We lay pipes to deliver a flammable gas to houses to which a noxious smell has been added so that we might notice if we're being poisoned by it.

Now do electricity.

While it's probably a good idea for most people to eventually switch over to electric induction, not least because it's much more energy efficient, I do think that banning gas ranges nation-wide is a big step that would require significantly more evidence that it was necessary.

Most of the problems with indoor pollution can almost certainly be more cheaply mediated by adding building codes requiring venting range hoods.

The fact that (as far as I have understood, can't find the link) the vast majority of US homes do not have a hood that vents to the outside is crazy. This should be the default for all new construction.

> Most of the problems with indoor pollution can almost certainly be more cheaply mediated by adding building codes requiring venting range hoods.

I would guess that adding range hoods is more expensive than switching everyone to electric stoves. Existing structures often have no provisions for venting to the outside and would often require very expensive retrofits. It would require opening up the ceiling to add ductwork, potentially building soffits if there isn't enough room in the ceiling, placing a vent in the exterior, etc. Range hoods above a certain CFM also require provisions for make-up air. In new construction, obviously the costs are different, but the cost difference between a gas and electric stove is also minimal.

Venting hoods would solve a lot more problems, though. Cooking on an electric stove or in an electric oven still generates a lot of particulates that I'd rather not subject everyone in the house to. Not to mention making everything smell like whatever I'm cooking for the next day. Personally, I'd rather have induction and a venting range hood.

> The fact that (as far as I have understood, can't find the link) the vast majority of US homes do not have a hood that vents to the outside is crazy. This should be the default for all new construction.

I agree and I think we are starting to see some areas move in this direction. But even if it was mandated today, most people wouldn't have venting range hoods for decades to come because they live in older buildings. I think we need incentives to retrofit buildings with better ventilation.

> I would guess that adding range hoods is more expensive than switching everyone to electric stoves.

Doesn't this depend critically on what percent of gas stove owners have hoods? If 75% do, then you'd have to "fix" 3x as many kitchens if your operation is replacing stoves versus adding ventilation. If only 20% have hoods, then it could make more sense to swap the stoves. But even this doesn't make sense if the article is correct and there is not evidence of gas being worse.

My own anecdotal experience is that in America, very few homes have hoods that vent to outside the building. I have lived in one LEED certified apartment building that had one, and even that had issues with the exhaust backing up because they needed to clean the exterior grille (it vented next to the dryer vent). In single family homes I have generally seen them in high end subdivisions or custom builds. I believe the code in some areas is getting stricter and they are starting to become more common, but they seem rare in existing housing stock.

I see a lot of recirculating range hoods, but they do nothing for combustion products. They only trap some of the aerosolized grease from frying and sautéing.

Weird, I've seen them all over, and not just in expensive areas.

I briefly lived in a place with a gas range and no venting range hood (just a fan that... exhausted inwards?) and I effectively never use the range.

Now I have a large gas range and a large exhaust range hood which is always on whenever the gas is, and for some time after the gas is off. I keep a CO2 monitor next to the stovetop to help indicate general air quality. The air quality is often better than normal (~100ppm above outdoor levels) when I'm cooking (outdoor levels) because the range hood is so efficient.

It would certainly be more effective to not use gas at all, but gas powers a lot of utilities in my home and here it's much cheaper. I'd consider induction if I were on the market for a new range and oven but I'm not. I'd also have to get new cookware and figure out how to keep my coffee warm.

There exists counter top induction ranges, with for example one or two elements, that are very good and everyone should probably own.

> There exists counter top induction ranges, with for example one or two elements, that are very good and everyone should probably own.

I'm sure they're nice, but try telling that to a New Yorker. Counter space is at a premium.

That's the brilliance of it. You can have it invisibly embedded in the counter.

https://victoriaelizabethbarnes.com/induction-cooking-integr...

The point is there isn't enough counter space as-is. Where do you chop things if you're cooking on the counter?

These are beautiful but not practical for small apartments.

Chop first, cook second. "Mise en place".

Unless you forgo a cooktop entirely in favor of microwaving/baking everything, your objection applies to every cooking surface - electric range, gas range, induction cooktop. At least here it's a dual-use surface.

OP was suggesting that everyone get a countertop induction unit. That includes people who have gas or electric ranges already. Getting a second countertop unit only makes sense for people with spare counters.

This is true, though in many countries in the world folks live in homes considered small by north American standards, and a countertop gas stove has been a staple of apartment cooking for some time now.

That's honestly pretty great.

Although now I will want a hood over my entire counter.

The problem with changing the building code is that the response would be much slower than banning the devices. Landlords notoriously don’t update their properties. But when the stove breaks, which it will, they would be forced to buying something that is healthier and more efficient.

Don't all serious proposals to ban gas stoves only ban installing new ones, rather than like-kind replacement?

Not sure, but I would be surprised if that were not the case.

That's crazy! Aren't most U.S. homes single family units? Adding a range vent is just a matter of making a 3x10 hole in an exterior wall and sticking a $40 external vent through it.

I just moved mine to the middle of the bottom floor of a 2 storey home. It took some work and there is lots of fire safety code to adhere to but it wasn’t a difficult job if you can do basic jobs around the house. Mine was a 160mm circular steel vent which is typical here.

With an external vent it’s also easy to put the fan on the roof or attic instead of in the hood, to reduce noise inside.

An indoor-only hood with a charcoal filter is the alternative but only reduces odor. I couldn’t imagine not having an external vent from the kitchen. Super cheap but massive quality of life improvement.

As long as the range is on an exterior wall.

The last two places I lived in the US, neither had an exterior wall near the range. The lack of regulation creates quite a bit of debt and makes change even more challenging.

To my untrained eye adding vents does not seem cheap at all.

Its a standard contractor job, when you are talking about installing a stove the difference between price in gas stove and induction may just offset the cost. I'd even assert you should have a vent regardless of range type: a lot of cooking methods necessarily create smoke, oily air, extreme steam, spicy air, on and on.

It depends. In my 100 year old home it involved cut a hole in the side of the house, run 2 foot of duct, add hooded vent cover, caulk, done. It was certainly cheaper than the extractor hood/microwave the previous owners installed and foolishly didn’t vent. But it can vary, and some might care about hiding the duct with a little box or something, or painting, which I didn’t bother with.

In most single-family dwellings, it'll probably be cheaper to add a range hood, even if some duct work is necessary, than to get a 240 volt 40-50 amp dedicated line for an induction stove that's as powerful as a gas range. Electric work is not cheap.

A serious, meaningfully effective range hood is much more expensive to install than a 240 plug. Most range hoods are performative. Can you sear a steak without setting off a nearby smoke alarm? If not, your range hood isn't doing much.

