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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 3, 2023

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gas stoves

There was a minor media circus about them, but they haven't actually been banned, have they?

Anyway, induction is amazing and I hope both gas and conventional electric stoves get banned.

  • -23

Anyway, induction is amazing and I hope both gas and conventional electric stoves get banned.

"I like X, not X should be banned", without elaboration or reasoning, is childrens cartoon villain logic.

I thought the downsides of gas and conventional electric stoves were well-known.

Gas stoves cause indoor air pollution (I believe this is what the aforementioned media circus was about) and require gas, which is a fossil fuel – do I need to explain why fossil fuels are bad? And they require either a network of gas pipelines, which are an additional bit of infrastructure that needs to be built and maintained (and they tend to explode), or distribution in individual tanks, which is very wasteful. Induction just needs the existing electrical grid.

Conventional electric stoves are extremely inefficient, so they waste a lot of energy. And they are horrible to work with, it's basically a human rights violation. If conventional electric stoves are Americans' perceived alternative to gas, then I can understand the overreaction to the mere suggestion that gas stoves might be banned. In fact, in that light, it was probably an underreaction.

  • -18

do I need to explain why fossil fuels are bad?

I think you do. And if your explanation is "because they'd be out someday" you'd have to do better than that because "someday" is doing a real lot of work here and it's not practical worrying what would happen in 3000 years - in 3000 years the people might be all living in the Matrix anyway.

and they tend to explode

If they are properly maintained, they don't. If they are maintained by PG&E, then well, that's a whole different business.