What a gas stove ban means for restaurants • Hacker News Board

Re: What a gas stove ban means for restaurants

#131

Post by amluto » Fri, Jun 03, 2022, 5:37 PM UTC

al_borland wrote: post #57

amluto wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Induction stoves are quite efficient. Gas stoves, perhaps counterintuitively, are not. This is mostly because the considerable majority of the heat from the flame goes around the pot without heating it. (A pot on a grate is a terrible heat exchanger.) So it is not obviously a loss to burn gas to make electricity and then to use that electricity to cook. It may even be a win. All of this ignores that electric cooking…

I've been looking into replacing my terrible electric range with one that has induction burners. One consideration I saw when looking at comparisons was that electric and induction really require a flat bottom pan. If your pan is curved, you need gas to evenly heat it. So when it comes to something like a wok, you need gas. To eliminate gas is to eliminate the wok as a means of cooking.

For a wok, you need an actual electric wok, a special induction stove for woks [0] (of course this is a thing!), or gas.

On the flip side, if you have a mediocre pan with a thick base but thin walls, an induction stove won’t heat the walls the way a gas stove would, which will reduce burning.

[0] https://www.atcooker.com/products/commercial-induction-wok/ for example. I have no idea if this is any good.

Re: What a gas stove ban means for restaurants

#132

Post by karaterobot » Fri, Jun 03, 2022, 5:37 PM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #96

tablespoon wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's a bit disingenuous. Those units were brought online in 1985 and 1986 and are licensed to operate through 2025. That's forty years - which is the life span of a power plant, especially a nuclear power plant. So, they're not being "switched off", they've hit end-of-life. I doubt that is true https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_Canyon_Power_Plant#2021... talks about a report that states "that keeping Diablo op…

> Why is this a "lack of ability" rather than a lack of political will? Even in countries that are massively pushing for nuclear energy and where the utilities are sometimes outright government-owned, like in France, Finland or the UK, nuclear reactor projects have continuously hit massive cost and deadline overruns: Finland's Olkiluoto 3 had 12 years delay and ended up costing over three times as expected, French Fl…

What you described is not the lack of ability, it's the lack of political will.

Re: What a gas stove ban means for restaurants

#133

Post by ryukafalz » Fri, Jun 03, 2022, 5:38 PM UTC

seibelj wrote: post #68

D13Fd wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Minuscule” or not, it doesn’t matter. Every molecule of CO2 & other greenhouse gases avoided now is worth dozens or hundreds or more that we’ll have to recapture via carbon capture in the future if we want to prevent a climate disaster.

The amount of carbon a gas stove emits, like plastic straws, plastic bags, and all manner of bans the eco-activists are forcing on society, is so infinitesimally small compared to the airplanes the same activists and politicians use to jet around the country. It's completely laughable and totally absurd. I'm so utterly tired of virtue signaling in all aspects of society. We put insane amounts of effort into things th…

Okay, now how much carbon does the entire gas infrastructure used to pipe that gas around emit, and the gas used to heat homes? Because as long as people are going to specifically demand gas stoves, all that infrastructure still has to exist, and gas heating is going to be attractive because the gas hookup is already there.

The fossil fuel industry specifically uses gas stoves as a gateway to push people towards using more gas (see the old “cooking with gas” campaign for example). This is about countering that messaging.

(And besides, we know more about the health impacts of gas stove use now too; there are more direct health reasons you’d want to avoid them in addition to the climate impacts.)

https://www.npr.org/2021/10/07/1015460605/gas-stove-emission...

Re: What a gas stove ban means for restaurants

#134

Post by mschuster91 » Fri, Jun 03, 2022, 5:38 PM UTC

mananaysiempre wrote: post #121

mschuster91 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why is this a "lack of ability" rather than a lack of political will? Even in countries that are massively pushing for nuclear energy and where the utilities are sometimes outright government-owned, like in France, Finland or the UK, nuclear reactor projects have continuously hit massive cost and deadline overruns: Finland's Olkiluoto 3 had 12 years delay and ended up costing over three times as expected, French Fl…

I’m suspicious of the appropriateness of the even in this phrase. Massive bureaucracies with no competition produce late, cost-ineffective megaprojects, and a nuclear reactor is essentially megaproject bait even if does not actually have to built as one (unlike, say, a hydroelectric station). I’m reminded of how Higgs physics on the LHC is done on two completely independent detectors, ATLAS and CMS, because only buil…

The problem at the root cause is the public's (reasonable!) expectations about safety. Humanity has experienced twice just how much damage a nuclear reactor blowing up can cause, not to mention how brittle they are and how lax people treat safety - just look at how many accidents happened at Sellafield - or the terrorism risk. Many of the experimental design ideas add the question of nuclear weapons proliferation on top.