It's also much more expensive to maintain long term.

Some (but nowhere near all) of this is expensive because of gas appliances. If you have a powerful range hood you also need a complex makeup air system to avoid the hood pulling CO from your gas furnace and killing you. That makeup air system can also cause problems: if the grease that accumulates in the hood catches on fire, it can keep injecting air into the fire.

I’d like it to be easier to get a good range hood (some of the bad air quality effects of cooking are smoke from searing a steak!), which maybe electrification will help with.

There's a new company that uses a hefty battery to juice up the output of an induction stove, allowing you to have a powerful stove on a normal circuit. It can't output high power for as long as a real circuit but that seems fine for a lot of home cooking. Most high-temp cooking I do is in relatively short bursts (e.g. sear a steak for a couple minutes, stir fry, boil water and then turn the stove down to maintain).

Which is to say: a lot of these problems are product engineering and marketing problems, not fundamental technological problems. (should we ban gas stoves? probably not. Should developers at least consider putting induction and/or hookups in new construction? maybe).

That seems reasonable and likely, but it is worth pointing out that there is very little evidence collected about this. And what study has been done of indoor air quality seems to indicate that there are problems, though eliminating natural gas fixtures may not be the best response. What might be a good option would be to study the issue in more detail then come up with possible responses and study those also in order to formulate a response that is effective.

> more energy efficient

Sorry, thermodynamics would not agree with you. There are very few losses when converting natural gas to high entropy heat. Many losses when converting natural gas to high entropy heat, then to low entropy electricity, transmitting it and finally converting back to high entropy heat.

Of course the carbon footprint of an electric stove could be lower if powered by nuclear, wind or solar.

What kills the efficiency of gas stoves is not converting gas to heat, it's getting the heat into the pan. Induction stoves heat the pan directly. Gas stoves heat the air, which then has to heat the pan. Inductions stoves can be 90% efficient while gas is more like 40% [1]. Even if your electric company is using gas to generate electricity, generation and transmission losses can be low enough that you'd actually use less gas to power an induction stove than a gas stove.

What complicates things somewhat is that the extra energy goes into heating your house (if it is not effectively removed by a venting range hood). In the winter you may not be concerned about that, but in the summer it means you would spend more on air conditioning.

[1] https://www.aceee.org/files/proceedings/2014/data/papers/9-7...

It shocks me

1. How much faster my $15 electric kettle boils water than our expensive nice gas range

2. How much gas stove seems to heat up the air, handle, cabinet, range hood, my hand. And just about everything but the food.

I thought the benefit was in transferring said energy to cookware. Induction just heats up the cookware, while gas heats up the surrounding area as well.

> Most of the problems with indoor pollution can almost certainly be more cheaply mediated by adding building codes requiring venting range hoods.

As houses become increasingly more energy efficient, the cost of providing conditioned air only increases. Venting that air willy nilly to the outside has a real financial and climate cost.

All rangehoods in new construction should be mandated come with sensors that auto adjust the power based on detected particulate levels. With the old school dumb rangehoods, most people never bother constantly touching a bunch of oil smeared buttons to adjust the speed and just have it on full blast the entire time. You save a couple of hundred dollars going with the non-sensor version but its a false economy as it silently increases your HVAC bill and ERV filter replacement costs over time.

i read about environmental regulations that forbid venting because it would be bad for the environment. so there is a tradeof to be made. the pollution needs to be trapped.

personally i am also bothered by the noise. noise pollution is a problem too.

as much as i prefer cooking with gas myself, burning anything creates pollution with is bad for the environment and for our health. i don't see a way to keep using gas if i want to create a better future

> cheaply mediated by adding building codes requiring venting range hoods.

Do you know how much it costs to add ventilation to a building that wasn't required to have it? It is anything but cheap. A $1000+ induction range is peanuts in comparison.

https://www.angi.com/articles/how-much-should-it-cost-instal...

> It typically costs between $400 and $1,500 to install a range hood, with the average being $750. Installing a ductless range or a replacement range hood with existing ductwork falls on the lower end. Installing a ducted range hood with new ductwork comes in near the high end.

In NYC to do this you'd have to penetrate the envelope of the building - that requires a permit, which requires an engineer. You're looking at 8k a shot, before a single piece of hardware or a single hour of labor. Figure 12k all told.

How much does it cost to upgrade the service entrance and run new electric lines of sufficient capacity to run an induction range through 19th/early 20th Century buildings that were never designed for that? I'm betting it's not cheap. One site estimates $15,000-30,000.

The range I'm looking at on the Lowes site requires nearly 12kW if you want to use all the burners, not counting the oven. That's 100 amps just to run the range without any other electric usage in the apartment.

An induction cooker may be more efficient, but if you're burning gas (or coal) to generate electricity to then operate an electric stove, it's more efficient to burn the gas directly in the stove.

Literally, with no context, externalities, and in a lab setting, you are correct.

With the broader societal goal of "never burn fossil fuels when an alternative exists" and "never have to build new infrastructure for residential gas again", it becomes clear we should move away from residential fossil fuel consumption. We must work to cutover individual tools from fossil to electric, and in parallel work to cutover electric generations from fossil to renewable.

The same principle applies to vehicles. I don't care that the electricity for a Tesla comes from coal today - it soon won't.

I hear the rebuttal "ICE engines are very inefficient but a gas burner is different". Yes, but the replacement need is the same, and on the timeframe that people buy large appliances, it would be best if people moved to electric ASAP.

---

That all said, from an air quality concern perspective, I agree the focus should be on proper venting. It is disgusting to me that so few houses and almost no apartments have true external venting for bathrooms and kitchens - why this was done in houses 50 years ago but not today should be an embarrassment to every homebuilder outfit.

Burning gas on a stovetop burner is nowhere near as capable of extracting energy from the resulting heat as a gas turbine power plant or even a modern furnace.

That's simply not true, because you aren't accounting for the large losses in energy between the flames and the food. Induction is significant more efficient at getting the heat to the food.

I imagine there is also loss involved in gas transport to hundreds of thousands of homes versus a single pipe to a power station

There's also losses when transporting electricity. A pipe can be made perfectly airtight, but a wire cannot be made perfectly efficient*

*Yes I know about superconductors, that doesn't apply here

Doesn't that depend on the delivery mechanism? City gas would be fine but LPG tubes would probably use up more fuel in transport vs existing power lines.

By all accounts, the CPSC strongly agrees with this take.

Nobody should be installing gas in new construction, period. We won't stop using fossil fuels if we don't stop making things that need it.

