Climate Town
10 HN recommenders · recommended in 10 months, 2021–2025
21:27 · 1.1M views · Nov 18, 2021
Climate Town argues for moving away from gas stoves. It covers the gas industry's decades of marketing and lobbying, health effects of gas cooking, methane leaks, and the case for induction.
HN commenters recommend it in gas stove and induction threads for exposing how the idea that gas is better for cooking was a marketing ploy.
20 comments from Hacker News
Recently I've had an experience with a minor gas leak that's left me afraid to even use my furnace. I have a gas furnace, and I live in a rental. The furnace works, but for the first hour of it being on I can smell gas. It's enough that a carbon monoxide detector will go off nearby. One day I told my partner that I've been feeling super groggy and cloudy-headed for a few months, and we narrowed down the time frame to when I moved into my place. Sure enough, I switch to using a small space heater and two weeks in I'm feeling better than ever before. I 100% attribute the fogginess in my brain to the gas leak. It wasn't enough to cause an explosion, but it doesn't take much to cause serious health problems. Here's a great video on the topic by Climate Town, an awesome educator on climate change: this video
Before anyone reads this and decides, "oh ya the NYT is lying to me and gas is fine", it's not. Gas in your home is objectively bad for your health, the environment and is overall worse than induction when it comes to the cooking experience in just about all ways. That being said, It might not be as bad as living with a smoker (as the NYT asserted) but it is bad for you. The YouTuber Climate Town did an excellent video on gas cooking which exposed some very nasty truths of the gas lobbyists and the negative health effects it has on the population. Citations are in the description: this video
The big problem with piping natural gas to buildings is that the miles of pipes that deliver the gas leak. Gas leaking is a real issue since an equal amount of un-burnt methane has 25x the climate change potential as CO2. Even if the power plants supplying electric heat pumps/radiators is natural gas, the shorter supply chain (only to power plant and not to every building in the city) go some way to offsetting extra emissions. Then you have the obvious benefit that once the NYC grid transitions to renewables there won't be as many natural gas ovens and heaters that need to be replaced. The commenters pointing out that natural gas stoves don't have a significant effect on emissions are right, but once a building gets a gas hookup installing natural gas heaters and water heaters becomes more attractive and economical. That's something we don't want to be incentivizing Climate town recently released a new video talking about this issue as well as the decades of marketing and lobbying the natural gas industry has paid for to neuter or outright kill legislation like this. this video
The thing is - when you get rid of gas stoves you can get rid of almost all other gas appliances. That’s literally the only thing keeping gas in most homes in the USA and continued in new construction. When you add in gas water heaters, heating, etc. then gas becomes a more significant contributor to GHG. Whereas switching all of those with heatpumps and induction cuts off the gas lobby from fucking with everyone. Best way to get gas lobby to stop winning? Get rid of gas stoves. Climate Town has a good video on this subject. this video
Dumbest take I've heard all day. Banning gas would increase quality of life. Why subject yourself to pollution, gas leaks and expensive secondary energy infrastructure when you can just not do that. I understand the gas lobby has spent billions convincing you otherwise, but the fact is that direct natural gas is far inferior to electricity at this point. Some education for you: this video