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New York to ban natural gas, including stoves, in new buildings

nytimes.com

241–250 of 1001 posts

Re: New York to ban natural gas, including stoves, in new buildings

#241

Berkeley attempted this and it was recently overturned: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/court-overturns-berkeley-califo... California's electric grid is in horrendous shape. We can barely keep the power on in the summertime, especially when wildfires happen. When the power is out, am I expected to start a fire in my yard to cook food? Fire up my JetBoil? My BBQ?

> When the power is out, am I expected to start a fire in my yard to cook food? I tried this and a neighbor called CalFire on me since its illegal when its not a "burn day". It seems the solutions are to have: - a 5 gallon propane tank in the garage - a BBQ in the back yard - your own batteries - a generator (also useful for refrigeration) I have about 20 gallons of gas in my garage that is good for my generator. I u…

> I tried this and a neighbor called CalFire

> I have about 20 gallons of gas in my garage

I'm with your neighbor on this one

Re: New York to ban natural gas, including stoves, in new buildings

#242
post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electricity is also a centralized protocol, prone to catastrophic failures.

My gas heat goes down if electricity fails.

Only because of the thermostat, right? You could short the contact that turns the boiler on.

Re: New York to ban natural gas, including stoves, in new buildings

#243
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people around here buy enough battery or generators to keep the power on. PG&E is way below one nine of availability this year, but the outlets inside our house are at 6 nines followed by an eight. Granted, once the propane rationing started, a few of our neighbors lost power for extended periods of time (weeks). The phone company doesn’t maintain internet if the power is out, but there is starlink, and fiber co…

> a third world country if you measure things by quality of government services And yet Californians pay enormous taxes.

> And yet Californians pay enormous taxes.

Part of this is because California is the most populous state with a high average personal income.

When talking about actual tax burden averages the best way to calculate is by dividing the total state and local taxes by the total income in the state.

https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/state-and-local-t...

In 2020 the total tax rate in California was 10.01% of total personal income. This put it at 37th place among the US states, and 0.52% above the US average.

For the other most populous states, Texas was at 8.56%, Florida at 7.21%, and New York at 13.92%.

The cheapest state was Alaska at 7.13% (with Florida the second cheapest), and the most expensive state was New York (with Hawaii the second most expensive at 13.16%).

Some of this data is confounded by state revenues not being solely from taxes (or especially from personal taxes). Regardless though, California isn't that much above average, and is one of 30 states with a graduated state income tax that hits higher earners harder than lower earners, whereas 11 states have a flat tax structure.

Re: New York to ban natural gas, including stoves, in new buildings

#244
post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 regarding cooking gas being a minuscule amount of gas usage overall. And not to mention, gas is still the first choice for most serious cooks, so the small benefit comes at relatively large cost to lifestyle. Regarding heat pumps phasing out gas heat, in NY it isn’t feasible. It gets too cold. In more temperate climates, sure, but in the northern US and further, there will be a need for on-demand heat for a long t…

> Regarding heat pumps phasing out gas heat, in NY it isn’t feasible. It gets too cold. Not true, heat pumps are widely used as primary heat sources in environments as cold or colder than NY, like in Montreal and other parts of Canada. The take that heat pump tech only works in very moderate temperatures is stale at this point.

[flagged]

Re: New York to ban natural gas, including stoves, in new buildings

#245
post #191
post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A big part of the reason for banning gas is not energy but indoor pollution. There's pretty strong and growing evidence that cooking with gas leads to substantial health risks because of various combustion products that end up in your air (especially if not properly vented).

Are you a doctor? This one doctor (whom I probably trust the most of online doctors) disagrees. https://peterattiamd.com/putting-out-the-fire-on-the-gas-sto... > For example, the analysis included multiple studies that found an association between gas cooking and respiratory disease in children but variously failed to evaluate parental smoking habits, indoor smoke, pet ownership, or outdoor pollution as other possibl…

No, but I will be by the end of next week.

Re: New York to ban natural gas, including stoves, in new buildings

#246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My gas heat goes down if electricity fails.

Only because of the thermostat, right? You could short the contact that turns the boiler on.

There's this thing called a fan that's inside your furnace. If the electricity goes out - you're gonna die of cold anyway because there's no way to move the heat from the furnace through your ductwork.

Re: New York to ban natural gas, including stoves, in new buildings

#247
post #216
post #17

And NPR told me that the possibility of gas stoves being banned was fake outrage: https://www.npr.org/2023/01/20/1150228734/the-facts-and-stra... .

There are many ways that outrage can be fake, and a variety of them apply to this situation. For one thing the conservative talking points were all about a sense that the feds were coming for your freedom, and not in any way about the merits or otherwise of being able to burn gas in the place you live. For another, this was being talked about as something that would impose a heavy burden on normal people, which is si…

You are wrong. Most normal people in nyc have gas stoves and they are massively superior in every way to a typical electric range.

Induction cooktops can be nice, but they are more expensive last I checked, and impose lots of limitations on what cookware you can use, including making it infeasible to use high end copper bottom French sauté pans, which also happen to be very hard to match the performance of.

It is absolutely a burden, and meddlesome, and a reduction in freedom of choice, and gas stoves use minuscule amounts of gas.

Re: New York to ban natural gas, including stoves, in new buildings

#248

Electricity is a universal protocol - you can generate it with multiple different energy sources, ranging from gas to nuclear. I think this change future-proofs constructions, and makes our infrastructure less fragile.

How is an all-electric infrastructure “less fragile”? I don’t see any advantage for the end user. The only thing that works during a power outage is the gas stove. Regarding power generation, gas is cheap and plentiful and gas power plants are much easier to build than nuclear. Nuclear takes years to get regulatory approval. Anyway, no one’s building nuclear. Germany closed down their last three nuclear plants, for s…

You forgot one small thing, there's two orders of magnitude more emissions with gas plants which makes this technology unsuitable for any future development, it's basically legacy, regardless of what you think of nuclear.

Re: New York to ban natural gas, including stoves, in new buildings

#249
post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many ways that outrage can be fake, and a variety of them apply to this situation. For one thing the conservative talking points were all about a sense that the feds were coming for your freedom, and not in any way about the merits or otherwise of being able to burn gas in the place you live. For another, this was being talked about as something that would impose a heavy burden on normal people, which is si…

You are wrong. Most normal people in nyc have gas stoves and they are massively superior in every way to a typical electric range. Induction cooktops can be nice, but they are more expensive last I checked, and impose lots of limitations on what cookware you can use, including making it infeasible to use high end copper bottom French sauté pans, which also happen to be very hard to match the performance of. It is abs…

And I also used my gas stove to prepare meals during at least three nyc blackouts.

Re: New York to ban natural gas, including stoves, in new buildings

#250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only because of the thermostat, right? You could short the contact that turns the boiler on.

There's this thing called a fan that's inside your furnace. If the electricity goes out - you're gonna die of cold anyway because there's no way to move the heat from the furnace through your ductwork.

I have this thing called steam heat.

But duh, I am realizing that shorting the contact won’t do anything so you’re right.

But I have a small solar generator and could probably make it work from that, because it requires very little electricity, as opposed to say, a heat pump.

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