"Nobody should be installing gas in new construction, period."

Couldn't you use that logic and say no one should be building cars with ICE, period?

No, you couldn't. We're still solving technological and supply challenges with batteries, charging infrastructure and cost differences on the order of $10-30k for a vehicle.

None of those issues are present with stoves.

And yes, we should be working as a society as quickly as possible to not use fossil vehicles.

Eventually, yes, we should probably do that (with minor exceptions).

I'd probably preceed it with a requirement for charging infrastructure in new home construction (especially if you're putting in a garage), and there are already subsidies for existing construction.

Yes! And we did -- and they're banned in 2035, which is later than I'd like but fine.

The difference here would be that the only infrastructure burden that is introduced by banning gas stoves can be solved by the new construction itself - forcing everyone to buy an electric car isn't going to cause all the required home and quick chargers to pop up at the same time.

EV cars still have some drawbacks, are in absolute terms significantly more expensive and cars don't last nearly as long as homes.

We won’t stop having slave children mine cobalt if we don’t stop making EVs that need it.

Both of Tesla's future chemistries (high nickel cathode, LFP) don't use cobalt.

Something tells me you don't actually give a shit about slave children but have a chip on your shoulder about EVs.

Something tells me you don’t know me. I have a chip on my shoulder about people being treated as subhuman. I have a chip on my shoulder about government policy that harms people in the name of protecting them.

I'll judge a book by its excerpts. You don't like government, period. That's fine. What I don't like is dressing up your disdain for the union of people (government) by concern-trolling people into issues with supply chains for critical resources.

If you want to have a discussion about ethical transportation, let's do it. Let's talk about the harms of fossil fuels, the human toll of car culture and suburban sprawl, the ethics of destroying the planet for future generations for cheap goods now, the issues of exploited labor in energy markets (including lithium and cobalt battery production) and more.

I agree exploited labor is bad. We should, as a society and via our government, do what is possible to not rely on exploited/slave labor for anything.

Is your assertion that, if the price of moving away from provably catastrophic activity like consuming fossil fuels is that parts of the supply chain rely on slave labor in other countries, we should not use it in any way?

Why can't it be mined by adults?

I don't know much about slaving, but presumably an adult is able to mount a more vigorous defense against would be slavers.

Why does Cobalt need to be mined by slaves when other things don't?

In the context you cannot both (burn fossil fuels) and (stop burning fossil fuels). You can mine things without child slave labour, so you can both (stop child slave labour) and (have EVs).

I didn't read the mathematical analysis terribly closely, but this additional point is at least as important. It is also much easier to understand.

> The results are very wrong, but there’s something even worse about this paper: an undeclared conflict of interest. The first two authors, Talor Gruenwald and Brady A. Seals are employees of RMI, Carbon-Free Buildings, which is, according to their website, “a non-partisan, non-profit organization that works to transform global energy systems across the real economy.” Their organization’s aims are to “Raise public awareness of health and climate costs of fossil fuels in buildings.”, “Design and advocate for carbon-free buildings policies in 20 key US states that represent 70% of direct gas use.”, “Retrofit large numbers of existing buildings to be all-electric, grid-interactive, and efficient.”, “Create buildings industry platforms to support dissemination of technology, supply chain development, and business-led interventions.”, “Leverage US successes to influence global supply chains and scale to China, India, Southeast Asia, and Africa.”.

And I think this push for

> Carbon-Free Buildings

is just another push to remove alternative energy sources from the homes of individuals.

Part of the growing smart meter control movement currently exemplified by Nest thermostats.

It is amazing that gas stoves as something to think about have entered into the public space so rapidily from nowhere.

It's so deeply deeply bizarre. Am I the only one wondering not about the topic but about how these topics occur?

Yeah, it had "this comes from industry lobbyists" written all over it.

The link to "climate" is so obviously strained. We're talking about a minor energy user, and we're not seriously addressing the source of the electricity. We should be talking about electricity generation first. And if we're going to be talking about homes, we should be talking about HVAC, starting with insulation.

I know there's the "we can do both!" argument, and the "this will get us ready for when the grid finally switches to renewables" argument (like electric cars). So maybe this makes sense for new construction?

But in a world with little nuclear and precious few renewables, it just seems premature, and like a lot of noise directed at the wrong things. Our impulse when we want to "save the environment" should not be to run out, buy a bunch of new shit, and send perfectly good appliances to the landfill.

> I know there's the "we can do both!" argument, and the "this will get us ready for when the grid finally switches to renewables" argument

The problem with "do both" arguments is that it doesn't consider the costs and inconvenience of all those little changes on public support. That's particularly true banning gas stoves, because how people cook is deeply intertwined with culture and tradition. My Bangladeshi immigrant relatives think banning gas stoves is preposterous. You're telling them they need to get a high-end induction range to be able to brown meat as well as the cheap propane stoves they learned to cook on back home. (And somehow get their landlord to install a 240v line in the kitchen of their crappy Queens apartment.) They need to unlearn how their mom taught them to cook, and learn new techniques that don't involve lifting the pan off the induction range, new ways of using pressure cookers, etc. You're telling Mexicans they can't directly heat tortillas (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fybeV8uWCQI) or char peppers on the flame. You're telling Asians they can't use woks the way they're used to.

If you're going to step into a hornet's nest like that, the pay off had better be huge! Otherwise you're just setting the environmental movement's political capital on fire for little payoff.

is anybody talking about banning gas stoves for existing homes? You mentioned "crappy queens apartment", but I didn't think that would require any change at all.

Yes:

> The Consumer Product Safety Commission, which has a staff of roughly 500, plans to open public comment on hazards posed by gas stoves later this winter. Besides barring the manufacture or import of gas stoves, options include setting standards on emissions from the appliances, Trumka said

ah. so it would be forcing a change when things break. It would likely be that existing devices would be uhmm "grandfathered" in though right? That's usually the case when it comes to these things.

The ban may grandfather existing devices, but if it prohibits "manufacture" and "import" you're not going to be able to get replacements. It's like lightbulbs--you don't have to turn in your incandescent bulbs, but you can't get new ones.

Sure you can. Plenty for sale at Home Depot: https://www.homedepot.com/b/Lighting-Light-Bulbs-Incandescen...

After August 1, you'll only be able to get ones that meet an efficiency standard, with a variety of exceptions as well.

The ban won't do anything, because it doesn't exist. It's not being proposed. It's not a thing.

No, they don't.

Nobody is talking about banning gas stoves for existing homes. There's lobbyists on both sides of this, and the oil industry is more powerful than the appliance industry.

