Since many won’t believe it:
And in a remarkable coincidence, this also came out yesterday:
So the Regime is coming for gas stoves. Not their gas stoves: Regime chiefs’ chefs will certainly still be allowed to use them. Your gas stoves are “toxic“. U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission commissioner Richard Trumka “said a complete ban on new gas stoves was ‘a real possibility.'”
Because they can. They can ban anything they like.
Because “climate crisis” and because, at least for now, “asthma”. Perhaps they will add “sudden deaths” to the list soon.
Anyway, the peer-reviewed paper is “Population Attributable Fraction of Gas Stoves and Childhood Asthma in the United States” by Gruenwald and others in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.
TL;DR: epidemiologist fallacy and wee p-values; children’s exposure to gas stoves never measured, confusion of correlation and causation.
Abstract (my paragraphifications):
Indoor gas stove use for cooking is associated with an increased risk of current asthma among children and is prevalent in 35% of households in the United States (US). The population-level implications of gas cooking are largely unrecognized.
We quantified the population attributable fraction (PAF) for gas stove use and current childhood asthma in the US. Effect sizes previously reported by meta-analyses for current asthma (Odds Ratio = 1.34, 95% Confidence Interval (CI) = 1.12–1.57) were utilized in the PAF estimations.
The proportion of children (<18 years old) exposed to gas stoves was obtained from the American Housing Survey for the US, and states with available data (n = 9). We found that 12.7% (95% CI = 6.3–19.3%) of current childhood asthma in the US is attributable to gas stove use... Our results quantify the US public health burden attributed to gas stove use and childhood asthma. Further research is needed to quantify the burden experienced at the county levels, as well as the impacts of implementing mitigation strategies through intervention studies.
Sigh. There it is, the epidemiologist fallacy in its full glory. Number of kids “exposed to gas stoves was obtained from the American Housing Survey for the US, and states with available data (n = 9).”
Not one kid’s exposure to gas stoves was ever measured. Just some hand-wavy proxy for it.
And then the purposeful lazy sloppy forgetting that the proxy is a proxy. Not even a gesture of taking into account of calling the proxy the actual measure—even though they falsely (probably through ignorance) say they have “quantified our uncertainty”. They did not. Which makes the results of no use.
No use to science: no use to you. The results will be very useful to the Regime, though.
I’ve said it many times, and you’ve read it many times: without this fallacy, the field of epidemiology would dry up.
How do they keep getting away with confusing correlation with causation? Because everybody does it!
As depressing as that answer is, it’s the truth. Because there is a sea of Expert epidemiologists using this fallacy, pumping out result after result, the other epidemiologists look at this mess and say to themselves, “This must be the right thing to do.” So they do it, too.
Because everybody does, as I said.
I haven’t seen this particular “study” cited by the Regime yet. Trumka was only going on about “indoor air quality”. But the propaganda push is only just beginning. So look for it.
People have been using gas stoves for uncountable number of years, with no problem. Only now a “problem”, or rather “problems”, are identified. Curious timing, no?
Incidentally, Norwegians don’t have gas cooking stoves, but one estimate says some 20% of kids have asthma (which I don’t believe, too high, but there you go).
I was also told that “the lead authors of the study are from the Rocky Mountain Institute and Rewiring America, both anti-fossil fuel and electrification advocacy organizations.”
What a, uh, shock.
I wonder what kind of relationship they have with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.
Buy my new book and learn to argue against the regime: Everything You Believe Is Wrong.
This is crazy! Asthma in Norway as about 8 %, one of the highest in Europe. Norway also has the cleanest air and almost no gas stoves. Go figure. Greetings from Norway. PS I think the prevailing theory in Norway for high asthma prevalence (everyone gets measured), is that it is too clean and sterile.
So I should replace my gas stove with electric and just buy more electricity, which my local utility generates by burning coal. Sounds ecologically sound, both to curb the insidious effect of greenhouse gases and asthma caused by dastardly particulate matter.