Saturday, January 14, 2023

Junk Science Again: This Time, Gas Stoves

There was an attempt to run the news cycle that started early this week with an attack on gas stoves.  It didn't seem to go as well as they wanted, but it could just be the early stages.  The immediate reactions, including memes and bumper sticker sayings and so on may have been more counter than they expected and it may have been exactly what they wanted; not being insiders we can never know.  

What we can know is that this is the level of so-called science that makes "climate change" seem as well-established as knowing when we drop something it'll fall.  

To begin with, this is not a new idea or a new discovery.  The article it was based on may have been a recent publication but the idea has been floated around for a while and just isn't that good.  To begin with I'm going to copy the abstract from that published article and point out some things. 

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. The proportion of childhood asthma that could be theoretically prevented if gas stove use was not present (e.g., state-specific PAFs) varied by state (Illinois = 21.1%; California = 20.1%; New York = 18.8%; Massachusetts = 15.4%; Pennsylvania = 13.5%).

As always, this is based on an observation and correlation study, not a study in which every possible variable was controlled for except the one being studied and people were assigned at random to the experimental or control groups who had no way of knowing which group they were in.  That sort of test is very hard and expensive to do, as well as potentially being illegal or immoral, since you're doing something to people that you think could hurt them.  

The yellow highlighted word is very important. A meta-analysis (singular) is when a group of studies are combined to enlarge the data set.  The way this is worded implies this is a meta-analysis of a group of existing meta-analyses (plural).  That means that without extraordinary effort to ensure the studies are as identical as possible; not just that they studied the same thing but that the populations being studied were as similar as possible.  In turn, that means an increase in the chance of having some outcome could have as much to do with variations in the populations, locations, or any other uncontrolled variable as the presence of the thing they're correlating to.  They conclude, for example, " We found that 12.7% of current childhood asthma in the US is attributable to gas stove use."  In a meta-analysis of meta-analyses that's pretty much meaningless.  

When I took statistics, we were taught that a meta-analysis was typically less reliable than any one of the studies it was based on because it’s generally all but impossible to determine how well those groups compare on the countless other confounding factors.  I consider what this story is based on to be insignificant findings, regardless of their P value. I ignore those studies until the relative risk gets into the "more than twice as likely" range, that is, instead of this 1.127 risk ratio, it should be over 2.00. 

But it's even worse than that.  

About a year ago, a similar attempt to get people to dump their gas stoves was run, and was written about on Watts Up With That.  There were things in the study that really stood out as bad ways to do a study like this. 

Meanwhile, another expert told a different media outlet that the researchers had encased the kitchens in a Mylar tent to “trap and concentrate the emissions, and then measure the concentration.” No one cooks in a kitchen like that! He said it would “incorrect” to draw any health conclusions from the paper.

From Michael P. Ramirez.com 

As always when this sort of subject is talked about, there's no mention of the fact that if you have an electric stove it's very likely to be gas-powered, or even coal-powered. It's just that the gas isn't in your home, it's "far away" so it's different; they'll worry about that gas causing asthma next week. In reality, the truth is that they're just trying to get rid of natural gas power for anything anywhere.



15 comments:

  1. As long as canned chili is still available I will have some natural gas for these clowns.

    Busted.

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  2. I declare this response is "reactive". The Bad People(TM) have hired marketing people to make things up faster than you can process them, to overwhelm your https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop In my opinion, a more correct analysis would be, 'oh, this is their latest thing, [ostentatious delete]'. Then go back to talking about something which interests you. How did the approach of antenna support bolts placed into the end grain of your roof trusses turn out? Did you instead use plates with bolts oriented across the boards for shear strength?

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  3. "As always, this is based on an observation and correlation study, not a studyin which every possible variable was controlled for except the one beingstudied and people were assigned at random to the experimental or controlgroups who had no way of knowing which group they were in."

    In statistical analysis circles, this is known by the pithy phrase :"pulling sh*t out of our @$$#$ and throwing it at the wall to see what sticks".

    It is shorthand for violating (actually, anally raping) the Correlation ≠ Causation Fallacy.

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  4. The "Science" being quoted as justification is nothing but another smoke screen for the lefts real agenda. The coming ban...and it IS coming....has NOTHING to do with health, safety or the environment. It's about the ONLY thing that matters to the criminals in power. CONTROL. They plan on an eventual complete and total ban on the use of natural gas in any way for us peons. They want to kill off BILLIONS of us. This is just one of MANY methods they seek to impose to achieve that goal.

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  5. As I said elsewhere, this is about, as Dan also says, control. Remove natural gas, which is what they want to do, and you remove the ability to heat homes up north, to cook in off-grid situations, to having any gas appliances in off-grid or unstable grid situations.

    It comes down to forcing everyone onto an electric grid which they control, and have already stated will have rolling blackouts for the non-elite peons.

    Can't store lots of food if the power is iffy. Right now I buy one month's meats at a time and buy perishables weekly. Without decent constant power I'd have to shop every day for that day's food. How very third world, no?

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    Replies
    1. what I fail to understand is why they are pushing us harder - and yet even harder - to take up arms and revolt.

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    2. The Left/WEF/Democrat Fascists are pushing harder and harder because they are fully convinced that they will win and they want to cast us as the bad guys for starting the revolt. Ol' Pedo Joe did say they have the F-15s and Nukes so don't oppose them. The Left/WEF/Democrat Fascists may be more in the position of the Russians when Russia attacked Ukraine. They are over confident and corrupt.

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    3. They do not think us peons, serfs and wage-slaves will revolt. Because we are, to them, peons, serfs and wage-slaves. And how else to tie us to the land or the job or the apartment than to deny us freedom of movement and freedom of food and freedom of choice.

      That is what this is. Neo-feudalism. Where they own everything and we are tied to the land and the job and the residence at their sufferance. Debt-peonage, indentured servitude, outright chattel slavery, it's where they are pushing us towards.

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    4. Why do the leftists keep pushing? Simple. Because they can. Literally EVERYTHING they have done to us so far has elicited NOTHING but talk. And they simply do not care what we think, feel or say. Till we actually start HANGING THEM in wholesale numbers they have zero reason to stop what they are doing....and therefore they will NOT stop.

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    5. It isn't that they think the peasants won't revolt.
      It's that they think they can win such a contest.

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  6. More fear pron from The Powers That Be!

    "How long, Oh Lord, must we endure?"

    Things gonna get spicey...

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  7. The problem isn't the 50% of the people who say "Hell no!" but the 50% of the people who say "Sure, okay."

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  8. As an aside... any un-vented gas appliance inside an occupied space should have a window slightly open window or vent fan....just saying...TeX

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  9. Good analysis at A Chemist in Langley
    https://achemistinlangley.net/2023/01/12/are-gas-stoves-really-responsible-for-12-7-of-current-childhood-asthma-cases-in-the-us/

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    Replies
    1. Thanks for that, Dave. An entertaining read that went down roads I didn't.

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