Natural gas production. (Photo: ucr.edu)
The Tangled Government Web Behind the Push to Ban Gas Stoves
If natural gas stoves are really as dangerous as they claim, they would go after professional commercial kitchens
By Katy Grimes, January 12, 2023 2:45 am
We know that California is pushing to become the first state to ban natural gas heaters, water heaters, and furnaces by 2030, a policy of the California Air Resources Board, entirely made up of appointees by the governor.
Now the federal government wants to ban gas stoves. They claim “U.S. homes have a climate impact comparable to the annual carbon dioxide emissions of 500 000 cars.”
“The US Consumer Product Safety Commission plans to take action to address the pollution, which can cause health and respiratory problems,” Bloomberg reported this week. “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.”
Where did this strange idea come from?
Hang on – this is an E-Ticket ride.
Friday January 6, 2022 The Guardian reported that “the emission of toxic chemicals and carcinogens from gas stoves is creating indoor pollution worse than car traffic.”
The Guardian says “research has repeatedly found the emission of toxic chemicals and carcinogens from gas stoves, even when they are turned off, is creating a miasma of indoor pollution.”
This research link is from Harvard Health Publishing. The article is written by Wynne Armand, MD in September 2022 who claims “Cooking with gas stoves creates nitrogen dioxide and releases additional tiny airborne particles known as PM2.5, both of which are lung irritants. Nitrogen dioxide has been linked with childhood asthma. During 2019 alone, almost two million cases worldwide of new childhood asthma were estimated to be due to nitrogen dioxide pollution.”
Dr. James Enstrom of UCLA long ago debunked the PM2.5 epidemiology. He found no robust relationship between PM2.5 and total mortality. However, this claim about these airborne particles have been used for decades by the government and American Cancer Society “as the primary justification for many costly regulations, most recently the Clean Power Plan,” as Dr. Enstrom explains.
Dr. Enstrom explains the background and his conclusion:
In 1997 the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) established the National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) for fine particulate matter (PM2.5), largely because of its positive relationship to total mortality in the 1982 American Cancer Society Cancer Prevention Study (CPS II) cohort. Subsequently, EPA has used this relationship as the primary justification for many costly regulations, most recently the Clean Power Plan. An independent analysis of the CPS II data was conducted in order to test the validity of this relationship.
No significant relationship between PM2.5 and total mortality in the CPS II cohort was found when the best available PM2.5 data were used. The original 1995 analysis found a positive relationship by selective use of CPS II and PM2.5 data. This independent analysis of underlying data raises serious doubts about the CPS II epidemiologic evidence supporting the PM2.5 NAAQS. These findings provide strong justification for further independent analysis of the CPS II data.
The crux of the Guardian article is this statement: “Children living in households that use gas stoves for cooking are 42% more likely to have asthma, according to an analysis of observational research. While observational studies can’t prove that cooking with gas is the direct cause of asthma, data also show that the higher the nitrogen dioxide level, the more severe the asthma symptoms in children and adults.”
And this: “Organizations like the Massachusetts Medical Society and the American Medical Association are trying to raise clinician and public awareness about these risks.”
The Guardian article also references “the carbon free buildings program at RMI who undertook the research.” What or who is RMI?
RMI is the Rocky Mountain Institute, “a 501(c)3 nonprofit aiming to radically improve America’s energy practices.”
But the link in the Guardian article takes readers to is not RMI but to MDPI International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, which MDPI says “is a peer-reviewed open access scientific journal published by MDPI, to a study titled “Population Attributable Fraction of Gas Stoves and Childhood Asthma in the United States.”
This is a screen capture of the online study page:
MDPI references the U.S. National Institute of Health (NIH) National Library of Medicine. NIH is the largest source of funding for medical research in the world. And MDPI says “This research was supported in part by internal funds of RMI and in part by the National Cancer Institute.” The National Cancer Institute is a part of the NIH (cancer.gov).
