Pry gas stoves out of dead fingers

When Greg Trauthwein offered me a column Maritime Reporters & Engineering News, I received little instruction regarding subjects. I have not yet tested the limits of my subjects, and perhaps one day I will try to insert a column on the role of nautical fiction in the development of modern literature.

So far I’ve tried to stick to technical topics, although lately I’ve been pushing the boundaries with discussions of decision making, aesthetics, and OODA loops.

It occurred to me that in writing these topics I had skipped over an important engineering topic that is also not often covered in engineering curricula. That topic is data. Data is essential, any discussion of a problem without a solid understanding of the data is pointless.

The late Senator Patrick Moynahan should have expressed this as:

• “You are entitled to your opinion. But you have no right to your own facts.”

As an engineer, I’m not sure I agree with the statement. I think it would be more appropriate to say:

• “You are entitled to your opinion, but not if it has no factual basis.”
  

No doubt there are complex problems with limited facts where there can be different solutions and therefore different opinions, but in real life there are even simpler problems that lead to simple factual solutions and therefore clearly flawed solutions should be strongly denounced. It’s a tiring prospect, and the real solution is to train people to actually look at data and facts and draw the right conclusions.

The concept of facts is not uniform in the human condition. For a lawyer, a fact can be a statement. This leads to cross-examination questions such as: “Mr. van Hemmen isn’t it a fact that Mr. Soandso told you on such and such a day that he saw pigs fly? Yes or no?” To a lawyer, the fact is the noise, but to an engineer, the message in the noise is the fact, and flying pigs are far from a fact.

So let’s stick with the term data and define it as verifiable truth. On a philosophical level, one can argue that nothing is really verifiable. You never know that what you perceive as life is not actually a dream. But allow me to proceed rationally in my dream. The best truths are the truths that are personally verifiable and repeatable. So if I poke myself in the eye it will hurt and it will hurt again if I do it again. Then we can take small steps and assume that being tackled by an NFL linebacker is likely to hurt. Not far from there we have schools and textbooks that can be quite unreliable. Fortunately, today we have Wikipedia, which is actually proven to be more reliable.

We all know that not everything on the internet is true, but even that is getting more and more interesting as ChatGPT might eventually be able to filter out unfounded opinions.

And there are so many unfounded opinions, all based on broken facts.

Take gas stoves.

Yes, gas stoves obviously produce combustion products and therefore can cause health problems. Is it bad? It could be, but so far there is no data to suggest that people who use gas stoves die more easily than people who use electric stoves. Let’s face it, we’ve survived lead gas, lead paint, ozone depletion, PCP’s, DDT, raw sewage and carbon soot. A reasonable assumption is that it might make sense not to burn natural gas indoors, but in the broader context, it’s not COVID. Too many people now love their gas stove and would never switch to an electric stove.
Imagine switching to an electric stove! Your life will be over! Maybe gas stoves will be banned! We’d better form one “You can pry my gas stove out of my dead hands” PAC!

And we go to the races. I’ve even heard dedicated environmentalists lament the prospect of electric stoves.
The bizarre thing is that everything in this discussion is based on bad data.

Let’s go through this:

1. Traditional electric cooktops do not work as well as gas cooktops.
2. Induction cooktops work just as well as gas cooktops and have many other benefits
3. Gas hobs and gas ovens are energy guzzlers compared to electric ovens and induction hobs
4. Electrical energy can be provided sustainably, natural gas cannot
5. Since there are better technical and ecological solutions, there is absolutely no reason to continue using gas cookers.

Some of my readers may be thinking: What? NO! Electric hobs suck!

Please do yourself a favor and get the dope on induction cooktops. They’re magically good, react faster than gas stoves, are safer, cost no more than gas stoves, use less energy and are easier to clean. Yes, you need pans that work on induction stovetops, but you may very well own such pans without even knowing it, and pans are a lot cheaper than stovetops.

Let me make a confession. My gas stove broke last year (a leaky valve that would cost more to fix than the cost of the entire range). I went into the store and looked at induction cooktops and then said, “I just don’t have the time or mental energy to find an electrician and wait for them to show up and a 240VAC outlet near my cooktop Installed. I’ll just get another gas stove.”

Due to a momentary lack of energy I have now been remarried to a gas stove for another 30 years. This is despite the fact that I have a $300 dual burner 1500w induction cooktop on my boat which is better and cheaper than any gas cooktop available for installation on a boat.

When I confessed my wrong decision to a friend, she sent me links to two startups that will make convection ovens with built-in batteries. Because stoves run at maximum power intermittently and only for short periods of time, this is a wonderful hybrid solution that solves two problems: power outages and the need to install 240V outlets. Once the stove is charged, 1500W with battery backup is always enough to power the stove properly. A classic hybrid solution that immediately points to additional advantages such as: B. Battery operation to keep a nearby fridge running during a power outage.

So what is the reason for this whole debate?

To some degree it is public ignorance. Induction cookers have been around for 40 years but somehow never made it into the public cooker discussion. Less than 5% of all cookers are induction cookers.

However, I will blame the original publishers of the air quality studies. Somehow, these researchers found it more important to report a problem than a solution.

There were two ways to convey their insights: “Bad news! Gas stoves can kill your kids” or “Good news! The ill effects of gas stoves can be fixed forever with a simple switch to induction stoves.”

Somehow the researchers’ decision-making skills don’t match their research skills. As engineers, let’s not make the same mistake.

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For every column I write, MREN has agreed to make a small donation to an organization of my choice. For this column I select No Limits Cafe. Induction for cooking class.