Real Science Behind Reversal of Gas Stove Ban
The proposed ban was based on bad science and even worse political agendas.
As noted by my colleague Mary Chastain, the Biden administration recently considered a nationwide ban on gas stoves, blaming “pollutants” released by the appliances, according to a report.
One of the studies cited was published in Scientific American. We have been documenting the narrative science and agenda-driven conclusions that the publication offers.
The “study” involved 53 households, all in California.
We quantified methane released in 53 homes during all phases of stove use: steady-state-off (appliance not in use), steady-state-on (during combustion), and transitory periods of ignition and extinguishment.
We estimated that natural gas stoves emit 0.8–1.3% of the gas they use as unburned methane and that total U.S. stove emissions are 28.1 [95% confidence interval: 18.5, 41.2] Gg CH4 year–1. More than three-quarters of methane emissions we measured originated during steady-state-off. Using a 20-year timeframe for methane, annual methane emissions from all gas stoves in U.S. homes have a climate impact comparable to the annual carbon dioxide emissions of 500 000 cars.
But there is more!
The publication date of this study is January 27, 2022. In February, energy markets and public policy expert Roger Donway noted that one of the study’s authors indicated replacing gas with electric stoves was not the solution.
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.
Fortunately, the backlash to awful policy based on bad science was so hot that the administration backed off the proposed ban.
At least one solid data point can be gathered from this incident: There isn’t one agency the Biden Administration can’t use to hurt the American people.
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Comments
Ask any good cook how they feel about cooking on an electric stove. Then duck, fast.
Compared with a standard coil or glass top electric, yes. I’m one who “heats food”. I am hardly a good cook or chef. But, even I prefer a gas stove, or if gas is not possble, induction.
OK, let’s go the other direction and talk about cooking over a wood coal fire! We cook outdoors on our patio 3-4 times a week. If we’re cooking meat it will often be on the direct-heat side of our BBQ pit… I’ll make a wood fire (normally post oak) and let it burn down to coals, then grill the meat. Cooking like this really can’t be beaten, the meat picks up a ton of wonderful flavor from the wood coal. You also can’t beat the texture you can get on the meat with a super hot fire like this.
Love induction!
You speak as if your life as you would have it mattered — what you’d lose does not matter, because it does not matter to them.
Of course, there is an over-abundance of electricity to draw on to run all of these stoves, especially in California. /snark
Ha!
“Honey, could you pull over and shut down the EV? The state electric regulatory agency called and said that if I want to cook lunch for the kids we need to lower our overall family energy consumption”
The reality is more like, “Honey, we don’t have the money to pay to cook dinner every night, unless we buy household batteries.” California charges extra, a LOT extra, for electricity use 4pm to 9pm, the time frame when young families are active in the home.
https://rmi.org/
Hmmmm…..aha!! It’s for………….DA CHILDRENZ!!!
“There is about 50 years of health studies showing that gas stoves are bad for our health, and the strongest evidence is on children and children’s asthma,” said Brady Seals, a manager in the carbon-free buildings program at the nonprofit clean energy group RMI and a co-author of the study.
———————————————-
Erin Sherman
Senior Associate
Carbon-Free Buildings
Erin is a senior associate at RMI in the Carbon-Free Buildings Program, where she supports the Codes for Climate Initiative to accelerate progress toward building codes and performance standards aligned with the goal of securing a 1.5°C future by 2030.
Prior to joining RMI in 2021, Erin’s work focused on the intersection of climate action and – behavioral science.
Check out her twitter picture
https://twitter.com/WeCouldTestThat
First they come for our stoves, then they come for our heat and hot water heaters. If you have a gas range you most likely have gas heating, and a gas hot water heater as well.
First? Let’s not give them a pass on history.
Never forget our toilets, shower heads, and light bulbs.
And before that, our autos and trucks, whether gas or diesel.
And don’t get me started on DDT.
The DDT ban killed millions of people. Literally.
Another episode of the bureaucracy seeking to impose their will upon the people.
If they come for Mrs. Wrangler;s gas stove, they had better bring their lunch. And Kevlar.