The quote from the CPSC commisioner was "Products that can’t be made safe can be banned." which is making people go haywire. Natural gas stoves can be made safe, and that is by mandating ventilation (possibly automatic ventilation on ignition), and emissions standards.

> There's lobbyists on both sides of this, and the oil industry is more powerful than the appliance industry.

You forgot the green energy lobby.

> But in a world with little nuclear and precious few renewables, it just seems premature

Most people aren't talking about banning existing gas stoves in existing homes. But every easily avoidable greenhouse gas emission should be targeted, right now. And the entirety of the infrastructure to bring natural gas to so many homes involves lots of emissions, especially when considering leaks.

I really don't care about the "let's wait until x" arguments. All of these things need to be addressed now. Way too many people don't seem to understand the urgency here.

We are careening down the highway towards a brick wall, and people are saying "I don't want to take my foot off the gas pedal, because I want to keep making stir fry in my wok." Come on.

Not taking sides on this, but this is a great case-study on effective propaganda (n.b. propaganda in a neutral context) It's pretty amazing how this can dovetail with ideology to ride coat-tails so effectively. This is how the CCP and others can so effectively mobilize their population to change course on a dime.

A scientific article was recently published (within the last week IIRC), so it's natural to see a lot of coverage and discussion. The effect of gas stoves on health has been investigated for a long, long time, however.

True, but suddenly, after this new questionable paper appears, the current US administration is now considering a ban on gas stoves in all new construction.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-is-coming-for-your-gas-st...

I'd be cautious treating the WSJ editorial page as accurate news coverage.

The WSJ editorial was in response to the flood of mainstream coverage about the administration's announcement yesterday. I knew it was an editorial when I linked it and it should be obvious to anyone who reads it. Is there any question about the facts of the administration's policy statement?

> Is there any question about the facts of the administration's policy statement?

Yes, there is; there wasn't a policy statement. One commissioner (out of five) made an off-the-cuff, vauge mention about regulation (which could easily encompass something like a ventilation or emissions standard for them) in an interview. The usual suspects are now trying to turn it into the next culture war battle.

This unfortunately won’t be the last you will hear about them, either

The Inflation Reduction Act, passed last year in the US, has rebates to pay for 50% or 100% of the cost to convert a gas stove to an electric one

That means that there are people who stand to make a lot of money by convincing you to go electric at no cost to you :)

"at no cost to you" other than the devaluation of your money via rampant inflation caused by irresponsible multi-trillion dollar spending bills.

C-entral P-anel (for) S-hitting C-itizens? ;->

People coordinate. It's, like, what makes us people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JournoList for example. Or all the climate activists meet at conferences and things.

An acquaintenance in my network is a founder in the climate space. Two years ago he mentioned that for climate activists, eliminating gas stoves is the next target.

About a year later the trickle of bad news about gas stoves began. And it’s somehow all about the health risks of having a gas stove.

I’m not a conspiracy guy but it seems to me like climate activists are driving this message and they know full well you will never convince people to stop cooking over a flame, without resorting to “protect the children” nonsense.

> About a year later the trickle of bad news about gas stoves began.

Nah. Here's an article from 1996. (The "now, ladies" dates it pretty well to sometime outside the last decade, heh.)

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-04-02-ls-54048-...

"And now, ladies, one more reason to get out of the kitchen: Cooking may be hazardous to your health. Or so suggests controversial new research into the relationship between the use of gas stoves and respiratory problems in women. The major pollutant released by the combustion of gas is nitrogen dioxide, an odorless, reddish-brown compound that irritates the linings of the respiratory tract and causes shortness of breath."

Great citation but it really can support the point either way.

Something known for decades is now getting new attention, scrutiny and oversight. What changed? Is it just a coincidence it’s become a target for the climate industry at the same time?

What changed? "Climate change isn't happening" ceased to be a sustainable political position in most of the world; even in the US it's moved from "climate change isn't a thing" to "humans can't cause climate change" to "it's real but we can't stop it". Same thing that happened to tobacco in the 1990s; the fossil fuel industry stopped being able to bullshit their way out of admitting the problem's existence.

Yes it’s a problem, but induction cooktops are true feats of engineering. Have they tried just mandating these companies make a gas stove that doesn’t poison the users? Whatever that means.. better fans, tighter tolerances, it doesn’t sound intractable.

Ultimately, I think it’s a hard sell that we as a race should no longer cook over an open flame. But of course, the other target from the climate industry is meat itself so I guess the idea is that when it’s all plant paste who cares how it gets cooked?

> Have they tried just mandating these companies make a gas stove that doesn’t poison the users?

They might do exactly that.

The exact quote from the interview (https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2023-01-09/us-safety-...):

"'This is a hidden hazard,' Richard Trumka Jr., an agency commissioner, said in an interview. 'Any option is on the table. Products that can’t be made safe can be banned.'"

The mitigations you propose would seem to fall within the "made safe" category.

Also in the LA Times piece, emphasis mine:

"The Consumer Product Safety Commission, which has a staff of roughly 500, plans to open public comment on hazards posed by gas stoves later this winter. Besides barring the manufacture or import of gas stoves, options include setting standards on emissions from the appliances, Trumka said."

30 years ago it was radon. Everyone was running out to get detectors lest the ground beneath their houses killed them in their sleep. And who can forget Alar on apples or fat=bad or a thousand others.

So far I have yet to read a comment addressing the actual analysis of the studies by the author of the article. It's all: "Everyone knows gas is bad; it's axiomatic and self-evident, and anyone who goes to the trouble of actually looking at the source data and run analysis on it is a moron."

Whats bizarre about it? There is apparently serious discussion about banning gas stoves and that is spawning discussion/debate among the rabble.

Most of humanity's housing used to be centered around fireplaces burning wood. Many still are.

Why is it a surprise that we switched to gas?

Slow news week?

An important detail to have here is that the CPSC is not, in fact, considering an actual plan to ban gas stoves.

https://twitter.com/Ben_Geman/status/1613188324491137031

What appears to have happened here is that a new CPSC commissioner --- the CPSC has 5 of them --- gave an interview to Bloomberg laying out his case against gas stoves. That's unsurprising: there has long been strong case against gas stoves! But the CPSC chair shot the whole thing down right away.

Bloomberg ran an article that made it seem as if CPSC might put a ban proposal forward by the end of this year:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-09/us-safety...

... but that is not happening.

Curiously... certain twitteratti and other influencers got right on that boat on cue to promulgate how bad gas ranges are. So one commish starts a snowball that grows into an avalanche...

So you're right, if it were only one commish in the forest no one hears... but apparently many heard his signal and hit the gas --and that sudden lurch alerted people not on that wavelength that something weird was going on. That's the hubbub, not that one commish has some opinion.

