Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

631–640 of 1001 posts

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

#631

Post by poslathian »

boplicity wrote: post #590
iamdamian wrote: post #365

This regulation feels quite frustrating to me, and several comments in this thread illustrate why. This change is being promoted as a critical step in the fight against climate change. (See most news articles over the past two years covering this.) But when you dig into the details, it seems like the regulation may not have much effect on climate change at all. When you point this out to advocates, you'll get an enti…

> This change is being promoted as a critical step in the fight against climate change. 27 years from now, when we're supposedly going to be "net zero", do we really want to be supporting a bunch of natural gas infrastructure? Or should we start making that expensive infrastructure not necessary? 1. Most homes built now will be around in 27 years, and still in good shape. 2. Building and maintaining natural gas infra…

Why is this downvoted? This whole thread is scratching it head as to the “real reason” behind this. Here you go. Infrastructure is way too expensive to maintain for stuff you don’t really need.

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

#632

Post by schrectacular »

tptacek wrote: post #609
rayiner wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, and if you’re talking about poor people, what electric stove will their apartment have, resistance or induction? And will they have induction safe cookware? Banning gas stoves would be a huge blow to all the immigrants who rely on cooking techniques (like woks) that don’t work well on resistance coils, and require expensive special equipment to work on induction.

People in China routinely use woks on electric stoves; they're just as common in China as they are here. There's a lot of mythology about woks and wok hei, most of which is based on people confusing restaurant cooking techniques with home cooking. This issue isn't racially coded.

I lived in China for a decade and never once saw an electric stove.

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

#633

Post by whiddershins »

annexrichmond wrote: post #351
topaz0 wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you try to do exactly what you were doing on the gas stove in the same way, you will have a bad time, but my and many other people's experience is that a decent electric stove is perfectly capable of making good food once you figure out how to use it. Electric stoves in general can heat faster than gas, and in my experience heat more evenly (no hot spots), so you don't need the crutch of a copper bottom to conduct…

[flagged]

The person you are responding to managed to work Tucker Carlson into the convo so obviously knows precisely what is propaganda and what is objective fact.

All rational and educated modern chefs understand that copper bottom pans are just a crutch, because Mother Jones said so.

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

#634

Post by danans »

armatav wrote: post #592
danans wrote: post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is absolutely a big miss, but it's in the context of long tail events (in the magnitude of the event severity), which California by its very nature experiences more than most other large population states: relentless storms, heat waves, wildfires. Should California utilities be better at restoring power in these situations? Absolutely, and we shouldn't cut them much slack in that regard. But that doesn't mean it's…

I’m from a third world country, and now live in the Bay. To give you context our place in SA was having a couple hours loadshedding a day, and here in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods our power was gone for three fucking weeks, and just yesterday was in and out three times. It’s absolutely third world country level when the weather is anything but exactly 70 degrees. You have zero idea what you’re talking about, t…

> I’m from a third world country, and now live in the Bay

> You have zero idea what you’re talking about

Same here. I've endured the sweltering tropical heat in a polluted developing-country city during power cuts, so I well understand what I'm talking about.

> To give you context our place in SA was having a couple hours loadshedding a day, and here in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods our power was gone for three fucking weeks, and just yesterday was in and out three times.

In my Bay Area neighborhood there have been no outages for the last 3 years, but that anecdote is no more or less valid than yours when generalizing about California at large. It's a huge state with incredible variability in nearly every dimension.

Hyper-local conditions matter greatly to reliability. I'm in a dense urban environment, near hospitals and fire stations. That's probably why our power is more reliable. We have friends who live in a wealthy wooded and hilly area of the Peninsula who have lost power for days this past winter, because those repeated winter storms made so many trees fall on power lines. Similarly, extremely fire-prone neighborhoods just 10 miles from me experience public-safety-power-shutoffs frequently in the summer while I don't.

Your power problems sound highly localized, and you are right to be upset about it, but it's on your utility, not the overall grid.

