Category Archives: Energy and Climate Change

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Amanda Marcotte gaslighting on stoves

As we have previously noted, wealthy New Englanders renovating their homes on This Old House sure do love their gas heating and hot water systems, despite the climate activists and opinion columnists being given OpEd space in our major newspapers calling for bans on not just gas stoves, but gas appliances in general.

But it isn’t just the wealthy. For Season 42, the Dorchester Triple Decker in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, the show worked with the owner of a working-class triple decker house which suffered damage from a fire. Unlike the very well-off homeowners we normally see on the show, this one had serious budget constraints, as the homeowner was not wealthy by any means, and the insurance settlement for the fire wasn’t huge.

And in the season 42, episode 23 show, the installation of the gas-fired heating and hot water systems — three of them, one for each apartment — was shown. The final episode, episode 26, showed that all three kitchens, one of which was to be rented not to family but a regular tenant, had gas ranges. We have previously noted that it “seems that almost everybody prefers a gas range,” even though the climate activists don’t want people to have that choice.

Naturally, with the recent stink about the Consumer Product Safety Commission reviewing gas ranges with at least a possibility of banning them, but with that report, both the commission and the White House hurriedly denied that such was anywhere under serious consideration.

Enter the very lovely and self-proclaimed foodie Amanda Marcotte, who took a far different tack.

“Gas stoves!” freak-out is the least convincing fake Republican outrage ever

Suddenly the party that despises kale and Dijon mustard wants to pretend they’re precious about culinary techniques

by Amanda Marcotte | Thursday, January 19, 2023 | 6:00 AM EST

It’s perhaps telling that Amanda Marcotte’s Twitter biography photo was taken in a bar.

“If the maniacs in the White House come for my stove, they can pry it from my cold dead hands,” Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Tex., tweeted. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tex. — essentially a chatbot that churns out culture war nonsense — falsely accused Democratic of being hypocrites for having gas stoves they never said they intended to ban. Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., tweeted out a stove-based Gadsen flag, declaring, “don’t mess with gas stoves!” So on and so forth. Very predictable and very, very dumb.

There have been many thoughtful responses to this faux hysteria, carefully detailing how massive a lie it is, how no one is banning gas stoves, and how Republicans gin up these pretend panics to avoid talking about real issues. “Everything becomes identity politics,” Alex Shephard writes for The New Republic. “The right has long since stopped trying to come up with solutions to problems like climate change.”

Here’s where Miss Marcotte fails: conservatives have recognized that many of the articles I linked above supporting the elimination of gas ranges also called for the elimination of all gas appliances, particularly gas furnaces, in favor of heat pumps. Continue reading →

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Al Gore’s unhinged rant at Davos The best thing George W Bush ever did was to keep Al Gore and John Kerry out of the White House

We previously noted how Special Envoy for Climate John Kerry told attendees at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that they were a “select group of human beings” who got to talk about saving Mother Gaia from global warming climate change emergency, something about which Robert Stacy McCain wrote in more detail. Not unexpectedly, Mr Kerry was not the only former Democratic presidential nominee to go off anything that could have been considered a preplanned script. Mr Kerry’s remarks were certainly impolitic, as talking to other patricians about how they need to guide the plebeians’ actions is not something which is likely to endear the commoners to Mr Kerry’s, and the other Davos denizens’, ideas, but at least he didn’t go off on an unhinged rant.

Al Gore goes on ‘unhinged’ rant about ‘rain bombs,’ boiled oceans, other climate threats at Davos

Gore claimed climate change could ultimately end mankind’s ability for ‘self-governance’

by Gabriel Hays | Fox News | Wednesday, January 18, 2023 | 12:30 PM EST

Climate activist and former Vice President Al Gore recently went on an “unhinged” rant on the dangers of climate change at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Gore’s speech, which involved him yelling about climate change “boiling the oceans,” causing freak weather occurrences like “rain bombs” and ultimately affecting humanity’s ability for “self-governance,” made for quite the spectacle on the world stage and on social media.

