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We're going to need to draw the lines somewhere. Blaming gas stoves for climate change seems like a bit of an over reach. Where's the resistance to people buy

by desine 5y ago

We're going to need to draw the lines somewhere. Blaming gas stoves for climate change seems like a bit of an over reach. Where's the resistance to people buying crappy, unnecessary junk from countries with cheap labor and low environmental regulation, and the associated carbon output of mega barges burning bunker oil, the lowest grade petroleum product? Is that just too popular, compared to barbecue and natural gas stoves? This push to be perfect is never ending, but always attacks the common folk, and rarely the multi-national megacorps. It's always with a justifiable pro-environment angle, which means any common folk who fight against it are painted as immoral, or uncaring about the planet. This is just the next lowest hanging fruit, but I'm getting annoyed at this point.

mdoms 5y ago
The real issue is gas hook-ups to homes, not just gas cooking. The author of this article just tried to frame it in the most controversial way possible. Using gas to heat a home and provide cooking heat in an area where electricity is almost perfectly green is a big problem.
- desine 5y ago
  How do I cook with gas if not my home hookup? By driving my car to the nearest hardware store, purchasing or renting a steel propane tank, filling it from another tank that was filled by a truck that drove in, and driving home? This is death by 1000 cuts.
  - mdoms 5y ago
    No, my point here is that you're saying we're "blaming gas stoves for climate change" but no one is saying that. However gas hookups are a big contributor to carbon output for a family home.
    - desine 5y ago
      I guarantee the habits of the habitants are greater. But no politician wants to run around chastising their voter base, so that's not an option.
      - spfzero 5y ago
        What they actually don’t want to do, is chastise their funding base. With enough funding, your campaign can convince all the voters they need.
  - balfirevic 5y ago
    If you're asking seriously, you get a gas canister delivered to your home (and they take the empty one) or you do the same at the gas station. Cities don't have gas hooked up to homes in the part of country where I live, so that's how people do it.
  - akiselev 5y ago
    You put a tank outside or in your garage next to the water heater and a truck comes and refills it once or twice a year. You can use propane or natural gas. Tens of millions of Americans living in rural and exurban areas have been cooking like this since before we were born. This is what we’d call a “solved problem.”
    - beerandt 5y ago
      >This is what we’d call a “solved problem.” Natural gas run directly to the home is a solved problem. Yet we're having this discussion.
- willis936 5y ago
  Where is electricity almost perfectly green? Burning at the house is thermodynamically much more efficient (and by extension much more green) than burning at a plant for resistive heating at the house. Nowhere in the US is even close to having an energy mix where this is not the case. Why take steps backward and pollute more? Shouldn't we be trying to make strides to reduce emissions?
  - fy20 5y ago
    A study in the UK found that heating with electricity has lower carbon emissions than heating with natural gas: > the average efficiency of gas heating rose slowly to 86% over the last decade, so that carbon emissions from producing 1 kWh of central heating [using natural gas] fell to 215 grams of CO2 in 2019. However, simple [resistance] electric heaters averaged only 207 grams of carbon dioxide per kWh by the end of 2019 https://www.designingbuildings.co.uk/wiki/Carbon_emissions_of_electric_heating_v_gas https://www.designingbuildings.co.uk/wiki/Carbon_emissions_o... For new buildings the effect is probably even greater, as you are probably going to choose a heat pump (2-5kW heat output for 1kW electrical input) over resistance heating. The US averages around 400g CO2 per kWh, so yes maybe resistance heating doesn't make sense, but heat pumps for sure do.
    - willis936 5y ago
      I'll grant that heat pumps in the US should be standard, but no one is going to cook stir fry with a heat pump.
  - sgustard 5y ago
    Much of Santa Clara county CA offers 100% carbon free electricity by default. https://www.svcleanenergy.org/ https://www.svcleanenergy.org/
    - seibelj 5y ago
      Wind turbines are manufactured using petrochemicals and currently have no way of being recycled, so they build up when they are replaced. GE hopes to turn them into some form of cement, but that may take decades https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-02-05/wind-turbine-blades-can-t-be-recycled-so-they-re-piling-up-in-landfills https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-02-05/wind-turb... Solar panels are built in China, powered by coal and slave labor. My point is there is no such thing as a free lunch, and a lot of "green" tech is very much not-so at this point.
ip26 5y ago
Gas stoves aren’t “the problem”; natural gas space heating and leaks from the gas grid are. Gas stoves are more collateral damage than culprit, in my opinion, although the indoor air quality issues are a compelling health concern.
- desine 5y ago
  Natural gas space heating is a good backup solution for extreme cold. When Texas's power grid went down, people were freezing to death. AFAIK, gas delivery wasn't affected. But again, it's more of questioning the scale. How big of an issue is leaks in the natural gas grid? I'd like to see some actual numbers as to the damage that is done. Promote electric space heaters as primary option, sure. But this smells like all hype and little bite
  - ip26 5y ago