MDPI shows the study is authored by several people including Brady Seals, manager of the carbon free buildings program at RMI who told the Guardian, “the prevalence of asthma due to gas stoves is similar to the amount of asthma caused by second hand smoking, which she called ‘eye popping.’ Seals added: ‘We knew this was a problem but we didn’t know how bad. This study shows that if we got rid of gas stoves we would prevent 12.7% of childhood asthma cases, which I think most people would want to do.’”
The carbon free buildings program at RMI states:
We Must:
Construct only zero-carbon buildings
Retrofit 5% of buildings annually
Ensure electric and efficient appliances
RMI claims they are: “Driving the technical, policy, and regulatory solutions to accelerate the transition to all-electric buildings.”
You can begin to see how this attempt to ban natural gas stoves started. Their agenda is huge.
Rocky Mountain Institute proposes “carbon-free buildings.” They say, “Commercial buildings consume more than 35 percent of the generated electricity in the U.S. and are underperforming at every level. They waste energy, emit too much carbon, and are too costly for owners and occupants.”
Under the RMI Carbon-free Electricity program, they say:
We Must:
Scale clean energy portfolios
Build clean, competitive, modern grids
Make utilities clean energy champions
Natural gas does not fit into this model.
The 2019 revenue for the RMI (their latest IRS 990 form available) was $61,864, 266. And the RMI organization qualifies under IRS rules as a “publicly supported organization,” by more than 72%, according to their 2019 IRS Form 990.
So the question is, “Did the U.S. Government (National Cancer Institute) initiate the study, bolstered by RMI’s mission plan and government funding?” If the government is providing the Rocky Mountain Institute the bulk of its funding, and then uses the Rocky Mountain Institute to justify the ban on gas stoves, where is the independent peer review? Or is that also from a government funded organization?
“We need to be talking about regulating gas stoves, whether that’s drastically improving emissions or banning gas stoves entirely,” Richard Trumka, a commissioner at the US consumer product safety commission said, according to the Chicago Tribune. “And I think we ought to keep that possibility of a ban in mind, because it’s a powerful tool in our tool belt and it’s a real possibility here.”
“Good ventilation systems can reduce the health risks of cooking with gas. But Trumka said it’s important that your stove’s exhaust hood connects to a vent outside your home.”
“Trumka’s remarks came during a recent virtual news conference hosted by PIRG.” The Tribune tells us that PIRG is a network of public interest research groups.
“The start of a federal process that could lead to more regulation of gas stoves is ‘a big step’ said U.S. PIRG environment campaigns director Matt Casale,” the Tribune reported.
A Google search of PIRG says they “operate and support organizations committed to a shared vision of a better world and a strategic approach to social change.”
PIRG claims, “All Americans want a healthier, safer, more secure future. PIRG works to find common ground around common sense solutions that will help make that future a reality. The problems we work on aren’t progressive or conservative. They’re just problems that our country shouldn’t tolerate in an age of great abundance and technological progress.”
The Guardian reported, Stanford researchers discovered last year that levels of nitrogen dioxide emitted from gas stoves and ovens can rise above safe standards set for outdoor pollution by the Environmental Protection Agency. The Stanford link takes us to the NIH again to a report titled, “Methane and NO x Emissions from Natural Gas Stoves, Cooktops, and Ovens in Residential Homes.” This revelation is in their study abstract: “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.”
Why are the anti-fossil fuel zealots pushing so hard to do away with natural gas stoves in private homes, when if they were being honest, and if natural gas stoves are really as dangerous as they claim, they would go after professional commercial kitchens, and fast food kitchens where stoves and burners are on all day cooking just-ordered meals.
I am not advocating putting McDonalds, In-N-Out, Chez Panisse or Spago out of business. But none of these studies seem legitimate, because once again, the government is targeting the lowest hanging fruit – the consumer and individuals – rather than the industry which uses commercial natural gas stoves professionally.
It’s as if the government is just trying to create another jobs program – for itself – rather than addressing a real need. Perhaps the motive is more nefarious. The WHO is named in the studies, as are many Chinese studies.
UPDATE: “The White House on Wednesday asserted that President Joe Biden does not support a ban on gas stoves after a federal consumer safety official suggested that such a proposal was on the table,” CNN reported.