The former U.S. leader and current WEF agenda contributor spoke on the Davos stage in front of the global community urging drastic action on protecting the environment and combating climate change.

One thing is certain: for all of his other faults, we owe the younger George Bush an incalculable debt of gratitude for keeping Messrs Gore and Kerry out of the White House!

You can watch Mr Gore’s rant on the video, below the fold: Continue reading →

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In which Lurch says the quiet part out loud! John Kerry let us know just how special he is!

Former Senator John F Kerry (D-MA), the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, then Secretary of State under President Barack Hussein Obama, and now President Joe Biden’s Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, knows just how special he is!

That “select group of human beings”? How were they selected? Mostly by how much money they have.

Also read: Robert Stacy McCain: Kerry at Davos: ‘A Select Group of Human Beings 
 Talk About Saving the Planet’

Mr Kerry is wealthy too, having made his fortune the old fashioned way: he married it! Before he married Theresa Heinz, the widow of Senator John Heinz (R-PA), and heir to the Heinz food empire, Mr Kerry “had little more than his annual Senate salary of $133,600 and a trust fund valued at $50,000 to $100,000. When his mother died in 2002, he inherited trusts with $300,000 to $1.5 million in assets,” nothing to sneeze at, but nowhere near his current net worth of $250 million.

So, the hoitiest and the toitiest get to fly, many on private jets, gather together in a posh Swiss ski resort, where they can vacation with their wives and mistresses, and tell those of us who are not so hoity and toity how we must live. I have frequently referred to the Patricians and the plebeians, and the distinguished Mr Kerry decided to give the rest of us an illustration of just what those words mean.

We plebeians, of course, don’t usually have anywhere near Mr Kerry’s $250 million, and surveys have revealed that 49% of Americans would have a difficult time with an unexpected $400 expense, but Mr Kerry, his “select group of human beings,” and the well-off all seem to think that they can simply impose, by government fiat, a whole bunch of additional expenses on us to fight global warming climate change.

Well, not just no, but Hell no!

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No, they’re not going after just your gas stove; the #ClimateChange activists want to get rid of all of your gas appliances.

We were told that no, the government isn’t coming for your gas stove. We were told that it was just gaslighting — pardon the very much intended pun — of conservatives. But I sure am seeing a lot of advocacy articles in my media sources from people who want to do just that, ban gas stoves.

Gas stoves should be banned in Philadelphia

After the Port Richmond explosion, the city must transition away from gas and toward electricity.

by Zakaria Hsain and Erin K. Reagan | Tuesday, January 17, 2023 | 5:00 AM EST

Erin K Reagan, from her LinkedIn biography page.[1]Zakaria Hsain is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. Erin K. Reagan is a doctoral candidate at the University of Pennsylvania.

Erin Reagan? Not the Erin Reagan played by Bridget Moynahan on Blue Bloods? 🙂 No? Well, it is difficult to disagree with a pretty redhead, but, alas! I must.

Every day, Philadelphians are exposed to silent health hazards from gas stoves, boilers, and heaters. Gas appliances release dangerously high levels of pollutants, even when turned off. Many of these pollutants are toxic, carcinogenic, or associated with a higher risk of asthma and other respiratory diseases, particularly in children.

Ahhh, there you have it! Dr Hsain and Miss Reagan aren’t just after your gas stove, but all of your natural gas appliances, including boilers and heaters.

Of course, Dr Hsain and Miss Reagan know, or should know, that modern gas appliances do not have the pilot lights to which they referred when they stated that gas appliances are releasing pollutants even when turned off. Rather, they have electric sparks which ignite the gas when the appliances are activated. Yes, older gas appliances do have those things, but as remodels and rebuilds gradually replace the older appliances, the pilot light appliances are gradually being reduced.

The evidence is overwhelming, and it clearly shows that using gas in residential buildings is dangerous to the lives, health, and long-term welfare of Philadelphians. Just as the new year began, Philadelphia’s Port Richmond neighborhood was rocked by an explosion that destroyed three houses and left many injured and traumatized. Some pipeline safety experts say that the cause may have been a gas leak, though an ongoing Philadelphia Gas Works (PGW) investigation found no flaws in its distribution lines.