    Most natural gas space heating involves a blower fan of 500W or more. We don’t know exactly how much leaks, but the estimates have been growing and most sources cite 2-4%. Given the 80x multiplier on methane as a GHG compared to CO2, that’s potentially a really big problem. One of the reasons to be aggressive here is that building codes are upstream. You won’t see the impacts on the market (reduced gas consumption, strong demand for induction stoves & electric space heating) until many years after this change, and it’s precisely those shifts in demand we need to drive further advancement in electric stoves and heating to make them even better quickly.
    - ikr678 5y ago
      I work for a utility with ~260km of gas pipe, ranging between 60 year old cast iron to brand new polyethelene pipe, and everything in between. We aim for <2% UAFG (unaccounted for gas) and our regulatory requirement is <2-4% depending on the network classification. This is leakage from between our recieving gas and it being metered to the customer. On the customer side, there's another estimated 2-4% loss. Get your appliances serviced regularly!
  - DennisP 5y ago
emodendroket 5y ago
One reason to start with stuff like gas stoves is that, frankly, the disruption isn't that big. You'd get used to a new stove pretty quickly.
- boring_twenties 5y ago
  I've been stuck with an electric stove for the past 4 years. There's no way to ever get used to it, it simply sucks.
- Notanothertoo 5y ago
  No, it's not comparable and are you kidding me? This is utter nonsense. There are 12 ships that produce more co2 than all the gas fed home sin the world.. Quite getting off in telling other how to be.
  - emodendroket 5y ago
    The point isn't that a stove uses more than a container ship -- where did you get that idea? It's that "I can't figure out how to work an electric stove" is a relatively frivolous reason to burn fossil fuels.
    - Notanothertoo 5y ago
      ... Thats disingenuous, its not I don't know how to use an electric stove its that its simply better, they don't even compare. The response time on a gas stove is unbeatable and makes a big difference in how you cook. Also try using a wok on an electric stove. My point was why don't we fix the very obvious and low hanging fruit like cargo ships that run on sludge, fix that first before you tell me and millions of others that "we don't know how to use electric stoves"
      - emodendroket 5y ago
        Ultimately I just find these conversations frustrating. People say they're concerned about the environment but then go into fits at having to make even trivial sacrifices like putting up with electric stoves which are better than they've ever been. And in the process they point at vital industries like shipping and agriculture and say we should do away with those first. If you compare the sacrifices people made, say, to win World War II, just on the home front -- gas rationing, donating household goods for scrap metal, etc.-- it makes us look quite unable to meet the historic moment to see people have fits about using a paper straw.
omosubi 5y ago
"...the ability of the rich and the powerful to identify their ascendency with lofty moral principles, [makes] resistance a crime not only against the state but against humanity itself. Ruling classes have always sought to instill in their subordinates the capacity to experience exploitation and material deprivation as guilt, while deceiving themselves that their own material interests coincide with those if mankind as a whole" -christopher lasch
spfzero 5y ago
In CA, the state wants to replace nuclear power plants with natural gas. That’s many times more carbon emission than forcing some number of new homes to be built with electric ranges. As always, some sacrifice from regular people is the first and only option, even when it is a tiny fraction of what would be a significant improvement. I could cut down watering my garden, until everything was dead, for a year, and it would be negated by the water one almond tree drew in our San Juaquin valley. I get that people like to do things they feel are helping, even a little. Just know that other people are laughing all the way to the bank.
- raffraffraff 5y ago
  There's something going very badly wrong when a state or country that decides to decommission existing nuclear to replace it with any mix of sources that includes fossil fuels. That said, I'm still in favour of keeping gas stoves as long as the co2 output is small. I also think that incinerating plastics and generating electricity from the heat is the best way to deal with "the plastic problem".
gajjanag 5y ago
Politics today doesn't care about nuances like this. The stove question covered by the article is an egregious example. A much less egregious but still valid one is buying a sports/lower mileage ICE car today, and driving it less (e.g., using public transit for commutes, and the sports car for weekend rides). This can have a lower carbon footprint than a long distance everyday commute in an electric car. The fixes that properly account for these things are trivial technically (any econ grad can tell how), but do not have any political support. I do not expect the political landscape to ever appreciate these things. Therefore, I will alter my consumption pattern according to my own understanding, and not according to the whims of Capitol Hill.
dundarious 5y ago
