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

nytimes.com

741–750 of 1001 posts

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

#741

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you buy a home and want it to have a gas stove, why is it the state government's place to say that you can't do so, for your own health? This is the wrong question to be made. You should ask what should be the safety standards you need to adhere to ensure health risks are mitigated. The reason why this sort of thing must at all times be regulated, without any exception, is that the personal interest of a corpora…

First, obviously regulation is a conspiracy. It will is a coordinated activity by multiple individuals. Second, none of this is an argument to ban natural gas appliances. what is the harm? Is the harm acceptable? Should a person be allowed to except the harm? Can the harm be mitigated by education or change in behavior? And who has the jurisdiction to implement these regulations even if natural gas stoves are in unre…

If regulations are a conspiracy because they are coordinated by multiple individuals, then so are all laws and my weekend ultimate frisbee match.

You're going to be quite shocked when you learn about building codes and building inspections that you already get the benefits of.

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

#742
post #703

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it something that you cook daily? If it's occasional, maybe you could get a small butane gas burner or something equivalent?

You’re reaching so desperately for a way to defend this blatant overreach, and I think you missed the original point.

I think we need to ditch the gas infrastructure and completely get rid of natural gas lobby and influence. No gas burners at all, electricity for everything.

From a climate perspective and also from a safety and health perspective.

Gas should be opt-in, not opt-out.

And I'm perfectly fine with this being regulated because the free market sold us leaded gasoline 60+ years after they introduced it maliciously, themselves, for example.

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

#743
post #687

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume you make non-roasted dishes as well? I’d like to say the majority of dishes don’t need a flame - but I’m sure you would provide a list of exceptions.

Why have a heating unit for food at all if we can all survive on gruel at room temperature? "You don't need it, so you can't have it" is a dangerous argument.

Kindly do not make ad-absurdum arguments.

My point is that you need to weigh the advantages and disadvantages. Some individuals wanting baba-ganoush in NY should not be the reason to avoid electrification for the others.

I appreciate that forced illegalisation is off-putting, but like others have said, renters don’t get a choice and landlords will avoid all expenditures. We need a way to help the majority wean off gas.

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

#744
post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alternatives to gas are so good these days that there's no way I'd pay to connect any new house to gas.

Gas alliances are significantly cheaper to run. Also perform better. Gas dryers are awesome compared to electric for example. Plus electric goes out often. Gas doesn’t.

> Plus electric goes out often.

This is not something that should happen in urban/sub-urban environment often in a first world country. In rural areas building up the infrastructure to that point can be too expensive but not in built up areas.

In the last ~15 years of living in cities/suburbs in Finland I have not had a single power outage that lasted more then 5 minutes. And even those have been super rare.

If that really is a problem in a first world country (and you are not riving in a really remote area) talk to your politicians as your system is seriously broken and needs fixing.

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

#745
post #647
post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

-20 - at which point the COP of the heat pump I linked to is still well above 1 - is equal to the coldest temperature on record in the locations I mentioned. Not the coldest daily maximum. The coldest temperature ever recorded, and the heat pump still wouldn’t require any backup system. Yes, it’s probably working hard at that point, but so? We’re talking exceptional conditions for the location. And for the other 99.9…

So you have all the heat pumps going on full blast on the coldest days, all together. It's a huge spike in energy demand. As long as the grid can deliver it fine, but when it doesn't the potential is catastrophic. Natural gas heating is far less grid dependent. Even if you lose power you could run a gas furnace with a small generator. Not the case with a heat pump. Rationally speaking we can only turn the ship as fas…

> So you have all the heat pumps going on full blast on the coldest days, all together. It's a huge spike in energy demand. As long as the grid can deliver it fine, but when it doesn't the potential is catastrophic.

Repalce heat pumps with gas furnaces and you have an equally true sentence, if "the grid" is the gas grid.

Gas usage also spikes on those cold days. You know what people do to prevent this being an issue? Storage. Nothing you couldn't also do with electric power.

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

#746

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'm one of those people who weirdly likes resistive electric cooktops - but yeah, I 100% agree with you.

I'd rather people install heat pumps in new construction, and I'd agree that you should discourage use of natural gas for heating, I think there are ways to do that with market incentives, not by bans.

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

#747
post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t buy the climate argument. However, banning gas appliances comes from the same place as banning lead paint. Gas appliances are a major source of indoor pollution. Gas heating leaks pollution inside the home, especially as furnaces age. Plus, many residents don’t own their own property. This helps protect renters.

Bwahahaha this is so ridiculous. This isn’t even on the same planet as lead paint. All this does is saddle folks with shittier, more expensive options in the name of ‘green’.

It's arguably less dangerous than lead paint. If don't let lead paint deteriorate and clean regularly then the health risk is minimal.

There's no comparable mitigation option for gas stoves. Installing a fune hood involves cutting a hole in the wall, no chance your landlord will ok they in a cheap place.

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

#748

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect you're conflating resistance cooktops (the kind with coils that heat up) and induction cooktops (which use EM fields to transfer energy directly into the pan). Resistance cooktops are slow and weak, but induction cooktops are just plain better than gas (faster to heat across the entire temperature range, better temperature control) in pretty much every case except when needing a pan that doesn't fit the ind…

And if the government mandates electric stoves, which of those (restive or inductive) do you think the landlords of cheaper apartments are going to pick?

Anecdotal, but in my cheap apartment (like $300/mo) there is an induction stove. This is not in New York, of course, but still it couldn’t have been that expensive to install.

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

#749

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…

Banning gas for heating has a reasonable climate change argument. In Vancouver heating systems in new buildings will have to be zero emission soon. That makes some sense at least. Banning it for cooking seems to be another case of focusing on things that don’t move the needle. Meanwhile coal power plants continue to operate. There are less than 2500 major coal power plants worldwide. Why don’t we band together, mass produce 2500 nuclear plants that are at least as large, and make an actual difference. Yeah there’s lots of details there about fuel, construction and engineering, proliferation, etc. But that is all solvable with current technology. No leap of faith required, just the will, the money, and execution.

Yet nobody seems to talk about real solutions and we’re content to focus on stupidly useless things instead. I find it frustrating. Are we really in a crises? If yes, then fucking act like it and let’s see some ambitious solutions.

In the movies and books you see something threaten the survival of the human race and the whole world comes together and engineers something impossibly amazing to save the world. I think in reality we’d argue about plastic straws, or who pays for it, or gas stoves until the apocalypse kills the species too dumb to save itself.

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

#750

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They certainly won’t install an expensive induction stove in housing for poor people

It is arguments like these that make me happy I live in a country where you rent a flat and bring your own kitchen (and appliances).

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