When it was reported that no gas line leaks were discovered, my mind went instantly to one thought: meth lab! Of course, I have no information at all confirming such, but if there were no gas line leaks, then a gas explosion had to be cause by something other than the problems the authors attribute to the gas infrastructure in parts of the 769-word OpEd that I have not quoted.

City leaders and PGW may promise to upgrade or better maintain an aging, nearly 6,000-mile-long gas distribution network to mitigate the risk of explosions, but this does little to address the other health and climate risks. Additionally, maintaining this network may expose PGW to financial distress and stranded asset risk if the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which Pennsylvania recently joined, should impose carbon pricing on gas utilities.

And not only maintaining but improving and increasing the electrical production and distribution network will not? How many older homes in the City of Brotherly Love have only 100-amphere electric service? To run the “heat pumps, electric resistance and induction stoves, and electric space heaters” the authors said should replace gas appliances in a paragraph further down requires modern, 200-amp service. Do you have any idea what it costs to have a qualified, licensed electrician — particularly in a union-dominated city like Philly — upgrade electrical service?

More, heat pump HVAC systems use forced air duct work, but if you live in a Philly row home in which your natural gas or heating oil boiler pumped hot water or steam into cast iron radiators, you’ll need all-new ductwork installed as well. Did the authors consider that?

The propane fireplace that is our secondary heat source. It sure is nice on really cold days.

The heat pump that is the primary heating unit in our home is powered by two 220-volt, 50-amp circuits, one for the condenser, and one for the HVAC unit. The HVAC unit has an emergency heat setting, in which electric heating elements are activated when it’s too cold outside for the condenser to draw much heat from the outside air. Then add another 220-volt, 40- or 50-amp circuit for the electric or induction ranges Dr Hsain and Miss Reagan want you to use, plus a 220-volt, 30- or 40-amp circuit for an electric clothes dryer, and you’re talking about some real electric demand.

We have the supplemental, and occasionally backup, heat source of a gas — propane, actually, since there is no natural gas available out in our rural area — fireplace. When the electricity fails — and, delivered via overhead wires, electricity is our most vulnerable-to-the-weather utility — our propane fireplace, range (not the oven) and water heater still work. As we have previously noted, we’ve been without electricity for 4Âœ days due to winter storms.

The authors, further down, state that the city:

should introduce a retailer rebate program to incentivize the installation of electric appliances, modify its building code to mandate electrification of new residential buildings, and set minimum energy-efficiency standards that would encourage the adoption of efficient electric appliances in existing buildings and improve insulation and construction practices. In all this, the city should prioritize the electrification of public housing units and provide direct financial assistance to low-income homeowners.

While some fear that electrification would be cost-prohibitive, costs to property owners can be kept modest if no new buildings are connected to gas, gas appliances are replaced as their lifetimes end, and the city commits to providing financial and technical assistance to households. To further defray the costs of electrification, the city can apply for federal funding through the $550 million Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant program, as well as encourage eligible homeowners to benefit from up to $14,000 in federal incentives provided through the Inflation Reduction Act.

The last time I heard, Philadelphians also pay federal taxes, so it isn’t as though “federal incentives” don’t somehow cost city residents money.

Philadelphia’s leaders must get serious about the dangers of gas. Enacting policies that advance building electrification, while transitioning PGW to an alternative business model, is the only way to effectively safeguard the health and well-being of Philadelphians, now and in the future.

Dr Hsain and Miss Reagan write as though there are no dangers in electricity, but as someone who has done electrical work, I can assure you that there are. Electrical circuits improperly installed can lead to fires, and with the costs of getting licensed, professional electricians to install upgraded service and the additional wiring required to operate the new electrical appliances the authors want you to have, it’s not too difficult to imagine some homeowners or their jackleg brothers-in-law doing that work instead. Electric space heaters, which the authors mentioned as things people could use in their sixth paragraph, have caused, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, about 1,100 house fires across the country every year, roughly 32% of all home heating-caused house fires. Yet, with the heat pumps the authors advocate being relatively poor performers in extremely hot, on the air conditioning side, or extremely cold outside weather, people will be using those electric space heaters.