TFA states: > City carve-outs for gas cooking aren’t unreasonable, said Sara Baldwin, who works on electrifying the building sector at environmental policy firm Energy Innovation. But eventually, she believes that buildings will need to be fully electrified, including stovetops, to meet ambitious emissions-reduction goals, presenting an existential threat to the gas industry. So it's not quite "blaming gas stoves for climate change". The claim is there's a need to transition away from gas stoves _as a consequence_ of getting rid of gas hookups (which are presumably mostly used for heat), which would have a noticeable impact on emissions. Further driving that point home, the next sentence is: > “The gas industry really wants to make the household stovetop a wedge issue and use that to animate people against electrification as a whole,” said Charlie Spatz, a researcher at the Climate Investigations Center, an environmental advocacy group. So they know that a storm is brewing over gas stoves, because there's inherent resistance _and_ there's an large industry trying to use/abuse that fact in order to preserve their profits. To me, the reason the article focuses on gas cooking instead of gas hookups in general is for that exact reason. Gas cooking has a small impact on climate change, but the claim is it's a necessary sacrifice to get rid of the bigger problem of gas hookups and distribution, and it seems like it'll be a tough sell for opinionated people who are being amplified by a large industry trying to extract as much profit as possible on the way out. It could have spent more time on that claim that it's a necessary sacrifice though.
- desine 5y ago
  Still don't think it's a necessary sacrifice. Gas cooking vs electric (even induction) cooking is more noticeable but smaller impact than gas vs electric heating. Still tired of giving up every creature comfort just because Greta tells me to. Still realizing this is a never ending battle, and we're not going to live with fully electric appliances and suddenly be left alone. Humans have an impact on the planet. Deal with it. Some of the big ways we do are summarily ignored. Some of the small ways we do are easily changed and regulated by politicians. Many pats on the backs are had. Gonna fight this tooth and nail. Literally don't care that houses in Malibu are going to fall into the sea because I love grilling up some salmon and asparagus over cold ones (unnecessarily refrigerated - beer has the same effects when room temp) with the boys. Still gonna keep riding my bicycle to work when possible Still gonna keep my anti-consumerist lifestyle Still gonna install renewable energy sources on my own land
cosmojg 5y ago
Whence cometh carbon taxes?
fuzxi 5y ago
No kidding. >Nationwide, fossil fuels burned for energy in businesses and homes sit at 13% of annual carbon emissions, according to 2019 data from the EPA. >Gas stoves’ contributions to emissions are negligible compared with the gas used to heat homes and water. Less than 3% of natural-gas use in homes comes from cooking on gas stoves, according to a 2015 residential energy survey from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. 3% of 13% comes to just under 0.04% of carbon emissions. Yup, definitely making a big difference. Edit: 0.04% of residential carbon emissions in the US only.
- mgleason_3 5y ago
  Cooking accounts for less than a percent of total natural gas. So, no, we don't need to start here. We need to start where it makes a difference. 60% of US electricity is generated from fossil fuels (1). 40% of that is from Natural Gas. 20% from Coal which produces almost twice the carbon as Natural Gas. 60% of that energy is lost in conversion (2). So, converting from natural gas to electricity would actually increase carbon emissions in many parts of the US. So, where should we start? I'm not an expert, but just this quick analysis says decreasing the amount of fossil fuels used for US generation would be a much better choice. 1. https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427 2. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=44436 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=44436
  - ikr678 5y ago
    Cooking is a negligible amount of the gas use, but in warmer states gas networks will do rebate deals with developers to get gas appliances into new homes to keep the domestic networks expanding. There can be transmission loss in these networks and curbing demand for appliances (Via City regulation) stops them expanding. Also, at least in my country, the network connection fee to the gas network is often higher than the gas used by appliances, (warm climate) and residential cooks don't realise they're subsidisng the cost of our business gas users.
  - tialaramex 5y ago
    > 60% of that energy is lost in conversion However, unlike for a home gas boiler where the efficiency is maybe 90%, direct efficiency for gas stoves is poor. Basically you set fire to the gas, the fire is near the pans you're using for cooking, so they get hot. It's simple, but it is not at all efficient. This also produces waste CO2 (and some CO but hopefully not much), which is poisonous although not that poisonous, right where you are standing, whereas your gas boiler vents the waste gas to the outside air. In contrast induction has much better efficiency and of course produces no poisonous gases itself (though cooking foods does release a variety of volatiles you shouldn't really breathe, especially pan frying) So while "Burn gas in your home" to heat water is definitely a net efficiency win over "Burn gas in a power station, ship the electricity to your home, then use that" to heat water, the same does not follow for stoves where I suspect it's either a wash or a small win for electricity.
MomoXenosaga 5y ago
Let's draw the line at fireplaces and wood stoves. That's the lowest hanging fruit we should go for. Unfortunately it's the bourgeois that loves those things and they vote.
- desine 5y ago