This is probably a good move given that the White House kitchen is outfitted with a commercial natural gas stove.
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Richard Trumka, a commissioner at the US consumer product safety commission ….. Trumka Jr. is the son of the late Richard Trumka, who was president of the AFL-CIO labor union.
I find this interesting.
Thank you Katy for giving us all the facts and nothing but the facts! This ban the gas stoves and all gas appliances is the next “crisis” that the fake news media, the Democraps, and the greenie do-gooders are going to push.
Who even knows where to start in calling out this constant stream of “Boy Who Cried Wolf” from the govt and govt entities. First of all, the threat of Fed banning fundamental tools of survival in civilized life seems devised to be dragged out any time a diversion from other, more serious Dem skullduggery is needed. It IS diverting, for sure, as a headline such as “Biden Wants to Ban Gas Stoves” tends to send the citizenry into a panic for one reason or another. When virtually every person has experienced power outages they know what being entirely reliant on electricity would mean.
Second, the idea that govt bureaucrats and Dem politicians are concerned about children’s —- or anyone else’s —- health is truly laughable, considering what we know now about the devastating death and health effects of the All-Things-Covid, including endless recommendations for young children to be vaxxed in spite of glaring evidence of its harms and lack of necessity. Seems to me the Biden Admin is picking up NOW on CA foolishness because they desperately need an alarmist diversion at the moment. But they had better be careful or it simply won’t work for them if they go too far too fast with their phony destructive GREEN agenda.
Check out how AOC was mocked because she was “less than subtle” in her manipulations after getting the “Dem memo” to push this stuff:
https://nypost.com/2023/01/11/aoc-dragged-for-claiming-gas-stoves-are-linked-to-brain-damage/
Here’s all you need to know – follow the money trail :
https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/rocky-mountain-institute/
And others have hypothesized that this is the latest distraction to take the community’s focus OFF of Biden’s hidden trove of “Classified Documents” (many of which have damning ties to Ukraine and China, apparently?)
In any event, this is just another “Molon Labe” topic….
They are going to cause a Civil War.
What’s next toothpaste.
The government cannot do anything right…nothing.
The Rocky Mountain Institute is in bed with the WEF, no real surprise there
Uh, Eff you.
For clarity and accuracy please change the date on the following passage to 1/6/23:
“Friday January 6, 2022 The Guardian reported that “the emission of toxic chemicals and carcinogens from gas stoves is creating indoor pollution worse than car traffic.””
Well, that didn’t age well… 2023 year of the boomerang! Immediate grassroots counterattack. RMI is WEF, and their webpage features a photo of wind turbines, that cost more and use more resources including OIL to produce than they’ll ever produce in electricity in their lifetime. Manufacturing EV’s produces more CO2 than a gas vehicle produces in 8 years … RMI, because climate – muh! The counter study was done in 2013 by ISAAC-Intl Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood, data based on 512,000 children in 47 countries, NO evidence of an association with asthma or allergies. Just another control mechanism, denying people the ability to cook and
heat their home especially during storms and power outages, let alone the affordability and availability.
Note on ‘Fossil Fuel’: In 1892 at the Geneva Convention, biggest man in the oil industry, J.D. Rockefeller paid
scientists to call oil a ‘fossil fuel’, inducing the idea of scarcity in order set world price for oil. Oil is the second most plentiful resource on earth next to water, regenerating within the earth faster than it can be depleted.
The fear-porn of climate change (formally global warming, didn’t work out so well-lol) is astounding, and if there is such a concern, we know containers to replace plastic can be made from HEMP… Why not then? Because hemp feeds off CO2, and the narrative dies, and their profit with it.
PIRG is being very disingenuous when it claims:
” The problems we work on aren’t progressive or conservative. They’re just problems that our country shouldn’t tolerate in an age of great abundance and technological progress.”
In Sacramento, for example, the City Council and the Sacramento Municipal Utilities District, as part of their CLIMATE ACTION & ADAPTATION PLAN, are also pushing “all electric.” All electric is part and parcel of the very progressive assumptions about GHG and the “existential threats” of climate change.