We have reported how well-to-do New Englanders, people living in very Democratic states, still love to have modern gas heating, ranges and water heaters installed during expensive remodels, because gas heating simply works best in the cold-weather states. Electricity is the primary heating ‘fuel’ only in the southeastern United States, with our milder winters in which heat pumps can usually keep up.[2]In the more rural southeast, fewer homes have natural gas service available, and it is much easier to run electric lines to homes separated from others by some distance. We have propane on our farm. Even the brutally cold days, of which we do get a few, don’t normally last too many days in a row.

The northeast? Heating systems are most frequently fueled by natural gas or heating oil, because those systems simply provide more heat than electric heat pumps. People use what is available to them, and what actually works well. Dr Hsain and Miss Reagan either don’t understand that, or if they do, simply don’t care. The Patricians have never really cared about the burdens they impose on the plebeians.

References

References
↑1 Zakaria Hsain is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. Erin K. Reagan is a doctoral candidate at the University of Pennsylvania.
↑2 In the more rural southeast, fewer homes have natural gas service available, and it is much easier to run electric lines to homes separated from others by some distance. We have propane on our farm.
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The left are pro-choice on exactly one thing It's just that Our Betters know better than you how to run your life

The Food Network’s Molly Yeh, the only TV cook I’ve seen who uses an electric range. Click to enlarge.

It was just yesterday that we noted how the global warming climate change emergency activists want to require new homes being built, and older homes to be retrofitted, with electric heat, primarily heat pump HVAC — heating, ventilation, and air conditioning — systems. That the power might fail in the middle of winter, well, that never seemed to be a serious concern to them, even though with home electricity being primarily delivered via overhead wires, our electric utilities are the ones most vulnerable to weather-related and other damage.

We have also previously noted that it “seems that almost everybody prefers a gas range,” even though the climate activists don’t want people to have that choice.

Well, now the Biden Administration is taking a different tack, not pushing global warming climate change emergency reasons, but your kids’ health. From the New York Post:

Biden administration weighs nationwide ban on gas stoves: report

By Mark Moore | Monday, January 9, 2023 | 4:39 PM EST | Updated: Tuesday, January 10, 2023 | 8:40 AM EST

Millions of Americans may soon be entering “not stove season.”

Our remodeled kitchen, including the propane range! All of the work except the red quartz countertops was done by my family and me. Click to enlarge.

The Biden administration is considering a nationwide ban on gas stoves — citing the harmful pollutants released by the appliances, according to a report.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission is mulling the action after recent studies showed emissions from the devices can cause health and respiratory problems, Bloomberg reported Monday.

“This is a hidden hazard,” CPSC Commissioner Richard Trumka Jr. told the outlet. “Any option is on the table. Products that can’t be made safe can be banned.”

Reports by groups including the American Chemical Society and New York University Law School’s Institute for Policy Integrity found gas stoves — which are used in about 40% of US homes while the remainder use various forms of electric cookers — emit pollutants like nitrogen dioxide, ca​rbon monoxide and fine matter at levels deemed unsafe by the Environmental Protection Agency and World Health Organization.

The studies also linked gas stoves to respiratory illness, cardiovascular problems, cancer​ and other health conditions.​

There’s more at the original, and, unlike so many newspapers, the Post’s stories are not hidden behind a paywall. And yeah, I’m proud of my craftsmanship, so I’m willing to use yet another excuse to show off the kitchen I remodeled. 🙂

But there’s more. Here’s a bit more detail from the linked Bloomberg article:

Natural gas stoves, which are used in about 40% of homes in the US, emit air pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide and fine particulate matter at levels the EPA and World Health Organization have said are unsafe and linked to respiratory illness, cardiovascular problems, cancer, and other health conditions, according to reports by groups such as the Institute for Policy Integrity and the American Chemical Society. Consumer Reports, in October, urged consumers planning to buy a new range to consider going electric after tests conducted by the group found high levels of nitrogen oxide gases from gas stoves.