  I love these things. The scent and feel of wood burning to keep you warm is ingrained through nearly a million years of human history and evolution. It's more a part of the human experience than the concept of living in a group of more than a dozen people. It goes as far back in our shared experience as clothing. It predates writing by a longshot, and touches possibly the moments of language as a whole. Monogamy, marriage, every concept we have of interpersonal and romantic relationships is more modern and constructed than this simple chemical reaction that changed our species from simple hominids to Civilization Builders. A nice wood fire scratches the primal itch all humans (that I know) occasionally feel better than most things. Do we really need to shed such a cornerstone of humanity in order to remain being human on this rock?
  - chriswarbo 5y ago
    The main argument against fireplaces and wood burning stove isn't their CO2 emissions; it's the particulates they release into the immediate surroundings, which have much worse health impacts than previously thought.
Hammershaft 5y ago
A carbon tax would discourage this behavior only to the extent that it is harmful, and would avoid regulations on every niche market with a CO2 output... Unfortunately, Carbon taxes have been become political poison and red meat for the republican base, so we use methods that are less effective, more costly, and more annoying.
pankajdoharey 5y ago
Room Heating consumes more energy and thus emissions, perhaps switching to blankets and warm clothes can prevent more emissions than cooking. Even Better stop cookign and live on salads instead. That should be an even better way to prevent emissions. With this kind of logic one should probably just stop living altogether.
11235813213455 5y ago
Your reaction is very common, there is probably a name for such thing, because it's a paradox. People always say "this or that is unsignificant to global warming", but all contributors to pollution are insignificant, it's the accumulation of all of them that makes it what it is, and with this kind of reaction, things just keep getting worse Not only do I agree with this thing about electric efficient stoves, but I think we push our lifestyles much more in favor of environment, like not really "I have respect for the environment, and I drive an electric car", but more "I have respect for the environment, and I ride a bicyle" this means more to me (electric cars are still a large source of pollution, from their components: plastics, electronics, to the batterires, their maintenances..)
- trompetenaccoun 5y ago
  A lot of people seem unaware that many dishes can not be cooked with anything but a gas stove, including practically the entire Chinese cuisine. Electric stoves simply aren't a workable replacement in this case. I work in earth science, I know how bad methane is a greenhouse gas. The comment on top is absolutely right in that the line has to be drawn somewhere for a sensible approach though. Your bike example, the factories making these bikes still pollute, steel is a major source of pollution actually. So we should all walk! You see, there is no end to it once we get started and don't have a plan.
  - 11235813213455 5y ago
    > You see, there is no end to it It's a compromise, but those compromises should be more toward environment, less toward personal comfort (like hearing they use gas stoves because it makes something taste a little better, is a bit ridiculous). My footprint is very small, not 0% (electric cars showing "100% electric, 0% pollution" is not honest, I see the good intent behind, but let's not lie), I've one bike collected from garbage, the other is second-hand, even replaced tyres from thrown-out wheels. This compromise is good because it's also give me a good health, immune system, things like covid is not really a concern for me, at least far behind road accidents There's already a significant difference between this kind of basic bike and a full blown competition bike with all sorts of electronics devices. And the difference with a car is another level, just considering the weight of it (all kind of road kills it does, road damage, ..) and all services needed to maintain to fuel those cars, all the hidden indirect pollution, that's what people don't consider. If people reduced all their footprint by a half, we would in short/mid term pollute twice less globally, so it's defnitely worth trading some lifestyle habbits for environment friendly ones
zwayhowder 5y ago
The line isn't gas stoves. It's gas connections to new houses or businesses. Once you have gas connected you have gas hot water, gas heating, and oh yes, gas stoves. I suspect a lot of restaurants will move to bottled gas for cooking while using electricity everywhere else. That way they can still get the flame seared taste or the feeling of control they don't get with an electric or induction cooktop.
- torgian 5y ago
  This is how a lot of places in Taiwan do it, even some houses. Many restaurants have bottled gas for cooking.
lm28469 5y ago
> We're going to need to draw the lines somewhere. Blaming gas stoves for climate change seems like a bit of an over reach. I don't think ecology is the main drive here. It's more of a safety/convenience thing. No need to care about gas lines, a lot of new houses are fully electric (heating, stove). Also, no more grandma forgetting to shut down the gas and exploding half the building. Also, afaik, gas stove are pretty bad for indoor air quality
unethical_ban 5y ago
I could argue that there is a push precisely because it is the most controversial cutover from gas to electric. Few people argue over the quality of a gas vs. electric water heater, or furnace - if the air and water are hot, all is well. Gas cooking is the last hurdle culturally to dumping citywide gas lines entirely. This is just a theory.
chuck8088 5y ago
When the government tries to control business, they fight back with lobbyists, bribes, by moving, etc The citizens never fight back. They are pretty easy to convince that they are doing the right thing (see every Tesla owner ever [don't fight me guys, I'm joking])

