The Dawn of Gas Stove Denialism | The New Republic

Don t dismiss the consequences of last week s flash-in-the-pan culture spat. The sincere proclamations, as funny as they are, will have probably succeeded in spooking agencies and politicians looking to protect citizens from being locked into reliance on dangerous fossil fuels. It serves the industry well to lay these emotional land mines, where an epidemic of viral madness is triggered when tripped by even the merest suggestion of regulation of insidious fossil fuel reliance. The technique has served the industry well I lived through the right wing in Australia permanently toxifying carbon pricing using this technique.

But the looming slow-burn disinformation campaign will toxify the information space in deeper and more damaging ways. Once the doubt about well-established scientific links sets in, it takes years and years to recover. Given the way the fossil fuel industry is under siege on various fronts, it s almost certain to attack the emerging science of immediate health impacts, even if that only adds a few extra months or years of life to its inevitably doomed industry. It s certainly hoarded enough conflict cash to pay for it several times over.

It is vital that politicians, media outlets, and citizens pay close attention to the telltale signs of this kind of disinformation. Media outlets in particular need to avoid the instinct to provide false balance to science, a habit that played a major role in the spread of climate change denial in the 2010s. Social media platforms will doubtless be exploited to spread industry messaging (likely through various weirdly named front groups like Citizens for accurate science in the kitchen, or something similar). All that will feed directly into the legislative battles happening at various levels across the U.S., and likely in many other places in the world.

We know the sordid history of the fossil fuel industry s nasty relationship with scientific inquiry. The recent revelations about the raw scientific detail of Exxon s knowledge of the climate threat paint a cold, sinister picture of how decision-makers in these companies behave when they re facing emerging evidence of their products causing extreme harm to their customers. The only way to push back against fossil fuel disinformation is to identify and counter their campaign before the doubt they fund takes hold in society.

via newrepublic.com

The reaction of gas stove conservato-libertarians to just the slightest hint of reasonably regulating gas and gas-like stoves this last week was just so risibly ridiculous. No one is going to take your gas stove! Why do you even care so much? Next thing you know, gas stoves will be part of some conspiracy theory. Like the WEF doesn’t want you to use gas stoves or something. Get real! True, scientific research by PhD scientists doing extra careful, peer reviewed, scientific research has revealed that gas stoves cause cancer, asthma, hurricanes, flooding, drought and autism. But we must not move too fast. No one wants to take your gas stove, but, it might, just might, depending on research and what happens, be necessary, in order to save the planet, to temporarily borrow your gas stove, simply to determine how much the planet will be saved by your cooking with electric, which is just as good, for a brief period of time. That’s all. That’s it. So relax. Now hand over your gas stove, you stupid redneck mouth breathing inbred idiot, or we’ll throw you in jail and take away your kids.