Further down:

The Bethesda, Maryland-based Consumer Product Safety Commission, which has a staff of roughly 500, plans to open public comment on hazards posed by gas stoves later this winter. Besides barring the manufacture or import of gas stoves, options include setting standards on emissions from the appliances, Trumka said.

Lawmakers have weighed in, asking the commission to consider requiring warning labels, range hoods and performance standards. In a letter to the agency in December, lawmakers including Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey and Representative Don Beyer of Virginia, both Democrats, urged action and called gas-stove emissions a “cumulative burden” on Black, Latino and low-income households that disproportionately experience air pollution.

Well, of course the Distinguished Gentleman from New Jersey is going to find a racial angle in all of this!

If you don’t have an electric range, and want to install one, you’ll need a special circuit and receptacle for an electric range. Normally this will require a NEMA-14 receptacle, and a 240-volt, 30-amphere circuit. Do you have the knowledge, tools, and skills to install such a circuit? You do? Great! You don’t? Open your wallet again, and call an electrician.

As always, there’s more. As I noted in yesterday’s article, during our remodel we installed not just a propane — there’s no natural gas service out in the boondocks — range, but a propane water heater and propane fireplace. That fireplace has really helped, when the weather gets brutally cold and the heat pump that is our primary heating source couldn’t quite keep up, and when the electricity has gone out before. Propane fireplaces are as clean burning as an electric range top, and do not require a flue, but if the logic of the Consumer Product Safety Commission is held valid by federal regulators for gas ranges, then the same logic would apply to gas fireplaces.

And remember: the Environmental Protection Agency has already put in new regulations for wood stoves. The federal government have absolutely no reservations about imposing regulations on people’s homes.

I am not naĂŻve enough to think that the calls of the global warming climate change emergency activists have had no impact on how the Consumer Product Safety Commission does its business; claims that this is just for our health will be magnified by claims that banning gas ranges is an environmental necessity. But the American people prefer gas ranges; that’s why you see even the wealthy, very blue state New Englanders installing gas ranges during home remodels on This Old House.

The Patricians have absolutely no problem telling the plebeians how to live their lives. If it was only a matter of them telling us what we should do, that would be an exercise in their freedom of speech. But the problem is that the Patricians in government want to exercise governmental power, and force people to do as they say, and that must be resisted, that must be fought.

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The #ClimateChange activists really, really don’t understand how many Americans live They just blithely claim we can go out and spend $10,000 to $20,000 on things they insist we need

It was early Monday morning, March 12, 2018, when we received five inches of heavy, wet snow at our farm in Estill County, Kentucky, and we lost electricity, in our all-electric home, sometime before 4:30 AM. No, I’m not relying on memory; I’m actually kind of obsessive about recording things in my At-A-Glance Daily Diary, and I have a whole shelf of them, dating back to 1986, missing only 2001’s, which was lost somehow.

Fortunately, it was 42Âș F and sunny outside by afternoon, which helped some, but it still got down to 52Âș F inside the house. My wife, having to work the following day, drove to Lexington to stay at our daughter’s apartment, so she could do something really radical like take a shower in the morning. There was just enough sort-of warm water in the water heater for me to take a quick shower on Tuesday morning. While my wife could leave, I had to stay at home to care for the critters.

To make a long story short, we finally got sparktricity back at 4:54 PM on Thursday, March 15th. It had gotten as cool as 37Âș F inside the house, though warmer in my bedroom, which I heated with sunshine through the window and my own body heat. The high for that day was 58Âș F, so that helped some. I wonder how bad things would have gotten if we had lost power for 4Âœ days in mid-January.