by desine 5y ago

mdoms 5y ago

The real issue is gas hook-ups to homes, not just gas cooking. The author of this article just tried to frame it in the most controversial way possible. Using gas to heat a home and provide cooking heat in an area where electricity is almost perfectly green is a big problem.

desine 5y ago
How do I cook with gas if not my home hookup? By driving my car to the nearest hardware store, purchasing or renting a steel propane tank, filling it from another tank that was filled by a truck that drove in, and driving home? This is death by 1000 cuts.
- mdoms 5y ago
  No, my point here is that you're saying we're "blaming gas stoves for climate change" but no one is saying that. However gas hookups are a big contributor to carbon output for a family home.
  - desine 5y ago
    I guarantee the habits of the habitants are greater. But no politician wants to run around chastising their voter base, so that's not an option.
    - spfzero 5y ago
      What they actually don’t want to do, is chastise their funding base. With enough funding, your campaign can convince all the voters they need.
- balfirevic 5y ago
  If you're asking seriously, you get a gas canister delivered to your home (and they take the empty one) or you do the same at the gas station. Cities don't have gas hooked up to homes in the part of country where I live, so that's how people do it.
- akiselev 5y ago
  You put a tank outside or in your garage next to the water heater and a truck comes and refills it once or twice a year. You can use propane or natural gas. Tens of millions of Americans living in rural and exurban areas have been cooking like this since before we were born. This is what we’d call a “solved problem.”
  - beerandt 5y ago
    >This is what we’d call a “solved problem.” Natural gas run directly to the home is a solved problem. Yet we're having this discussion.
willis936 5y ago
Where is electricity almost perfectly green? Burning at the house is thermodynamically much more efficient (and by extension much more green) than burning at a plant for resistive heating at the house. Nowhere in the US is even close to having an energy mix where this is not the case. Why take steps backward and pollute more? Shouldn't we be trying to make strides to reduce emissions?
- fy20 5y ago
  A study in the UK found that heating with electricity has lower carbon emissions than heating with natural gas: > the average efficiency of gas heating rose slowly to 86% over the last decade, so that carbon emissions from producing 1 kWh of central heating [using natural gas] fell to 215 grams of CO2 in 2019. However, simple [resistance] electric heaters averaged only 207 grams of carbon dioxide per kWh by the end of 2019 https://www.designingbuildings.co.uk/wiki/Carbon_emissions_of_electric_heating_v_gas https://www.designingbuildings.co.uk/wiki/Carbon_emissions_o... For new buildings the effect is probably even greater, as you are probably going to choose a heat pump (2-5kW heat output for 1kW electrical input) over resistance heating. The US averages around 400g CO2 per kWh, so yes maybe resistance heating doesn't make sense, but heat pumps for sure do.
  - willis936 5y ago
    I'll grant that heat pumps in the US should be standard, but no one is going to cook stir fry with a heat pump.
- sgustard 5y ago
  Much of Santa Clara county CA offers 100% carbon free electricity by default. https://www.svcleanenergy.org/ https://www.svcleanenergy.org/
  - seibelj 5y ago
    Wind turbines are manufactured using petrochemicals and currently have no way of being recycled, so they build up when they are replaced. GE hopes to turn them into some form of cement, but that may take decades https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-02-05/wind-turbine-blades-can-t-be-recycled-so-they-re-piling-up-in-landfills https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-02-05/wind-turb... Solar panels are built in China, powered by coal and slave labor. My point is there is no such thing as a free lunch, and a lot of "green" tech is very much not-so at this point.

ip26 5y ago

Gas stoves aren’t “the problem”; natural gas space heating and leaks from the gas grid are. Gas stoves are more collateral damage than culprit, in my opinion, although the indoor air quality issues are a compelling health concern.