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

#635

Post by jrpt »

ahoy wrote: post #445
iamdamian wrote: post #365

This regulation feels quite frustrating to me, and several comments in this thread illustrate why. This change is being promoted as a critical step in the fight against climate change. (See most news articles over the past two years covering this.) But when you dig into the details, it seems like the regulation may not have much effect on climate change at all. When you point this out to advocates, you'll get an enti…

I _rent_ a home, as do a full half of new york state residents. I'd love an electric stove. Every rental I've ever lived in has a gas stove and no fume hood. The full half of new yorkers who rent - almost 20 million people - mostly get whatever theirlandlord picked. So when I read posts like this, decrying government overreach, I wonder if you've ever been poor? Have you ever lived here? Do you know what youre talkin…

If it's really that important to you, you could buy an electric burner or use other types of electric cooking devices.

Also, the poster is correct that it's not the function of government to tell people what type of kitchen appliances they can use in their own home. We would typically consider that governmental overreach. It's telling that society is becoming so accepting of being told by the government what they can and cannot do in so many areas of life.

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

#636

Post by brewdad »

dmix wrote: post #597
chongli wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a lot easier to just ban stuff than to regulate things so they’re done properly. I’m sure if building inspectors did an unannounced tour of 100 random apartment buildings in New York they’d find a list of code violations a mile long.

That doesn't make banning suddenly better because regulation/codes are so broken.

Yes it does. Unless you think reforming regulators will somehow be easier.

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

#637

Post by giardini »

crooked-v wrote: post #531
danans wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When the power is out, am I expected to start a fire in my yard to cook food? Fire up my JetBoil? My BBQ? How about a little butane stove? They work great at hotel omelette bars! Or a Coleman stove? It's not that big a deal to cook when the power is out, really.

Or just a tinfoil tray, a wire rack, and some candles. You're not going to really cook that way, but it should be more than enough to heat up some canned food or ramen or whatever.

Add a few bags of charcoal and you're set to BBQ some gooood ribs or steak there! And the candles are nice for lighting.

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

#638

Post by brewdad »

stevehawk wrote: post #397
MagicMoonlight wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Because destroying the planet affects everyone and injuring yourself costs everyone else in state spending. We also don’t allow asbestos or releasing poison gas in your garden. 2. Would you consider spreading awareness a suitable solution to knife crime? No? I wonder why.

i don't follow your argument on #2. i also dont understand why we can't have legislation that says "you can only have a stove cooktop if its properly vented".. In the winter, when i lose electricity, i can run my house on a small amount of power because i have natural gas heat, cooktop, clothes dryer, and two natural gas fireplaces. I'm not particularly interested in giving up that safety or luxury.

Good thing you won’t have to. No one is talking about forcing you to rip out your gas fireplace. You simply won’t be able to replace it when it breaks down 30 years from now.

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

#639

Post by giardini »

tpmx wrote: post #480
philip1209 wrote: post #174

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.

I think; for many of us: It's quite fascinating to see a debate between the benefits of electricity and gas in 2023 . Energy technology is so weirdly unevenly distributed. This debate could have taken place in 1940 - with the exact same arguments.

Which is why I still use a wood-burning stove to cook on and and heat during the winter.

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

#640

Post by tptacek »

schrectacular wrote: post #632
tptacek wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People in China routinely use woks on electric stoves; they're just as common in China as they are here. There's a lot of mythology about woks and wok hei, most of which is based on people confusing restaurant cooking techniques with home cooking. This issue isn't racially coded.

I lived in China for a decade and never once saw an electric stove.

I've lived in Oak Park, IL for over a decade, shopping for houses several times, and have never seen an electric stove. What's your point?

What's clearly the case is that homes in China do not generally have the ultra-powered gas wok burners that restaurants do, which is what people are talking about when they talk about what's distinctive about cooking on a wok.

Post reply on HN