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

911–920 of 1001 posts

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

#911

Post by tptacek »

fsckboy wrote: post #889
tptacek wrote: post #640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

woks are round (hemispherical) on the bottom, gas is better for heating that shape

Not even that is true! This seems like another instance of people deriving every facet of their arguments from faulty first principles. There are bowl woks and flat-bottomed woks. We're not going to get anywhere discussing this issue if we can't even agree what a wok is.

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

#912

Post by thehappypm »

SheepSlapper wrote: post #899
myroon5 wrote: post #862

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of Washington State lives around Seattle, which has never recorded subzero fahrenheit temperatures: https://www.currentresults.com/Yearly-Weather/USA/WA/Seattle... https://patch.com/washington/seattle/monday-was-seattles-col...

Which should lead you to conclude that I, in fact, don't live in or around Seattle? Contrary to what our governor would have you believe, there's a lot more to WA state than King county. Not that any of this matters to the conversation about gas, my points still stand. Last winter we hit -10F, and there were power outages, so having gas meant having heat when it was extremely cold.

What about if the gas lines have cold-related outages ?

Ultimately you need to be ready to be self-sufficient. I live in a cold climate and run my house on a heat pump, with an oil furnace backup, AND a wood stove with plenty of wood as a third layer.

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

#913

Post by seanmcdirmid »

kllrnohj wrote: post #776
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Induction cooktops generally require 220-40 outlets, so I get that a battery might be a way around that, I doubt it would work for code however. A household battery made out of old Tesla batteries sounds like a good idea, but I think someone has thought of it.

If those batteries are too old/weak to effectively power a car how useful are they going to be at powering a household stove? Especially when why would you need such a thing anyway when you have 220v+ just itching to get the job done directly from the grid? The grid needs power storage, yes, but there's all sorts of solutions to that beyond lithium ion batteries including water & stone gravity storage systems. Or jus…

That really isn’t how it works. They hold less charge, but you can have more of them and weight isn’t really an issue. They can also charge more gradually, making the dynamics really different.

A battery bank at home can be a good solution to grid balancing, eg if power is cheaper during the day or night, or if you have solar. Water storage systems aren’t very efficient and need lots of space, but there are people who do it. You can also compress air into a cave. Batteries are just something that are cheaper and more space efficient than other solutions.

Centralized batteries work as well, though they don’t do anything if you have lots of grid failures.

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

#914

Post by downut »

ecshafer wrote: post #129
downut wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am curious how one pops popcorn, shakes a pan, throws the pan, and heats the sides of the pan when eg reducing stock. How do woks work, exactly, on an induction burner? Why does spilling liquids cause the problems I encountered? Why does the bottom of the pans have to be perfectly flat? Some of my cast iron skillets (whoops never mind) are 50 years or more old and are not perfectly flat. They cook fantastic on a ga…

There is one really great use for induction stoves I found. My wife and I have a small one burner induction stove from Ikea, which is basically a high powered hot plate. Its great for putting on the table for hotpot, fondue, shabushabu, korean bbq, etc. Even though I love my gas range, I am always a little weird about putting a propane stove on my dining room table.

I really want to like your comment (and I will) but... but... hot pot, ..., korean bbq isn't the fire in the center of the table part of the entertainment the restaurant supplies?

I suppose we can always in the glorious future buy electric table candelabras with solar powered rechargeable batteries that we can place into the window light on the annoited day and be sure our dinner date at our table works out... well?

I choose the firebug spouse of mine who runs the campfires on outings and isn't afraid of a (controlled) spontaneous combustion.

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

#915

Post by shaklee3 »

lazide wrote: post #604
jnwatson wrote: post #411

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’.

Induction is better and can be cheaper

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

#916

Post by indymike »

kllrnohj wrote: post #783
indymike wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. As the owner of a 5 year old heat pump in a milder climate in Indiana, I can tell you this: * When it is under 10°F, my heat pump switches to emergency heat... forced air electric and is very expensive to run. * Often the temperature swings are pretty wild... 40-50 degr…

When your heat pump is using emergency heat yes it'd be "better" to burn natural gas to do so directly that to burn gas to make electricity to do resistive heating. However you need to look more at the average scenario to draw a complete picture. When your heat pump isn't in emergency heating then it's more efficient to burn the gas for electricity to power that heat pump than it is to burn the gas for heat (moving h…

I'd love to have gas forced-air as the emergency heat on my heat pump. Best of all worlds.

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

#917

Post by indymike »

justeleblanc wrote: post #476
indymike wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. As the owner of a 5 year old heat pump in a milder climate in Indiana, I can tell you this: * When it is under 10°F, my heat pump switches to emergency heat... forced air electric and is very expensive to run. * Often the temperature swings are pretty wild... 40-50 degr…

You bought a shitty heat pump and decided you were okay with living in a state that produces electricity using fossil fuels. What's your point again?

I bought the best product available at the time. Since Iceland is the only nation on earth that has successfully kicked the fossil fuel habit (11% of energy is produced by burning fossil fuels), I suppose you are suggesting I move there to blunt my aching conscience. I'm sure Iceland is nice, but I think I'd squander any environmental benefit flying to see my friends, relatives and immediate family.

Interesting reading: https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/countries-least-dependen...

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

#918

Post by blevin »

rayiner wrote: post #560
crooked-v wrote: post #544

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…

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.

We got a $75 portable induction unit and it’s all I ever use. Our wok works great on it, as do all our other pans except 1. Using the gas cooktop now feels like cooking with a Bic lighter. Admittedly it is not a high end expensive one.

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

#919

Post by smegger001 »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #901
kleiba wrote: post #681

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> many way more relevant factors to the taste of food then which power source was used to provide heat. Yeah, but not many more relevant ones to the actual cooking . > I bet if you did a blind tasting you'd not be able to tell the difference. You can't do a blind cooking . How often do you cook food on the stove yourself? If you do cook quite often and still insist that gas and electric stoves are equivalent, I'd be…

I have to agree with you. I grew up with electric coil stoves, and learned to cook with them, and had them most of my adult life so far until a few years ago when we bought our current home it came a gas stove/oven. I love it, I cooks so much better. Turn the knob and heat is just there now across the whole cook surface, the oven heats fast enough i don't bother to preheat anymore. the wok sucked on the coil stove.

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

#920

Post by freeflight »

realusername wrote: post #665
freeflight wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Afaik on an international level there's been a somewhat universal consent that natural gas is the "transition fossil fuel of choice" [0], due to being the fossil fuel with the lowest emissions. It also has the added bonus that gas infrastructure can realistically be retooled for green hydrogen, and related products. [0] https://www.iea.org/reports/the-role-of-gas-in-todays-energy...

I don't share this opinion personally, it would be only two times worse, it could be considered but at 50 to 100 times worse than non fossil tech, it's just not worth investing. Additionally to these environmental problems, it's one of most expensive infrastructure-wise and suffers from its storage problems, the list of potential providers is also an issue in Europe as seen during the Ukraine war (and it's not like Q…

> I don't share this opinion personally, it would be only two times worse, it could be considered but at 50 to 100 times worse than non fossil tech, it's just not worth investing.

This ain't about investments for the long term, it's about having a transition fuel into fully renewable, and that is needed for any realistic approach to the problem.

As the fossil fuel reliance doesn't only extend to the energy sector, but also manufacturing industries, where hydrocarbons, as a resource, are responsible for pretty much everything that defines modern life. [0]

> Additionally to these environmental problems, it's one of most expensive infrastructure-wise

The infrastructure is expensive, but it's also the only existing energy infrastructure which can realistically be retooled for renewable replacement through green hydrogen.

Now you can point out how hydrogen has also expensive infrastructure and even worse storage problems, which is true. But as of right now, green hydrogen is the only plausible way to wean ourselves off our fossil fuel dependence as a manufacturing resource [1].

It's a dimension to this way too few people have on their radar, as most of the public debate is solely centered on electricity generation from fossil fuels, when that's actually the easiest problem to fix with renewables.

But the dependencies on fossil fuels as manufacturing resource, fixing those is a much bigger and involved task than making electricity grids green and renewable.

[0] https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2019/11/f68/Products...

[1] https://www.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/zv/de/ueber-fraunhofer...

Post reply on HN