All this news about the ban has caused her to request a refresher on the operation of the 870, in case her skills have rusted over time…
Bad science and bad policy = liberalism.
Also equals opportunity. Musk is already breaking ground for a new factory to manufacture self-cooking electric stoves.
Hilarious. I’m imagining a contraption that allows a person to produce and capture their own natural gas. It’s primarily methane so this should definitely be possible. Better yet, open-source build instructions so anybody anywhere can create their own.
Close. But bad science = fascism + genocide.
They are coming for our stoves? If it was real science, the first thing they do is come for Biden. Because if it was real science, you wouldn’t have a person with advanced Alzheimers acting like he is President of the United States.
What do we need Biden for, after all?
The government is already full of self-licking ice cream cones.
That’s funny!!
The FBI’s new mantra: “Is that an cooktop in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?”
Bwhaahaaa!!!
A real scientific study would acknowledge that methane releases have reached an equilibrium with the methane removed from the atmosphere due to various mechanisms including biological. In other words, methane is not increasing global warming.
A real scientific study would show that water vapor contributes around 95% of the entire greenhouse effect and the amount contributed by methane is a rounding error in comparison.
A real scientific study would show how projected temperature increases according to global warming theory have exceeded, without exception, real world measurements by factors of two, three or more depending upon the model chosen so why are these predictions are used as fact when making policies?
One could go on about the starving polar bears who populations have grown to the point where they are now a threat to human populations living in the arctic, how despite predictions the polar ice caps remain, how snowfalls are still with us, etc., etc., etc.
Here’s a radical idea. Instead of pushing obviously failed theories in an effort to terrify the public into accepting policies they don’t want but help your agenda, how about being honest with the country and its people and let them live without benefit of your guiding “wisdom”.
Unthinkable! The idea that people can be allowed to live ‘unsupervised’ is terrifying to the ‘progressive’ mind.
“What? And abandon gun control??“
Tornados, ice storms, brown and blackouts ….if you have gas you can at least cook and have some minimal heat.
It’s not the gas from the stoves to worry about…
Its the gas that comes from the jackassess who think that govt knows it all & wants to control our lives!
Demons doing what demons do best….
Apparently, Jill Biden cooks with a gas stove.
She doesn’t need an oven. She’s got enough gas coming out of her mouth.
Fox News did have a nice headline for their story on this… “Burn Notice”. What would Michael Westen do?
I purchased a new all-electric home a few years ago. Tried to cook on the cheapo induction cooktop the builder installed. After three months I threw it away and installed an external propane tank and a propane cooktop.
One other issue with all-electric is the heat pump. During the cold snap a few weeks ago the heat pump had to switch to emergency heat, basically a few electric coils in the ducts. It couldn’t keep up and interior temps fell into the fifties.
Heat pumps are no good for northern parts of the United States. In warmer states, when you rarely need heat, they are usually adequate.
Yep. my house is 1984 and built with all electric. Just replaced the hot water heater that came with the house with a newer model. Still amazed the damn thing lasted as long as it did,
The water you have is more the determining factor for water heater life. As long as the elements are in water, there is no reason for them to fail.
If the water is chemically nasty to the tank, it will leak and fail.
In norther areas you are correct for air-to-air reversible heat pumps. However, for air-to-underground reversible heat pumps that is not necessarily true.
My Dad had a similar problem with the heat pump. Fortunately, the house is about 30 years old and designed for resilience. It has dual zones, so that part of the house is also heated by gas. Heat pumps have their uses, but a wise homeowner will not depend upon them to operate beyond their design limits.
Everyone outside of Capitol Hill will be effectively living in a third world dystopia if the Democrats/Liberals have their way.
Despite the pun, was the backlash really that “hot”. The average voter that needs convincing about how stupid these people are won’t even know that it was a consideration. They are completely ignorant of it and will remain that way as long as the media continues to declare war on only one side of the political spectrum and run agit-prop and cover for the other side.
This article successfully counters the study published in Scientific American.
Is this the *only* study on which the CPSC is basing its consideration of a ban on gas appliances? A more thorough review of the underlying ‘science’ would be very helpful!
