The real reason they want to ban gas stoves: climate change

The push to electrify everything is going full speed ahead, at the same time that our grid is getting less reliable and losing base load capacity. Brownouts/planned blackouts have plagued multiple grids in the country in recent months, and the electrification of the transportation industry threatens to overload the system even more.

Advertisement

Yet the Biden Administration, the Climate Change fanatics, and some “public health” folks are pushing for the banning of gas stoves on some shaky evidence that they cause asthma.

OK. Whatever. We’ve been using gas stoves for generations, and just about every restaurant uses them with cooks standing over them for hours at a time, but whatever. If safety is your concern, what do the stats say?

They say this:

Yet while electric stoves may be better for the environment, a report by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) presents a significant con for electric — a safety hazard that has households across America seeing red.

According to a 2020 report by the NFPA, households with electric stoves reported fires at a rate 2.6 times higher than those with gas stoves. Equally staggering, the death rate of electric-run households was 3.4 times higher than those with gas appliances — and the injury rate was nearly five times greater.

Uh, what? So cooking fires started by electric stoves are 3.4x as likely to kill you, and that means the Biden Administration wants to ban gas stoves and replace them with electric stoves for your own safety.

Sounds about right. Quite on brand, actually.

A federal agency is considering a ban on gas stoves, a source of indoor pollution linked to childhood asthma.

In an interview with Bloomberg, a US Consumer Product Safety commissioner said gas stove usage is a “hidden hazard.”

“Any option is on the table. Products that can’t be made safe can be banned,” agency commissioner Richard Trumka Jr. told Bloomberg. The report said the agency plans “to take action” to address the indoor pollution caused by stoves.

The CPSC has been considering action on gas stoves for months. Trumka recommended in October that the CPSC seek public comment on the hazards associated with gas stoves.The pollutants have been linked to asthma and worsening respiratory conditions.

A December 2022 study in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health found that indoor gas stove usage is associated with an increased risk of current asthma among children. The study found that almost 13% of current childhood asthma in the US is attributable to gas stove use.

Trumka told Bloomberg the agency plans to open public comment on gas stove hazards. Options besides a ban include “setting standards on emissions from the appliances.”

Advertisement

This is pure BS, and driven not by health concerns but rather is part of a war on fossil fuels. Steve Milloy of Junk Science debunks the study cited itself, which isn’t even a study. It is a poorly designed meta-analysis that doesn’t focus on children, doesn’t say what they claim, and doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

They wanted a result, and created some “scientific” research to get it.

Here is a quick summary of the some of study’s principle flaws, in no particular order:

  • It’s not actual research on children. It is a meta-analysis of previously published (and ignored) studies — a study of otherwise unpersuasive studies. The authors did a literature search for previous epidemiologic studies on gas stoves and asthma in kids and then just mixed those results together in an effort to contrive statistical signioficance. This is a bogus technique for a number of reasons including publications bias in the component studies — i.e., studies with null results aren’t published.
  • The study results, including the component studies, are weak statistical associations — i.e., noise range correlations. The study results, likely including the component studies, are not statistically significant either.
  • Asthma is an allergic disease. There are no allergens in natural gas. So the study has no biological plausibility. No one knows what causes asthma in children and so competing causes could not be ruled out.
  • The claim that gas stoves are responsible for 12% of childhood asthma – an epidemioogic concept called “attributable risk” – is entirely bogus because epidemiological studies can only be used to associated exposures with disease. They cannot be used to determine risk of disease because (1) the underlying data is not representative of the population; and (2) epidemiologic studies cannot be used by themselves to determine cause-and-effect relationships.

If none of that means anything to you. you need to read “Junk Science Judo: Self-defense Against health Scare and Scams.”

Advertisement

How do I know this is about Climate Change? Two ways.

First, European countries started banning the installation of gas lines to homes explicitly on the basis of climate change, as are Blue States, and second if you pop back a year or two you will start finding stories about how gas stoves are contributing to climate change.

This is actually part of a movement that has been flooding the zone for a while now. Governments in the US and around the world are banning new natural gas hookups, even for heating, no less cooking. This is driven by the climate zealots, pure and simple. All else, so to speak, a smokescreen.

The activists complained to the Biden Administration that climate change hysteria is not working fast enough, so they chose to go a different route to attack a clean and safer fossil fuel. Parents love their kids more than they love Mother Earth, so pretend the kids are under threat. Even though the reality is that electric stoves are more likely to kill you than gas stoves.

That’s all this is. It is the war on fossil fuels, not asthma. Of course.

Advertisement

Join the conversation as a VIP Member

Trending on HotAir Videos

Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement