New York to ban natural gas, including stoves, in new buildings • Hacker News Board

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

#751

Post by cj » Sun, Apr 30, 2023, 12:56 PM UTC

john_the_writer wrote: post #624

dbsmith83 wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your logic makes no sense. Make laws requiring landlords to properly vent gas stoves, not ban them altogether.

Nah.. 90% of places would be grand-fathered in. A landlord won't spend money on fixing the heat, they're not putting in duct work and a vent. Practically speaking how would a building do this, without costing thousands. Who do you think the land-lord will pass that cost to? I grew up in Canada with electric stoves (in multiple rentals). Never once did I have an issue cooking.

> I grew up in Canada with electric stoves (in multiple rentals). Never once did I have an issue cooking.

This is very much the same as Mac vs. PC debate.

It's 100% preference. The average Mac user will go insane if made to switch to windows, and vice versa. The reasons why are almost entirely personal preference, and a quite strong preference at that.

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

#752

Post by bombcar » Sun, Apr 30, 2023, 12:56 PM UTC

kleiba wrote: post #681

apnew wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also _rent_. I hate food cooked on electric stoves, so when I was looking to rent, anything that dint have gas stove was automatic non-starter for me. This whole argument that “you oppose a forced choice so you must hate poor people” is just a straw-man. Just because you prefer things one way doesn’t mean govt has a business telling me how I should cook my food.

This is such baloney - there's so many way more relevant factors to the taste of food then which power source was used to provide heat. I bet if you did a blind tasting you'd not be able to tell the difference.

All I know is I've yet to see an all-electric commercial kitchen.

I assume they exist somewhere, but I've yet to see one.

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

#753

Post by nemo44x » Sun, Apr 30, 2023, 12:57 PM UTC

14u2c wrote: post #644

nemo44x wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. On the US east coast it does not. Very rare occurrence, to the point where a major blackout is a noteworthy event.

I live in the us east coast and we lose power every year just about. Last summer it was 3 days in a row during a heat wave. It’s not large blackouts that would make the news but rather local outages. They happen all the time.

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

#754

Post by freetime2 » Sun, Apr 30, 2023, 12:59 PM UTC

pclmulqdq wrote: post #459

ahoy wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I hope you don't use that stove to cook, because if you do, you are putting hundreds of times more harmful particulates into the air than the stove puts out alone. This is the same kind of "green"-feeling hypocrisy as the plastic bag bans. After Australia banned plastic bags, they found an increased amount of plastic in their landfills. Why? Because people used to re-use them as trash bags and were now buying much th…

> After Australia banned plastic bags, they found an increased amount of plastic in their landfills. Why? Because people used to re-use them as trash bags and were now buying much thicker dedicated plastic bags for the purpose.

Do you have a citation for this?

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

#755

Post by bsagdiyev » Sun, Apr 30, 2023, 1:00 PM UTC

hedora wrote: post #559

7speter wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theres a comment upthread championing this law because eventually government will ban all the miscreants who use gas powered appliances and heating from using them and using something much more hip and palatable to a subset of voters who can afford expensive house upgrades and electric cars at the snap of a finger.

A top end GE induction range top is $1700. A lower end one is $400. These are both rounding errors vs. a year of energy bills. If you want something even cheaper (for instance, because you hate your tenants, and they are paying the power bill), resistive ones are still available.

Cool, let me tell my grandparents who are on a fixed income that they need to replace their heating and stovetop because they're dirty polluters and it's totally only going to cost a month or two of their after necessities money to do just their stove top!

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

#756

Post by bombcar » Sun, Apr 30, 2023, 1:00 PM UTC

john_the_writer wrote: post #622

askvictor wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hope you don't use that stove to cook, because if you do, you are putting hundreds of times more harmful particulates into the air than the stove puts out alone. Really depends on how you cook. If you're not frying, this isn't really a problem. > This is the same kind of "green"-feeling hypocrisy as the plastic bag bans. After Australia banned plastic bags, they found an increased amount of plastic in their landf…

Ha ha.. I know we're supposed to, but I've not changed one bit because of these new bags. A typical shop is now 1$ more expensive with the bags, that's where I stop thinking about it. When I'm out, and my wife calls me to ask me to pick up something at the shop, I don't have my plastic bag with me, so I buy another one. And it ends up in the bin. Now instead of a thin bit of plastic, I've got a bag that's easily 5 ti…

The stores in CA where plastic bags were banned now have insanely THICKER plastic bags they charge you some small amount for, and they claim are reusable.

They are really thick, almost as nice as hardware store bags, but they all get thrown away.

They should have require a standardized bag/crate with deposit that you would use instead, make it durable enough and people would bring it back or just throw it on the sidewalk and enterprising youths could collect them for the deposit.

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

#757

Post by lenkite » Sun, Apr 30, 2023, 1:02 PM UTC

slashdev wrote: post #749

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…

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…

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

#758

Post by junofan » Sun, Apr 30, 2023, 1:02 PM UTC

slashdev wrote: post #749

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…

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…

[flagged]

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

#759

Post by kllrnohj » Sun, Apr 30, 2023, 1:02 PM UTC

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #675

lazide wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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’.

Some historical context: > In 1960, New York City prohibited the sale of paint with high levels of lead for residential use, New York state imposed a state-wide ban in 1970, and the federal government banned lead in paint in 1978. You seem to think the danger from lead was obvious to all yet NYC was decades ahead of other places where the paint industry prevented or repealed actions to even label lead paint as poison…

The dangers of lead were known before leaded gas was even invented much less popularized. But immediate profits and convenience are much stronger human motivators than long term health consequences ever are.

See also PFOA and similar. Health impacts were known for 20+ years but it was too profitable so those reports were buried and lobbied against. And consumers weren't eager to acknowledge their amazingly convenient non-stick pans were directly poisoning hundreds of people and causing long-term issues in thousands more.

Now gas stoves are a little bit more unique in that the proponents aren't profit hungry corporations doing shadowy bribery but instead countless chefs who prefer it and will demand it, consequences to themselves be damned.

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

#760

Post by bombcar » Sun, Apr 30, 2023, 1:03 PM UTC

dan-robertson wrote: post #684

JakeAl wrote: post #653

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Love my gas stove, won't live without one, and it keeps my home warm in the winter even when the power goes out. Gas is much more cost effective than electric as well. Also lobe my gas water heater for the same reason. Hot baths during blackouts. This whole "gas is bad for the environment" is bunk when fossil fuels are required to generate al that electricity and that doesn't even get to the cost and efficiency of st…

Do your gas appliances actually work when the power is out? I guess you could light the stove with a match but aren’t most boilers going to be electrically controlled such that they won’t work without power. It also seems like a bit of a weird reason to me as a big reason. But maybe you get a lot more power outages than I do. (I would imagine somewhere with a gas main, where gas heating can be economical, would not h…

It all depends on the devices and how they're setup. If you're in an area that gets really cold AND has intermittent power (which is not uncommon, snow and ice on the lines can take down power) you can either design your setup to work without external power (think: emergency generator, etc) or you can design parts of it to be usable in an emergency (think: stove you can light with a match, fireplace; kerosene heaters, etc).

My gas furnace will not ignite without power and the power necessary to run the blower is 15 amps or so, wiring in a portable generator would be simple.

The water heater works without any power whatsoever.

The stove has electric ignition but you can light it without power. The oven needs power (I think? never tried it).