Australian retailer The Good Guys removed an article on its website this week that had described gas cooktops as efficient and affordable without mentioning the growing health and climate concerns of burning a fossil fuel in your kitchen.
The article, which was pulled after this column sent in questions, is nevertheless archived and had compared gas stoves to new electric induction cooktops.
“Before you decide what to buy, it’s important to understand how these cooktops work, plus the pros and cons of each. Who knows – you might even try something new based on what you learn!” the article said.
What readers wouldn’t have learned from the article was anything about the climate-heating emissions from burning gas or the health risks.
Eytan Lenko, chief executive of Boundless, an organisation that advocates for a rapid phase-out of fossil fuels and electrification, described the article as “extremely misleading” and tagged The Good Guys with his concerns on Twitter before the article was pulled.
This is extremely misleading by @TheGoodGuysAU @JBHiFi
— Eytan Lenko (@eytanlenko) April 30, 2023
“overall, gas tends to be more affordable than electricity” plus no mention of health effects or emissions of gas.
Suggest you speak to @RewiringAus and get up to date information. https://t.co/xAUgt8Z4sv
The growing controversy over the use of gas in homes should have been hard to miss. Some councils and states in Australia are already looking for ways to phase-out or ban gas from newly built homes.
In the US, the Consumer Product Safety Commission is currently investigating the health hazards from gas stoves that could eventually see gas cooktops regulated.
Across California, according to environment organisation Sierra Club more than 70 cities and counties have introduced building codes to curtail gas use in new homes.
Last week New York became the first state in the US to introduce a phased ban on gas for cooking and heating in new buildings.
The Good Guys article, dated 28 March, said gas stoves were “fast, efficient and very powerful”.
But induction cooktops are considered three times more efficient than gas. Much of the heat from gas is wasted warming the air, rather than the food.
Health experts have said using gas for cooking presents a health risk. Dr Christine Cowie, an environmental epidemiologist at UNSW Sydney, said: “Any gas appliances including gas stoves and gas heaters – flued and unflued - will emit noxious gases such as nitrous oxides, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, methane and formaldehyde. The use of gas stoves and gas heaters have been associated with increased risk of asthma and respiratory symptoms.
“Ultimately, we need to move away from using fossil fuels such as gas for heating and cooking in our homes,” she said, adding there were also risks from wood heaters in homes.
Studies in the US and Australia have said gas stoves are responsible for about 12% of childhood asthma cases. That burden could be substantially cut with the use exhaust vents, the studies have said.
Burning gas also releases CO2, adding to the accumulation of the gas in the atmosphere that’s driving a climate crisis.
In a statement, The Good Guys said the company “regularly review and update the product information we publish to help customers choose the product that is right for them. In this case, the information was out of date and has been removed.
“We will continue to focus on our customers and ensure we can respond to their changing preferences with more energy efficient products that incorporate the latest innovations.”
Charlatans?
Last month media watchdog the Australian Communications and Media Authority found four segments on climate change and the Great Barrier Reef from the Sunday morning Sky News program Outsiders had breached industry codes for accuracy and fairness.
In a response on the show, presenter Rowan Dean dismissed human-caused global warming as “just a theory” as well as misrepresenting what the watchdog had actually found.
Just a bit of background first. The former prime minister Kevin Rudd raised about 80 issues with Acma related mostly to Dean’s “Weather and the Sceptics Ice-Age Watch” segments from late 2021.
Dean said of the “80 or so” issues raised by Rudd “90% of the complaints were not proceeded with,” adding: “What does it tell you that in 90% of those issues, Acma did not consider it necessary to proceed further?”
So what does it tell us?
A statement from Acma said: “The Acma did not dismiss 90% of the allegations. As much of the content across the programs was repeated, there were recurring concerns raised in the 80 allegations.
“The Acma looked at all 80 allegations and selected a sample to formally investigate against the relevant codes of practice. We did not come to a view on whether or not those matters which were not investigated complied with the codes of practice.”
Dean defended one segment when the Outsiders audience was told that a report from the Australian Institute of Marine Science (Aims) – at the time misnamed as the Australian Maritime Institute – had released a report on conditions across the Great Barrier Reef.
In the segment, the audience was told: “They’ve come out and said there’s never been so much coral.”
Dean said: “According to the Acma finding, [the statement in program] was not true at the time I made the comments, although it is true now.”
Except there was another reason why Acma found Outsiders had breached its code relating to accuracy, fairness and impartiality.
That was because while Aims’s 2021 long-term monitoring report had said coral cover was recovering, Acma’s investigation said its report “nevertheless found that the recovery was fragile and at risk and that the longer-term prognosis was uncertain.”
“None of this important context was provided,” the investigation said. “A viewer would be left with the idea that the Aims report had demonstrated that the proposition that reef health was at serious risk was a false proposition.”
After all that, Dean went on to justify his own position that climate change was “just a theory” and that the “science is never settled” by pointing to scientific and philosophical greats like Galileo, Albert Einstein, Karl Popper and Carl Sagan.
Defending his own position, Dean quoted the late American astrophysicist and science presenter Sagan, who once wrote: “Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back… If we can’t think for ourselves, if we are unwilling to question authority, then we are putty in the hands of those in power.”
So what did Sagan – this revered figure in science communication – think about climate change? Was he taken in by charlatans?
In an amazingly prescient testimony to congress in 1985, Sagan warned if fossil fuel burning continued it could push up global temperatures by several degrees centigrade, melt glaciers and ice sheets and raise global sea levels. He also warned of China’s economic emergence and its appetite for coal, and how a global accord would be needed.
“Here is a problem which transcends our particular generation. It’s an intergenerational problem,” he said. “If we don’t do the right thing now, then there are very serious problems that our children and grandchildren will have to face.”
CO2 is good for koalas?
Visiting a coal mine in Queensland, federal MP Bob Katter sported a new vest with the words: “No CO2, No Tree.. No Tree, No Me” with a picture of a koala in a hard hat.
Trees do take in CO2 as they grow and store it. But does that mean adding more CO2 is good for koalas?
“CO2 levels are not at risk, but a stable climate is,” said Prof David Bowman, a fire scientist at the University of Tasmania.
“CO2 pollution is not good for wildlife because it causes global heating that leads to intense droughts and extreme fires like the 2019-20 bushfires that had disastrous effects on native flora and fauna, especially koalas that live in the flame zone.”
Katter also attacked Australian brands Coles and VB for trying to source more of their power from renewables which, he tried to argue on the back of his vest, meant they were getting their electricity from China because this is where many wind turbines and solar panels are made. They should be supporting Australian coal, he said.
But analyst Tim Buckley, of Climate Energy Finance, said this ignored how Australian mining also produced half of the world’s supply of lithium used for solar power, as well as other critical metals and minerals like copper, nickel and cobalt.