You write as if the CPSC just set off the movement against gas cooktops. Some municipalities have banned new gas hookups for years.

Let's just say, the sudden upswell in advocacy and promulgation just seems non-"organic" and seems more like coordinated memetics.

For example as another kind of ordinance which is more organic is the adoption of bans or phasing out of gas-powered leaf blowers.

Also, second-hand smoke from puffed weed is detrimental to non-smokers' health --can I expect the same virality?

I don't know what you're talking about. People believe things you disagree with. That's not a conspiracy; it's literally just the human condition.

How big is the climate impact of gas stoves, anyway? Subjectively it seems like excess emissions from a stove would be a rounding error compared to things like automobiles and manufacturing.

Natural gas leaks are responsible for way more greenhouse gas effects than stove CO2. That is, it's not the stoves, it's the transmission infrastructure.

Correct. But getting rid of gas stoves doesn't change that unless you also ban gas furnaces, water heaters, and clothes dryers.

Sure, and we should also ban those. We ultimately need to get rid of the transmission infrastructure to eliminate those emissions.

But if this had been an article on banning gas furnaces instead, would you be saying it doesn't matter unless we also ban gas stoves? Do we need to regulate everything bad simultaneously or not at all?

No. The important thing is to be honest about what the goal is and what would be required to accomplish it. Then we can do a cost benefit analysis on the whole bundle.

Gas clothes dryers are probably the only other one that people have a strong preference for. And yes, I think that is the intention.

In the UK gas central heating and hot water is extremely common but I've never heard of anyone using a gas dryer. Looking them up, it seems that they were always niche and are now off the market entirely. We were all-in on gas (partly as a result of discovering gas fields under the North Sea in the mid-20th Century) and gas stoves are still popular. (Edit: though it's increasingly uncommon for new houses to be connected to mains gas at all, and I think the government is intending to formalise that at some point).

I find it fascinating how different preferences arise and end up dominating in different countries. I wonder what it is about gas dryers that make them popular in the US. Anyone got one and can enlighten me?

A quick search shows they take half as long to dry a load as electric. Operating costs are also lower. Gas does cost modestly more up front though.

I've heard gas furnaces are more efficient from a cost perspective. People definitely don't want to be forced to replace an appliance with one that will cost more to operate.

My main criteria for choosing a place to rent is choosing a place that has a gas stove.

If you live in an area where most electricity is generated by natural gas, a gas stove probably has a lower footprint than an electric stove.

I don't know of anyone measuring it but the service lines and infrastructure providing gas leak GHG's in the process all over the place. The stoves themselves leak a little.

Modern induction stoves are far superior anyway you would be doing yourself a favour upgrading. That gas is somehow "qualitatively better," is propaganda from the gas companies to keep people choosing gas. "Now you're cooking with gas," is from a gas propaganda short aired decades ago... to keep people choosing gas when people were starting to convert to electric.

There's no good reason I can think of to keep using gas stoves.

> There's no good reason I can think of to keep using gas stoves.

Tortillas and marshmallows. Not enough of a reason to keep a gas stove really, but it's traditional to some people.

I eat tortillas daily, and use a gas stove, but why couldn't I use an electric stove?

You can! I just happen to love the taste of slightly flame charred tortillas.

Haha I see. I normally prefer non-charred tortillas because whenever they are charred it is because I forgot them in the stove so they get _very_ charred.

Though I do like restaurant provided charred flour tortillas

You can't use a clay comal for fresh or the direct-burner method for premade, tortillas with induction (you can use a cast-iron comal or griddle with induction for either.)

Oh that makes sense. I use an iron comal so didn't think about clay ones (nor the direct-burner method since I only do that when I am too lazy to wait for the comal (which I usually call plancha) to heat up).

I believe new construction should not utilize natural gas at all.

Your argument is a bit disengenious though. The slogan came about in the 30s-40s and yes it was with competition of electric stoves but traditional electric stoves suck. Induction only became reliable in the past few years, before that the components were not as reliable, we had many issues with component failure in our kitchen across various brands.

I can think of a handful of reasons to use a NG/LP burner over induction, mostly around heavy searing and stir frying but certainly new residential builds should not include them, easier to have separate LP hob setup.

It’s been around for a lot longer and is continually paid for by the gas industry when people tried to earnestly convert away from gas: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FJRQo5aawho

Modern magnetic induction is better. For me it has killed off anything about gas stoves that made them unique. Induction stoves heat fast, as hot as you need, even surface; wok, Dutch pot, whatever; I take it over gas stoves.

Side hob for a round bottom wok is a great idea.

My main issue with electric (which I have) and induction ranges is a warped pan becomes an issue immediately; it'll wobble and not make proper contact with the surface. Gas is a lot more forgiving in this regard.

The best reason I can think of is that they’re better in almost every way and your comment is mostly falsehoods, intentionally or not.

I recently switched from electric to gas when I moved. Gas stoves are qualitatively better and it’s not even close.

I have an electric stove at home, but a family member has gas. I was surprised that it's so much easier to cook an omelette on a gas stove.

Anything with eggs you can really tell the difference because you can see the edges start to cook just as soon as you put it on.

You think the gas companies are the propagandists here?

It'd be fairly insane to claim otherwise.

There may be propaganda on both sides, but fossil fuel companies have a long history of involvement in the debate.

For example: https://grist.org/culture/how-natural-gas-propaganda-made-it...

> The afternoon started off like most, with the 41-year-old software engineer picking his son up from John M. Tobin Montessori School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. But when his son opened his backpack, Bahmutov caught a glimpse of two children’s activity books emblazoned with the logo of Eversource, an energy utility that serves more than 4.3 million customers across New England. The booklets, one of which was titled “Natural Gas: Your Invisible Friend,” include natural gas safety tips and portray the fuel as an ideal, clean way to cook food, power vehicles, and heat and cool buildings. Bhamutov immediately noticed one gaping hole in the information provided in the booklets: They didn’t once mention that burning natural gas emits greenhouse gases and contributes to climate change.

https://theintercept.com/2019/04/03/branded-content-fossil-f...

> Or was it? On closer inspection, the report wasn’t coming from the D.C. paper’s newsroom. Though the link takes you to a page published by WashingtonPost.com, the story is actually a publication of WP BrandStudio, the paper’s branded content platform. In other words, the article is really an advertisement, and the copy was paid for by the American Petroleum Institute. The tagline — “Content from American Petroleum Institute” — is plain to see if you’re looking for it, though easy to miss if you’re not.

Yes.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FJRQo5aawho

Literally paid for by the gas industry to keep people choosing gas.