Speaking of deep-state WEF globalist minions, no doubt Gov. Gavin Newsom will be flying on a private jet to attend the upcoming WEF annual Davos Summit in Switzerland from Jan. 16 to 20, 2023 with his cronies? Wonder what the WEF globalist cabal will come up at that meeting to further enslave humanity as they implement their oppressive one world government?
I have read that this so called study was done in sealed room. Basically they put a stove in a giant plastic bag.
Can you say fake science? I think you can! 😉
LOL, wink, wink…
Ask The Science aka Fauci if science can be faked????
Gee, that sounds like the study CARB supported and funded at UCLA, I think it was, that put kids into sealed rooms and then pumped diesel exhaust in to study the effects of inhaling ‘Black Carbon’. The ‘study’ ended when it was explained to the Leftist mad scientists that their ‘study’ violated terms of the Geneva Convention.
You’d think the Brainiacs at CARB and UCLA could have figured that out for themselves, but they were too busy pushing their agenda of banning diesel trucks in California.
Pure evil is the only way to describe these freaks.
You remember the story I broke in 2015! The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency paid the University of Southern California and the University of California, Los Angeles to conduct experiments on children, to determine whether exposure to diesel exhaust harms humans. The EPA, USC and UCLA, illegally used children in diesel exhaust experiments 2003 through 2010, after the EPA and the California Air Resources Board had concluded inhaling diesel exhaust can cause death within hours. http://www.flashreport.org/blog/2015/01/21/epa-used-children-in-illegal-diesel-exhaust-experiments/
Wow.
NY Gov Kathleen Hochul is beating the same illogical drum: https://nypost.com/2023/01/11/gas-stove-fight-is-more-elite-culture-war-nonsense/
In flamboyantly trying to solve (yet another) non-problem, what are the democrats trying to distract everyone’s attention from?
Biden’s illicit classified document trove….
I believe they call it a “distraction”….
The recent claims made against gas stoves do not have to be accepted without scrutiny. Both Horiba Instruments and AVL, both of Michigan, have the equipment and expertise prove or disprove the claim regards nitrogen oxides and particulate emissions. Both have reputable working relationships with the EPA and with CARB. Both are capable of accurately measuring combustion (active), evaporative (idle), and particulate emissions. Both have well respected histories in the chemical, physics, analyzer technologies, procedural control, and mathematics of such testing.
Why gather actual data when you can simply develop a model with all your favorite biases, unproven assumptions, unsupported speculation and prejudices?
Within the next 5 years I can see myself driving home at 5:00 in the evening, plugging in my electric car, turning on the electrical heater for my house, and firing up the electrical stove. My house will be gorging on electricity. All my neighbors will probably be doing the same thing.
Within the next 5 years you’ll be cold sitting in the dark unable to charge your electric car or turn on any of your appliances because of your Democrat masters’ reliance on unpredictable wind and solar along with their failure to upgrade the electrical grid.
Forget owning an electric vehicle or a house full of electrical appliancees. Klaus Schwab and his WEF globalist minions have decreed that you’ll own nothing and be happy.
Dude you will be sitting in the dark with a flashlight unless they are going to ban those too.
It’s called commutarded. You can’t vote your way out of it.
I still can’t wrap my head around unelected bureaucrats creating and implementing law. Kinda taxation without representation. Has this ever been challenged? And no appreciation for the immutable Laws of Science & Thermodynamics! Heating water and cooking with electricity is one of the most costly and inefficient way of doing these things!
Meanwhile the price of natural gas in California has gone up 5 times even though in other states is has gone back down. Please write about this price gouging.
From the Los Angeles Daily News Today :
“Natural gas prices have surged in California. The cost of the commodity is up 314% from a year ago, according to SoCalGas.
In the rest of the country, however, the price of natural gas is not surging. In some places, natural gas futures are the lowest they’ve been in 17 months, while in California, natural gas currently costs five times the benchmark U.S. price.
Why is that, and can anything be done about it?
It’s happening because of a few factors: colder temperatures in the west led to higher demand for heating, dropping west coast inventories to roughly 33% below the five-year average; and limited pipeline capacity makes it difficult to quickly supply California with gas produced in other states.