No, you have it backwards. The CPSC is looking for a way to flex their regulatory power and keep their ‘green’ creds, so they grabbed onto the first study they could find that smeared natural gas, built up a public release of their ‘findings’ to stampede out and get the mob all frothing, and BLAMMO. It exploded in their face. Now they have moved the Overton window a few inches in the direction of the Freeze To Death In The Dark Greens so they’re busy doing the We Really Didn’t Mean What We Said polka until the fire dies down and they can start creeping the line further in that direction.
georgfelis, you did not respond to the issue I posed. Consider the following hypothetical (but likely) exchange:
Me: The study cited by the CPSC in supporting a ban on gas appliances is flawed, please read this Legal Insurrection article.
Them: But the Legal Insurrection article addresses only one of the studies cited by the CPSC. The CPSC cited more than the one study, so what is your point?
At the turn of the century…. 1901 that is…. the cooking and lighting gas was carbon monoxide. Now THAT was something to remove. I have an induction range at the house and gas at the cabin. A lot easier to cook well with gas although induction is more energy efficient for some things. Just can’t wok your way to a great meal with induction.
Communists don’t do real science, they just “feel”
It’s kinda funny that these people call themselves “progressive” since they won’t be happy until most of us are living in mud huts eating bugs.
That’s why I sometimes refer to them as “Regressives..” A much more accurate moniker than their self-congratulatory, narcissistic and inapposite characterization as so-called “Progressives” or “Liberals.”
“Progress” all depends on what way you’re facing when you start.
The gaslighters are trying to ban gas.
Anyone see the irony?
The liberals are not very liberal.
My stove has a gas cooktop and an electric oven. I love it.
Oops, sorry, that was meant to be post, not a comment on your comment!
Yet another example of the vile Dumb-o-crats acting as the most gleeful and brazen purveyors and propagators of “disinformation” and “misinformation,” around.
Science has nothing to with it. This is outside of gov purview. It is a liberty issue
Of course, electric stoves, in most of the country, are coal-powered.
So, here in The People’s Glorious Republic of New York, The Accidental Proconsul floated notions of outlawing this or that, after “consultation” with “experts”, and even “studies.” No more gas for you came out after consulting with the electric contracting lobby. This is my shocked face.
We’re sitting on one of the larger fields of shale-gas, which NY won’t allow to be extracted. Conveniently Pa is nearby. Yes, those Winter shortages in the NE are the results of at least three (3) overlord policies. Better get to freezing, folks, and decrease the surplus population.
In NY, electric capacity has been declining. The infrastructure is way out of date. The wind farms have been under-producing, and this is a bad place for solar.
Anyone suspect that the gas-ban, following the wood stove bans & the pellet regulations is really about driving people onto the electric grid is a conspiracy nut. What, they’re mandating “smart meters?” That monitor your detailed consumption, so they can “control” demand? Meters with built in remote capacity throttling?
What’s it take to refit / or replace with gas stoves that don’t passive-leak that 1.5% How’s that compare with electric power losses of 1/2 to 1/3 from point of generation to point of use? What’s a gas-fueled peak load power plant leak, anyway?
Whatever their pretend motivation, they’re pretending to solve, it’s all about demand control of the proles, every time.
You have hit on the main point of all of the “watermelons'” policies related to (shudder) climate change. They want to get rid of a lot of people. The “elite” just don’t get that their power and lifestyle are dependent on a large, vibrant middle class.
The Bears at the Salmon Run don’t get that the salmon will not run if their system is messed up enough. The Bears don’t get that it doesn’t matter whether you meant to destroy the thing you are feeding on: if you destroy it, even unknowing, it stops.
It’s not what you meant to do; it’s what you did. It’s not the results you imagined; it’s the consequences you got. In foreign relations the term is “blow-back.” It’s useful to recognize that messing withny complex, adaptive system can create blow-back. If you’re the expert, it’s your job to see the blow-back coming. Any idiot can naively poke a bear.
Commiefornia leads the baton in sealing off the infiltration/r filtration of air in homes. Of course they would have ventilation issues. Concentrating any emissions from a gas stove. Their rules are literally shaving years off of life expectancy of their population.