I’m confused why the federal government has the authority to regulate indoor air pollution in every home in the country?

Where does it end?

Will they inspect every home for mold next? Force you to install CO detectors? Connect them to a national monitoring system?

The Consumer Product Safety Commission tries to figure out which products have unnecessary risk for the consumer and apply regulation to the manufacturers. It’s very similar to what the NHTSA does for automobiles.

Not accusing parent comment of this, but there’s a flawed attitude that consumers can and will do full research before making a buying decision, and that the “free market” will sort itself out that way.

That expectation is unreasonable because forcing the individual citizen to undertake to avoid dangerous products both doesn’t work (because people don’t do that level of research for everything) and reduces individual freedom (because the requirement for work is being foisted onto the person).

I’m not really sure of the validity of this stove essay because it’s a wall of statistics, and I’m not arguing that all product regulations are good, but regulations do have a really important role in fostering a healthy and free society.

Yeah, on the one hand there is public good, on the other hand, this is like regulating cigarette smoke in your own home. I suppose they can regulate manufacturers but they cannot go and inspect your home for violations that would violate the 4th amendment to the American constitution.

It's similar to banning lead paint in your home tho. The gas is coming into your home.

>> It's similar to banning lead paint in your home tho.

Similar with the exception that lead paint is actually bad for you.

That blog doesn't read well I'm afraid. First of all, in the title it's something about climate, to then switch to Asthma. (And ctrl-F there is no mention of climate in the original paper.) Then there is some ranting about "activists" to which I will come back in a moment.

Afterwards the post identifies flaws in several studies the meta-analysis did not use correctly. I would at that point expect some intuition what went wrong, instead of just namedropping some method without much further explanation. The style written here, including dropping some studies in the reanalysis smacks of cherry-picking. (Not saying that they did, I didn't do enough work. It is just I don't expect that doing that work is a wise use of my time.)

And finally ranting about "activism." In general the expectation of a asthma research as an activist is, that the activism is motivated (or at least not in conflict) with a deep understanding of asthma.

Ironically this reads as cherry picking. The author's criteria is explicit

> only touching on those sources that have to do with asthma and gas stoves

The tie in to climate happens at the end of the article -- where the authors have a conflict of interest (involvement with organizations seeking zero carbon buildings) and regulators near-immediately use this as a reason to move towards banning gas stoves for consumer safety.

Which is absurd -- if the causal relationship between gas ranges and asthma were around 11% this would be apparent.

The activism in this case is not about asthma, it's about weaponizing asthma.

Fun thing is that one of the authors of the MDPI piece doen't seem to realize that there's a problem if you add up a bunch of PAFs and get something over 100%.

How, exactly, does anything cause more asthma than actually exists without the stats being bogus?

https://twitter.com/bradytoday/status/1610639235505336322

The blog post clearly states what the link to climate activism is according to the blog author. The conflict of interest of the meta study authors and suspected opposition to gas stoves on climate grounds by the regulator is clearly stated.

Calling this "climate activism" cheapens the phrase; that's not what this is. This is industry lobbying from a bunch of people who want to sell electric appliances. They'll be perfectly happy if these things are powered with heaps of bituminous.

Lies in the name of politics are increasingly irritating to me. Like when the Governor of Illinois goes on Twitter to lament all those lives we lost on January 6th. If only Karma were real.

Almost a third of a percent of annual deaths occurred on that day! They deserve to be mourned.

Finding statistical "faults" without experts in the specific narrow area of research being consulted reeks of politics.

On the subject of banning gas stoves specifically. I think 100% of everyone suspects that is going to happen at some point. Why not now?

Are we implying that gas stoves are safe? Surely this is just a straw that broke the camel's back for the CPSC and likely they didn't need much if any reason to ban them for safety reason, they do in fact pretty regularly kill people.

> they do in fact pretty regularly kill people.

So do cars. And really how often? Can you point me to some evidence of this?

Regardless of the numbers, what's your argument here?

Why are you so happy to have a federal agency nanny away our choices of home energy supply?

> Finding statistical "faults" without experts in the specific narrow area of research being consulted reeks of politics.

In this case, one of the authors of MDPI piece was doing this: https://twitter.com/bradytoday/status/1610639235505336322

I don't think it takes an expert to realize that there is a problem with stats that say that more asthma is being caused than exists.

The corrected numbers still look like the 3%-5% range, which is still probably enough of a reason to switch stove types... if all the other reasons weren't enough already.

And replace them with what? There are almost annual major electrical grid outages in the various US grids and California frequently does active rolling blackouts.

At least in the US (and it seems most of Europe, too), there is barely enough capacity for current surges. Migrating more high energy consumers to that infrastructure without plans to improve it seems doomed to fail.

Two things:

1. The default recommendation may likely be "use gas stoves with a good ventilation solution" rather than "throw out all gas stoves"

2. A change does not need to occur immediately. It's not unreasonable to expect that a shift in usage over a 10-15 year horizon can be planned out as part of larger grid considerations. Might be an awkward energy demand to manage, however, as it's all focused on meal times and not spread throughout the day.

For my household we've read the current material as a reminder to use our vent hood more often. We weren't doing so for a convenience (noise) reason, but of course burning things indoors can create all sorts of air quality issues that are remedied in part by the ventilation system so we now do.

I think this is the most sane reaction.

As an aside, it's important to keep in mind that while stopping nat gas cooking will remove NOx and benzene from our air, we'll all still benefit from ventilation to remove the particulates and VOCs that are inherent to heating food.

> When I got back, bacon was smoldering on the range, filling the house with gas-phase polycyclic aromatics - my favorite carcinogen by a long shot.

- Zodiac, An Ecothriller, by Neal Stephenson

Thanks for the calm, rational response. That is definitely a great reminder, and I’m guilty of the same.

Maybe Noctua should jump into that market.

Ironically, the post is also lying about climate change. Gas stoves have very very little to do with climate change, the use of fossil fuels for cooking is a rounding error and irrelevant. Gas stoves are worse for your health and an inferior product in every dimension except wok cooking.

Propane stoves 1.)have superior temperature control (to electric, I don't know about induction) and 2.)don't stop working when the electricity goes out, which happens just about every week or when it rains out here in the sticks.

Its clear to everyone banning gas ranges isn't the plan. The CPSC is lying to encourage people to buy new appliances. As opposed to cutting a hole in the wall for ventilation. For the benefit of climate.

Editorialized title: Lying for a Climate Crusade

Not to say author is wrong but I don’t get the point of writing a blog that reads like a paper with some political commentary at the end.