desine 5y ago
Natural gas space heating is a good backup solution for extreme cold. When Texas's power grid went down, people were freezing to death. AFAIK, gas delivery wasn't affected. But again, it's more of questioning the scale. How big of an issue is leaks in the natural gas grid? I'd like to see some actual numbers as to the damage that is done. Promote electric space heaters as primary option, sure. But this smells like all hype and little bite
- ip26 5y ago
  Most natural gas space heating involves a blower fan of 500W or more. We don’t know exactly how much leaks, but the estimates have been growing and most sources cite 2-4%. Given the 80x multiplier on methane as a GHG compared to CO2, that’s potentially a really big problem. One of the reasons to be aggressive here is that building codes are upstream. You won’t see the impacts on the market (reduced gas consumption, strong demand for induction stoves & electric space heating) until many years after this change, and it’s precisely those shifts in demand we need to drive further advancement in electric stoves and heating to make them even better quickly.
  - ikr678 5y ago
    I work for a utility with ~260km of gas pipe, ranging between 60 year old cast iron to brand new polyethelene pipe, and everything in between. We aim for <2% UAFG (unaccounted for gas) and our regulatory requirement is <2-4% depending on the network classification. This is leakage from between our recieving gas and it being metered to the customer. On the customer side, there's another estimated 2-4% loss. Get your appliances serviced regularly!
- DennisP 5y ago

emodendroket 5y ago

One reason to start with stuff like gas stoves is that, frankly, the disruption isn't that big. You'd get used to a new stove pretty quickly.

boring_twenties 5y ago
I've been stuck with an electric stove for the past 4 years. There's no way to ever get used to it, it simply sucks.
Notanothertoo 5y ago
No, it's not comparable and are you kidding me? This is utter nonsense. There are 12 ships that produce more co2 than all the gas fed home sin the world.. Quite getting off in telling other how to be.
- emodendroket 5y ago
  The point isn't that a stove uses more than a container ship -- where did you get that idea? It's that "I can't figure out how to work an electric stove" is a relatively frivolous reason to burn fossil fuels.
  - Notanothertoo 5y ago
    ... Thats disingenuous, its not I don't know how to use an electric stove its that its simply better, they don't even compare. The response time on a gas stove is unbeatable and makes a big difference in how you cook. Also try using a wok on an electric stove. My point was why don't we fix the very obvious and low hanging fruit like cargo ships that run on sludge, fix that first before you tell me and millions of others that "we don't know how to use electric stoves"
    - emodendroket 5y ago
      Ultimately I just find these conversations frustrating. People say they're concerned about the environment but then go into fits at having to make even trivial sacrifices like putting up with electric stoves which are better than they've ever been. And in the process they point at vital industries like shipping and agriculture and say we should do away with those first. If you compare the sacrifices people made, say, to win World War II, just on the home front -- gas rationing, donating household goods for scrap metal, etc.-- it makes us look quite unable to meet the historic moment to see people have fits about using a paper straw.

omosubi 5y ago

"...the ability of the rich and the powerful to identify their ascendency with lofty moral principles, [makes] resistance a crime not only against the state but against humanity itself. Ruling classes have always sought to instill in their subordinates the capacity to experience exploitation and material deprivation as guilt, while deceiving themselves that their own material interests coincide with those if mankind as a whole" -christopher lasch

spfzero 5y ago

In CA, the state wants to replace nuclear power plants with natural gas. That’s many times more carbon emission than forcing some number of new homes to be built with electric ranges. As always, some sacrifice from regular people is the first and only option, even when it is a tiny fraction of what would be a significant improvement. I could cut down watering my garden, until everything was dead, for a year, and it would be negated by the water one almond tree drew in our San Juaquin valley. I get that people like to do things they feel are helping, even a little. Just know that other people are laughing all the way to the bank.

raffraffraff 5y ago
There's something going very badly wrong when a state or country that decides to decommission existing nuclear to replace it with any mix of sources that includes fossil fuels. That said, I'm still in favour of keeping gas stoves as long as the co2 output is small. I also think that incinerating plastics and generating electricity from the heat is the best way to deal with "the plastic problem".

gajjanag 5y ago

Politics today doesn't care about nuances like this. The stove question covered by the article is an egregious example. A much less egregious but still valid one is buying a sports/lower mileage ICE car today, and driving it less (e.g., using public transit for commutes, and the sports car for weekend rides). This can have a lower carbon footprint than a long distance everyday commute in an electric car. The fixes that properly account for these things are trivial technically (any econ grad can tell how), but do not have any political support. I do not expect the political landscape to ever appreciate these things. Therefore, I will alter my consumption pattern according to my own understanding, and not according to the whims of Capitol Hill.