Accounting for all these risks takes up serious amounts of money, enough to make the construction of a new plant so expensive it literally cannot ever turn a profit against incredibly cheap solar energy and ever-cheaper battery or molten-salt storage.

One might even say that nuclear energy was never profitable because the only way it appeared to be cheap was that the general public took up an extremely risky bet that the reactors would not go boom and because the costs for teardown and storage were never really accounted for.

Re: What a gas stove ban means for restaurants

#135

Post by bcassedy » Fri, Jun 03, 2022, 5:38 PM UTC

taylodl wrote: post #59

breadloaf wrote: post #44

I always find laughable when governments are scolding or limiting peasants for basically nothing, while ignoring the elephant in the room. * You need to conserve the water, California peasant! Ignore the fact that 80% of water in California is consumed by agriculture and we are not going to do anything about it. * You need to stop using your gas stove, peasant! Ignore the fact that we are going to switch off Diablo N…

Ignore the fact that we are going to switch off Diablo Nuclear Power plant and replace it with gas plants. That's a bit disingenuous. Those units were brought online in 1985 and 1986 and are licensed to operate through 2025. That's forty years - which is the life span of a power plant, especially a nuclear power plant. So, they're not being "switched off", they've hit end-of-life. Building a new nuclear power station…

Can you point me to any resources that go into more detail on why the US cannot construct nuclear power stations? I'd love a cliff's notes version if you want to write it up, but I don't want to take up too much of your time

Re: What a gas stove ban means for restaurants

#136

Post by seoaeu » Fri, Jun 03, 2022, 5:40 PM UTC

spaetzleesser wrote: post #107

gruez wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The whole carbon footprint thing was created to shift blame from the dirty industry to inviduals you think that "the dirty industry" are just emitting carbon for the fun of it?

"you think that "the dirty industry" are just emitting carbon for the fun of it?" Yes, for fun and profit.

Profit from whom? All these industries ultimately sell the resulting end products to people.

This idea that Exxon Mobile is solely to blame for gasoline emissions or that a factory owner is the only one responsible for the emissions from their factory, rather than the person who purchases and uses those products is quite frankly absurd.

Re: What a gas stove ban means for restaurants

#137

Post by kemiller » Fri, Jun 03, 2022, 5:42 PM UTC

D13Fd wrote: post #49

cthalupa wrote: post #6

I've got a Control Freak, probably the highest end induction cooktop available for a home chef, and is even used in 3 michelin star restaurants like Alinea. It's amazing for consistency, holding temperature, and a dozen other things. It's quite responsive in general! But I still reach for my Iwatani butane stove and copper saucepot sometimes. These are still significantly more responsive even than a top of the line i…

Quoted post unavailable.

Gas used in cooking is a minuscule fraction of the all the ways we use methane, let alone other fossil fuels. The biggest problem with gas stoves as far as climate change is concerned isn't the gas they burn directly, it's that once you have the hookup, it's tempting to use it for heat as well, which burns an order of magnitude at least more gas. (Also, simply having a gas distribution network is an opportunity to leak methane. But we could let people use propane for cooking since propane is not itself a greenhouse gas.)

Re: What a gas stove ban means for restaurants

#138

Post by jcranberry » Fri, Jun 03, 2022, 5:42 PM UTC

adolph wrote: post #123

jcranberry wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A quick google tells me household consumption contributes to 72% of GHG emissions: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/es803496a

Maybe read before you make a statement about how "a quick google tells me?" The parent comment reference to "personal use (minuscule percentage of green house gasses) versus agricultural/commercial use" is not comparable to the linked paper's "household consumption," a "consumption category" that includes things like agriculture and manufacturing, see excerpt below. On the global level, 72% are related to household c…

I did read it. 19% of global emissions from household power and 17% from mobility (cars and such) is not miniscule, and not agricultural/commercial usage.

Re: What a gas stove ban means for restaurants

#139

Post by zumu » Fri, Jun 03, 2022, 5:42 PM UTC

dghughes wrote: post #63

carabiner wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It definitely is.

Is gas preferred over charcoal? I've no clue about what you are talking about but I figure charcoal would have been the oldest cooking method anywhere. Gas has no flavour or soul compared to charcoal cooking.

No. Charcoal is preferred. Gas is for cheap bbq places, so it makes sense they would swap to an analogous cheap energy source.

Re: What a gas stove ban means for restaurants

#140

Post by qbasic_forever » Fri, Jun 03, 2022, 5:43 PM UTC

m0llusk wrote: post #118

It seems like an alternative might be to use induction to warm a small heat exchange device, then blow air through it so that extremely hot air similar to a gas flame comes out. Probably some engineering would be needed, but not that much. There are already serious problems with water vapor condensation from burning natural gas so this could potentially be a superior alternative with more opportunities for controllin…

Charcoal is another option and doesn't have the water vapor problem either (it also cooks better and hotter than gas).