If you think the meta analysis was flawed then publish a paper showing why and skip the internet rant about politics. If you can’t get peer review, why should I waste my time reading your findings about something I personally have no expertise in? It’s not like I can or want to fact check the author on their meta meta analysis

> If you can’t get peer review, why should I waste my time

Where would the author get published and receive peer review?

The gate keeping, bias, and influence peddling in today's journals make what you're saying nearly impossible.

Let me be more clear: I don’t understand the goal of the OP because if you have the training and patience to read this article you probably would rather see it in a peer reviewed article; and if you don’t, then the article is meaningless other than the political rant at the end.

I don’t know who the intended audience is, but it’s definitely not me.

I personally love this type of blog post, and I think it’s good for articles on complicated topics to show their analysis. Have you read Scott Alexander? He does a similar style but with more humor to keep it entertaining.

This kind of blog posting seems like a much more integrous approach to disseminating information to me. Any person can add further information/opinions and back up their claims with links to sources or further reading. This is in direct opposition to most peer reviewed articles I see that don't allow any commentary, which seem to pretend that the documents are some sort of uncontestable hard truth.

In some contexts I agree, like when field experts publish blogs or tweets. For example, Scott Aaronson does this often ( https://scottaaronson.blog/ )

The problem is that this generally requires already having the credibility / “clout”. Without that, you’re just some anonymous person screaming into the void that the mainstream is wrong. there isn’t a dialogue, just a rant. And without a name backing you up, the internet has little reason to care about the rant.

I don’t see the numbers and analysis in this article contributing to any discussion but rather providing a facade of authenticity for the following political rant. And the problem is, if someone says it’s legit analysis, why should I believe them? Until an expert will put their name on the line, I just don’t care; and that brings us back to the peer review / “clout” problem

It may be 'screaming into the void' for you, but for people that want to read and comment, the opportunity is there, which is my point.

One problem is, if an 'expert' says it's legit analysis, why should I believe them?

As a reader, if one or several experts came forward with this blog, I would skip the analysis and read the political rant, keeping in mind they may have the benefit of the doubt on the analysis. Not ‘believe’ per se, but enough to consider it worth my time to read the political stuff predicated on the analysis.

When an anonymous author comes forward with this, I could do the same, but why would I? Political rants are a dime a dozen on the internet, so it doesn’t justify itself, and I can’t personally vouch for the author because I’m not an expert in the field.

If you have the expertise to validate the author’s meta meta analysis and actually want to do so, then I applaud your benevolence and envy your free time. When I was in my 20s I did this with P vs NP cranks on Reddit. I spent hours reading random people’s algorithms and pointing out flaws. In retrospect I don’t particularly feel like it was a good use of my time.

Because you can’t be an expert in everything. At some point you have to trust someone else’s knowledge.

The goal is to justify the political rant. I'm not going to fast check the meat of the article either but if I really had a dog in the fight then I could learn and check. It also allows other people with the appropriate expertise to check and offer a rebuttal if they find flaws

You raise a good question: if you're unwilling or unable to check the author's work, how should you evaluate articles like this?

I'd say the right answer is that you shouldn't evaluate it with any certainty, just file it away as something that might be true. Wrong answers would be "I disagree with the political commentary so the article wrong" or "I agree with the political commentary so the article is right". I think you're falling into the former category.

> I'd say the right answer is that you shouldn't evaluate it with any certainty, just file it away as something that might be true.

I suppose that’s fair. Although this is in some ways already the default position.

Check their other blog post.

Without any reasonable way to check the author’s credentials or the soundness of their analysis, I did go looking into who they are.

The pseudonym “Cremieux Receuil” and the avatar refer to Adolph Crémieux[1], a French lawyer and politician remembered for advancing the status of Jews in France. “Receuil” is just French for “collection”, and this person published a work by that name. Wikipedia notes that Crémieux’s decree did not extend French citizenship to Arabs. This may be significant when combined with what else we know about the Substack author.

The Substack has one other post, another long and very dense posting which, if I understand correctly, attempts to show errors in others’ historical analyses of the economic effects of slavery on subsequent generations. The author argues it is not significant, and points to racial mixing with Europeans as a better explanation for disparate outcomes among the descendants of slaves.

I admit I do not understand all the tropes this author is deploying, which seem common among online reactionaries. I speculate that I, the normie, am supposed to be dazzled by their erudition, triggered by the race science, and bewildered by their allusions to obscure figures. Perhaps, by attempting to decode them, I am giving the author what they want. But honestly, all I feel is tired. This person’s priorities are not my priorities. Perhaps it is true that our biggest problem today is excess zeal in fighting climate change or mitigating the effects of colonial slavery. Perhaps we are on the road to serfdom by trying to do anything about it. As a product of miscegenation myself, I look forward to lenient treatment from my future masters.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolphe_Cr%C3%A9mieux?wprov=sf...

Yeah we’ve seen even recently that the gatekeeping for even getting an attempt at peer review hampers many papers. I understand the rationale though.

I had submitted a paper with some friends to an epub, and asked some people in the academic space what they thought of it.

I was an undergraduate, other members were in their grad courses.

We had brown men on twitter call us names and berate us because we asked what they thought. Yeah the formatting wasn’t perfect, but the math behind it was sound

The click-baity headline and overly confident (given the evidence) conclusion mar what could have been a good article.

The blog author also takes umbrage at the paper's authors' other work and biases. Since the blog author is anonymous it's not as clear what their biases may be, but the only other blog they have posted comes to the conclusion that "whatever travails American Blacks suffered during slavery no longer matter for their socioeconomic attainment today," citing an infamous eugenicist.

Take that as you will.

Indeed. Reached the same conclusion. It's ironic that the individual decries the journal editors and authors for corrupt motives while they, as a blog poster, get to shelter behind a shroud of anonymity.

My first reaction after their conclusion was wondering what associations they have that may be biasing their own work. If they are that concerned about conflict of interest they should be more transparent in their own authorship.

You should see the other article they published.

If they think gas stoves are dangerous, I wonder what they think about ventless gas fireplaces?

> In other words, this is a work of blatant activism by people with an organizational interest in these extremely overwrought results

Well said.

Of course it's on substack.

This crusade against gas stoves is fascinating to watch. I believe we are observing the pattern for how "science" is used to manipulate populations. This effort has all the hallmarks of a disinformation campaign. Sudden emergence, weak or falsified evidence, an engineered emergency, using children to emotionally manipulate, politicians signally adherence, extreme calls to action, etc.

It's an interesting phenomenon; at its core is the "correct" idea that gas stoves aren't the most efficient and lead to indoor pollution but it is such a negligible problem that the effort put into legislation against it seems like a giant waste of time an resources.