dundarious 5y ago

TFA states: > City carve-outs for gas cooking aren’t unreasonable, said Sara Baldwin, who works on electrifying the building sector at environmental policy firm Energy Innovation. But eventually, she believes that buildings will need to be fully electrified, including stovetops, to meet ambitious emissions-reduction goals, presenting an existential threat to the gas industry. So it's not quite "blaming gas stoves for climate change". The claim is there's a need to transition away from gas stoves _as a consequence_ of getting rid of gas hookups (which are presumably mostly used for heat), which would have a noticeable impact on emissions. Further driving that point home, the next sentence is: > “The gas industry really wants to make the household stovetop a wedge issue and use that to animate people against electrification as a whole,” said Charlie Spatz, a researcher at the Climate Investigations Center, an environmental advocacy group. So they know that a storm is brewing over gas stoves, because there's inherent resistance _and_ there's an large industry trying to use/abuse that fact in order to preserve their profits. To me, the reason the article focuses on gas cooking instead of gas hookups in general is for that exact reason. Gas cooking has a small impact on climate change, but the claim is it's a necessary sacrifice to get rid of the bigger problem of gas hookups and distribution, and it seems like it'll be a tough sell for opinionated people who are being amplified by a large industry trying to extract as much profit as possible on the way out. It could have spent more time on that claim that it's a necessary sacrifice though.

desine 5y ago
Still don't think it's a necessary sacrifice. Gas cooking vs electric (even induction) cooking is more noticeable but smaller impact than gas vs electric heating. Still tired of giving up every creature comfort just because Greta tells me to. Still realizing this is a never ending battle, and we're not going to live with fully electric appliances and suddenly be left alone. Humans have an impact on the planet. Deal with it. Some of the big ways we do are summarily ignored. Some of the small ways we do are easily changed and regulated by politicians. Many pats on the backs are had. Gonna fight this tooth and nail. Literally don't care that houses in Malibu are going to fall into the sea because I love grilling up some salmon and asparagus over cold ones (unnecessarily refrigerated - beer has the same effects when room temp) with the boys. Still gonna keep riding my bicycle to work when possible Still gonna keep my anti-consumerist lifestyle Still gonna install renewable energy sources on my own land

cosmojg 5y ago

Whence cometh carbon taxes?

fuzxi 5y ago

No kidding. >Nationwide, fossil fuels burned for energy in businesses and homes sit at 13% of annual carbon emissions, according to 2019 data from the EPA. >Gas stoves’ contributions to emissions are negligible compared with the gas used to heat homes and water. Less than 3% of natural-gas use in homes comes from cooking on gas stoves, according to a 2015 residential energy survey from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. 3% of 13% comes to just under 0.04% of carbon emissions. Yup, definitely making a big difference. Edit: 0.04% of residential carbon emissions in the US only.

mgleason_3 5y ago
Cooking accounts for less than a percent of total natural gas. So, no, we don't need to start here. We need to start where it makes a difference. 60% of US electricity is generated from fossil fuels (1). 40% of that is from Natural Gas. 20% from Coal which produces almost twice the carbon as Natural Gas. 60% of that energy is lost in conversion (2). So, converting from natural gas to electricity would actually increase carbon emissions in many parts of the US. So, where should we start? I'm not an expert, but just this quick analysis says decreasing the amount of fossil fuels used for US generation would be a much better choice. 1. https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427 2. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=44436 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=44436
- ikr678 5y ago
  Cooking is a negligible amount of the gas use, but in warmer states gas networks will do rebate deals with developers to get gas appliances into new homes to keep the domestic networks expanding. There can be transmission loss in these networks and curbing demand for appliances (Via City regulation) stops them expanding. Also, at least in my country, the network connection fee to the gas network is often higher than the gas used by appliances, (warm climate) and residential cooks don't realise they're subsidisng the cost of our business gas users.
- tialaramex 5y ago
  > 60% of that energy is lost in conversion However, unlike for a home gas boiler where the efficiency is maybe 90%, direct efficiency for gas stoves is poor. Basically you set fire to the gas, the fire is near the pans you're using for cooking, so they get hot. It's simple, but it is not at all efficient. This also produces waste CO2 (and some CO but hopefully not much), which is poisonous although not that poisonous, right where you are standing, whereas your gas boiler vents the waste gas to the outside air. In contrast induction has much better efficiency and of course produces no poisonous gases itself (though cooking foods does release a variety of volatiles you shouldn't really breathe, especially pan frying) So while "Burn gas in your home" to heat water is definitely a net efficiency win over "Burn gas in a power station, ship the electricity to your home, then use that" to heat water, the same does not follow for stoves where I suspect it's either a wash or a small win for electricity.