But something can be done about it. California could produce more natural gas in-state, as it did in the past. Ten years ago, production in California was double what it is today.
California could also support the construction of pipelines to ensure a reliable, affordable supply of an essential commodity.
Overall, California uses more natural gas than any state except Texas, and almost one-third of it is used to run power plants that generate electricity.
Yet state leaders rarely if ever acknowledge reality when it comes to energy policy, preferring to pretend that the use of “fossil fuels” will be completely phased out, on an ever-accelerating timetable.
That’s a dangerous fantasy that has led to what we’re experiencing right now: winter temperatures and skyrocketing heating bills.
The bills are so high that utilities have been sending out notices to warn customers in advance and to offer friendly tips. Long Beach utilities recommended that customers “bundle up with warm blankets, socks and sweaters,” wash clothes in cold water and take shorter showers. SoCalGas recommended “monitoring consumption” and “balancing usage and comfort.”
High natural gas prices can be deadly during a cold snap. The L.A. County Public Health Department issued a warning to local residents not to heat their homes with “stoves, barbecues or ovens” because of the dangers of carbon monoxide or fire.
Californians are suffering this winter because politicians prefer lofty speeches on climate change to rational discussions about critical industries and infrastructure.
A better balance is possible.”
They also conveniently neglected to share that our Federal Government is selling LNG to Europe for a higher price, in support of the debacle they’re supporting in Ukraine, where (SURPRISE!) Hunter Biden and “The Big Guy” were doing shady gas deals with Burisma…
The whole thing is a giant sh*t show….
Exactly, CD9, just like the gas prices for our cars, the increase in natural gas to our homes has nothing to do with “price gouging” and everything to do with the continuous Democrat war on fossil fuels which raises the cost of EVERYTHING for all of us. But of course the Dems are just going to deflect for as long as possible and say that it’s the fault of all these “greedy” companies who they plan to put out of business. If you owned a business and the government said they intend to shut you down, what motivation do you have to invest in your company and improve efficiencies and the costs of your goods and services knowing that it is going to be put out of business anyway? Meanwhile, the rest of us who depends on these very same industries to facilitate our daily lives get to suffer. The evil and incompetence of the Democrats has no bounds.
There is a war on fossil fuels but that is just cover for their WAR ON PEOPLE. The WEF agenda is to EXTERMINATE over7 billion people. The remainder will be either serfs or slaves (their words). According to them, THEY don’t need all you useless eaters.
Always keep in mind their Real agenda. Everything else is a distraction.
That paper..
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9819315/
Its complete and total garbage. Its not only a meta-study (most of which are worthless due to basic errors) but the lead author has less than zero formal background in mathematics, statistics, in fact any relevant area. He is a Spanish and “International Relations” major. Thats it.
I started reading the paper but after the first paragraph of Section 2 Materials and Methods it was obvious that the guy did not have the slightest idea what he was doing. Basically naively weighted phrase searches. Thats its? Yeup thats it. Pretty pathetic really.
If the guy had any kind of math, stats or even science background I’d call it gross misconduct verging on fraud. But as he has none, he is just a charlatan writing total garbage.
As for the rest of the coauthors. I have read enough bio-science and medical papers the last few years to know that 99.5% of medical / bio-since people are mathematically illiterate. Very very few papers will withstand even basic rigorous analysis of the math used. The more self-aware of these people dont make outlandish claims in the Conclusions. And I am fine with that. The other 99.5%. Little more than charlatans to a greater and lesser degree. The greater the published paper count, the more extravagant the academic title, the higher the probably the work is worthless and little more than fraud.
Which is most of these papers.
Our gas stove identifies as a trans-electric stove!
My propane range now identifies as “trans electric.”
I am personally against banning gas stoves but there are recent scientific articles finding that particles smaller then p2.5 does in fact cause raspatory issues.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4740125, looked over a period of 20 years with the following findings:
“After twenty years of epidemiological studies, scientists have revealed a significant correlation between fine particle pollutants and respiratory morbidity and mortality.”