I feel like most people are in the camp of, "Who cares? Is this really something we're worried about?" At least I am in that camp but there's also likely a term for ignoring the small problems because of the big problems.

In the best light, I see it as an oblique play to raise awareness of venthoods. "If ya'll can't behave we're gonna take your toys!"

I’ve felt this way too. Suddenly this massive propaganda campaign has sprung up on the left to demonize gas stoves. Comment threads including this one are packed with lies about how electric is more energy efficient (only if you don’t consider how the energy is created), work as well as gas (no they don’t, not even new induction ones, are as reliable as gas (not during a power outage, and not other times either), and so forth. They’re trotted out on every single thread, the same spiraling arguments as people try to combat the lies and distortions. It’s like this is the latest windmill that progressives are being encouraged to tilt at.

I love my gas stove but it really is inferior in most ways to electric or more specifically induction. I have extremely good ventilation which most people do not.

> Suddenly this massive propaganda campaign has sprung up on the left to demonize gas stoves.

I don't see it this way. Articles and scientific journals started highlighting health issues related gas ranges in homes years ago, and with greater frequency in the last 2-3 years. None of the discourse I've observed is remotely novel from a health and safety and environmental perspective.

> only if you don’t consider how the energy is created

Where I live most electricity is renewable (hydroelectric) supplemented by nuclear. There's no universe where gas is more efficient for me.

It seems like it's also a good idea to move away from fossil fuels for electricity. With respect to this discussion, one does not necessarily preclude the other.

> work as well as gas (no they don’t, not even new induction ones

Induction ranges are very compelling. Have you used one? You can buy countertop one- or two-element ranges and they're delightful.

If you want to fire something up at high heat quickly, it's hard to beat gas, but induction comes close enough in practice. In truth, I most often cook at the lowest possible heat setting on my range and I wish it could go lower still. I wouldn't have any issues with induction.

> not during a power outage

My gas range's starters won't work without electricity. I definitely don't stock matches in my home but I could get it going if I really wanted. But then there's no way to run the exhaust fan? It's neither practical nor safe.

I don't think any of the demonization of gas stoves is unwarranted, but I'd struggle to call it that. It seems like mostly reasonable discourse, albeit with mostly unreasonable people.

> Suddenly this massive propaganda campaign has sprung up

https://hn.algolia.com/?q=gas+stove

There's articles posted to this very site that point to research 3 and 4 years ago. This has been researched for years. Here's a study from almost 20 years ago, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16268829/

> lies about how electric is more energy efficient

Not a lie, induction is up to 3x efficient, partially because gas shoots the heat component around your pot/pan and heats up the room, whereas induction's energy mostly goes into the pan.

> work as well as gas (no they don’t, not even new induction ones

Explain?

>are as reliable as gas (not during a power outage, and not other times either

During power outage, sure, but nothing wrong with keeping a nat gas grill outside where it's properly ventilated. Can you also explain the "other times" electric is not as reliable as gas?

Induction is more energy efficient if you had any idea how induction cooking works. I guess major municipal gas infrastructure is a zero-cost, zero-maintenance feature too.

I'm not saying "rah rah I hate gas stoves", I'm saying "wow, if they are a source for major indoor air pollution, and we should be migrating off residential fossil fuel anyway, and induction is damned near as good if not better and safer than gas, then everyone should consider induction anyway".

Feel free to also ignore the many people saying that venting should be in the calculus of the air-quality discussion. That doesn't fit your narrative.

> Sudden emergence

Yeah, a report got released after being worked on.

>weak or falsified evidence

I guess articles like this will hash it out, but it's a bold assertion.

>an engineered emergency

I don't think anyone has called this an emergency of any kind.

>using children to emotionally manipulate

Debatable but hard to argue against.

>politicians signally adherence

My instinct would tell me this isn't something most on the left are campaigning on, while reactionary rightists are probably tweeting about freedom (for gas stoves, not the poor, the workers, the non-whites or the ill).

>extreme calls to action

A ban is being discussed, yes. Sometimes government regulates dangerous consumer goods.

> etc.

Uh-huh.

For as shoddy job as they did this time trying to invent an emergency, think of all the times it happens successfully....

Agree - any propagandist paying attention the last couple of years is acutely aware of the contemporary efficacy of labeling "Science" as a manipulative stiumuls. Run a few biased "analyses", pay for placement in a journal and/or get promoted in a few clickbait news rings, syndication through social media...inception into the minds of millions with relative ease.

How much longer can an average person expect to live if we ban gas stoves? 0.5 years? Not worth it for having to deal with a wimpy electric stove: https://www.epicurious.com/expert-advice/how-to-stir-fry-ele....

We don't have natural gas out here in the boonies of Maryland, so we have a high-end range converted to propane (which puts out twice as much heat as natural gas). That thing cranks. Frying things in ghee is a dream. The G-men can confiscate my gas range over my dead body.

> "The G-men can confiscate my gas range over my dead body."

1) Hear that buying a new gas stove might become illegal.

2) Fantasise a world where the FBI will send agents to confiscate your cooking stove and decide that you will have a FIGHT TO THE DEATH over your cooking stove.

You don't want a 'wimpy' electric one? Buy a powerful one, here's a 7kW induction hob specifically for wok use: https://www.euro-catering.co.uk/shop/product/berner-BWK7-cou...

That's 4,000 £s for a single burner.

Then start making and selling them cheaper. Apparently there is such demand that people would sacrifice their lives for a hot wok. You could make a killing.

> Apparently there is such demand that people would sacrifice their lives for a hot wok.

LOL.

Yeah - I've never understood the heavy-hand of government/society and urban-life people forcing ideologies onto people in rural areas - especially when urbanites have no idea what it's like to live rurally. Have fun using your electric cooktops after a storm when the power lines are all blown down and you're waiting for the electric company to repair the lines.

Just let people use what they want to use. If it's more convenient for them to use gas, let them use gas.

It just comes off as holier-than-thou and self centered - ideologically driven as opposed to practically driven.

If gas lines were run above ground and electrical lines below ground, you might be saying exactly the opposite thing about which type of cooking system is better in an emergency. Somewhat arbitrary, culturally rooted infrastructure features are dominant here.

I don't have a "gas line." I've got a propane tank outside my house that I only have to fill twice a year for both cooking and hot water. The fact that propane (or fuel oil) is energy dense, and easy to store and use with cheap infrastructure compared to electricity is a fact of physics, not "culture."

And my axe!

   > How much longer can an average person expect to live if we ban gas stoves?

34 minutes, on average. Not sure of my math, but since the "ban gas stoves" movement was just started by lobbyists, I can make things up too :)

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