MomoXenosaga 5y ago

Let's draw the line at fireplaces and wood stoves. That's the lowest hanging fruit we should go for. Unfortunately it's the bourgeois that loves those things and they vote.

desine 5y ago
I love these things. The scent and feel of wood burning to keep you warm is ingrained through nearly a million years of human history and evolution. It's more a part of the human experience than the concept of living in a group of more than a dozen people. It goes as far back in our shared experience as clothing. It predates writing by a longshot, and touches possibly the moments of language as a whole. Monogamy, marriage, every concept we have of interpersonal and romantic relationships is more modern and constructed than this simple chemical reaction that changed our species from simple hominids to Civilization Builders. A nice wood fire scratches the primal itch all humans (that I know) occasionally feel better than most things. Do we really need to shed such a cornerstone of humanity in order to remain being human on this rock?
- chriswarbo 5y ago
  The main argument against fireplaces and wood burning stove isn't their CO2 emissions; it's the particulates they release into the immediate surroundings, which have much worse health impacts than previously thought.

Hammershaft 5y ago

A carbon tax would discourage this behavior only to the extent that it is harmful, and would avoid regulations on every niche market with a CO2 output... Unfortunately, Carbon taxes have been become political poison and red meat for the republican base, so we use methods that are less effective, more costly, and more annoying.

pankajdoharey 5y ago

Room Heating consumes more energy and thus emissions, perhaps switching to blankets and warm clothes can prevent more emissions than cooking. Even Better stop cookign and live on salads instead. That should be an even better way to prevent emissions. With this kind of logic one should probably just stop living altogether.

11235813213455 5y ago

Your reaction is very common, there is probably a name for such thing, because it's a paradox. People always say "this or that is unsignificant to global warming", but all contributors to pollution are insignificant, it's the accumulation of all of them that makes it what it is, and with this kind of reaction, things just keep getting worse Not only do I agree with this thing about electric efficient stoves, but I think we push our lifestyles much more in favor of environment, like not really "I have respect for the environment, and I drive an electric car", but more "I have respect for the environment, and I ride a bicyle" this means more to me (electric cars are still a large source of pollution, from their components: plastics, electronics, to the batterires, their maintenances..)

trompetenaccoun 5y ago
A lot of people seem unaware that many dishes can not be cooked with anything but a gas stove, including practically the entire Chinese cuisine. Electric stoves simply aren't a workable replacement in this case. I work in earth science, I know how bad methane is a greenhouse gas. The comment on top is absolutely right in that the line has to be drawn somewhere for a sensible approach though. Your bike example, the factories making these bikes still pollute, steel is a major source of pollution actually. So we should all walk! You see, there is no end to it once we get started and don't have a plan.
- 11235813213455 5y ago
  > You see, there is no end to it It's a compromise, but those compromises should be more toward environment, less toward personal comfort (like hearing they use gas stoves because it makes something taste a little better, is a bit ridiculous). My footprint is very small, not 0% (electric cars showing "100% electric, 0% pollution" is not honest, I see the good intent behind, but let's not lie), I've one bike collected from garbage, the other is second-hand, even replaced tyres from thrown-out wheels. This compromise is good because it's also give me a good health, immune system, things like covid is not really a concern for me, at least far behind road accidents There's already a significant difference between this kind of basic bike and a full blown competition bike with all sorts of electronics devices. And the difference with a car is another level, just considering the weight of it (all kind of road kills it does, road damage, ..) and all services needed to maintain to fuel those cars, all the hidden indirect pollution, that's what people don't consider. If people reduced all their footprint by a half, we would in short/mid term pollute twice less globally, so it's defnitely worth trading some lifestyle habbits for environment friendly ones

zwayhowder 5y ago

The line isn't gas stoves. It's gas connections to new houses or businesses. Once you have gas connected you have gas hot water, gas heating, and oh yes, gas stoves. I suspect a lot of restaurants will move to bottled gas for cooking while using electricity everywhere else. That way they can still get the flame seared taste or the feeling of control they don't get with an electric or induction cooktop.

torgian 5y ago
This is how a lot of places in Taiwan do it, even some houses. Many restaurants have bottled gas for cooking.

lm28469 5y ago

> We're going to need to draw the lines somewhere. Blaming gas stoves for climate change seems like a bit of an over reach. I don't think ecology is the main drive here. It's more of a safety/convenience thing. No need to care about gas lines, a lot of new houses are fully electric (heating, stove). Also, no more grandma forgetting to shut down the gas and exploding half the building. Also, afaik, gas stove are pretty bad for indoor air quality

unethical_ban 5y ago

I could argue that there is a push precisely because it is the most controversial cutover from gas to electric. Few people argue over the quality of a gas vs. electric water heater, or furnace - if the air and water are hot, all is well. Gas cooking is the last hurdle culturally to dumping citywide gas lines entirely. This is just a theory.

chuck8088 5y ago

When the government tries to control business, they fight back with lobbyists, bribes, by moving, etc The citizens never fight back. They are pretty easy to convince that they are doing the right thing (see every Tesla owner ever [don't fight me guys, I'm joking])