Thus, it was with somewhat of a jaundiced eye that I noticed a series of tweets:

Dan Walters: These power outages have me even more appreciative of having a gas-fired stove, so we can at least have hot food. Something to ponder as officialdom tries to make homes all-electric

panama bartholomy: By now we recognize that burning gas in buildings is one of our leading air polluters, more than cars and power plants combined, part of the reason we have terrible air in CA. We can’t clean up our air and continue to burn gas. We also cannot run a gas system just for cooking (1)

panama bartholomy: If we replaced all of our furnaces with amazing 400% efficient heat pumps (http://bit.ly/3CuNhOU) and water heaters with heat pump water heaters we could cut over 90% of gas use to buildings and have dramatically better air. (2)

The embedded link led to this OpEd in The Washington Post:

Why everyone is going to need a heat pump

By Robert Gebelhoff, Assistant editor and Opinions contributor | January 4, 2023 | 2:43 PM EST

For anyone using fossil fuels to heat their homes, I have good and bad news.

The bad: You’re going to want to replace that system with heat pumps eventually, and it might be expensive. The good: The government can help you, and the change will have huge benefits for you and the world.

Oh, the government can help us? How will the government help us?

These heating and cooling systems, once considered useful only in warmer climates, have in the past few years become far more sophisticated. They are now the best chance we have to phase out fossil fuels as a means of heating and could set the stage for a climate policy revolution. . . . .

Americans are not yet as enthusiastic, but policymakers in many states recognize heat pumps’ potential. A New York commission recently approved a plan to require all new houses built in the state after 2025 to use electric systems rather than those running on natural gas, oil or propane. After 2030, it seeks to require homeowners to replace all fossil-fuel-burning systems with non-carbon-emitting ones once they give out.

New York’s approach is the most aggressive in the country, but it’s by no means alone. Fifteen states and more than 100 cities have plans to encourage heat pump installation. The federal government is in on the strategy, too. The Inflation Reduction Act provides generous rebates and tax incentives for those who install the devices, and the Energy Department has dedicated $250 million to increase their production.

Really? Generous rebates and tax incentives? In March of 2021, we had to replace our heat pump based HVAC — heating, ventilation and air conditioning — system due to the record-setting flooding on the Kentucky River. The rising waters destroyed the old system, but while they got into the crawl space, they did not get into our house itself. Replacing the old system was $6,100, $6,100 we didn’t want to spend. The price was lower for us in that the ductwork from the previous system was still in place and usable. Fortunately, we had the cash to do it, though I wonder just how many of my eastern Kentucky neighbors could say the same.

And if you are living paycheck-to-paycheck, $6,100 is a lot of money, money you have to pay up front to get your new HVAC system installed, months before you ever see those generous rebates and tax incentives. While the numbers fluctuate, surveys in May of 2022 showed that 49% of Americans didn’t have the cash available to handle an unexpected $400 expense.

Can people in such close financial straits get the credit to have a new HVAC system installed when they don’t have the cash?

These efforts are well worth the expense. Consider that buildings consume about 40 percent of all energy in the United States. Residential buildings alone contribute to about 20 percent of U.S. carbon emissions, with half heated by burning fossil fuels.

This is where Robert Gebelhoff, an Assistant editor and Opinions contributor for The Washington Post, tells us just how much he doesn’t understand much of America. “These efforts,” he wrote, “are well worth the expense.” Well, perhaps to someone who has a relatively high position for one of our nation’s most famous and important newspapers, (probably) earns a decent salary — and no, I couldn’t find Mr Gebelhoff’s salary or net worth — and could, I assume, afford that expense. And never forger: Mr Gebelhoff once blithely wrote, “NASA’s latest gamble might not pay out, but it’s worth the $2 billion anyway“. But both my wife and I grew up poor, and if we’re not poor now, having retired back to Our Old Kentucky Home, we can and do see plenty of poorer people living around us.

Heat pumps, in contrast, simply move heat from the outside air or ground inside — even during frigid winter months.

They do? Technically, yes, that’s how they operate. But taking heat from the outside air, when the outside air is 10Âș F, isn’t quite the same thing as doing so when it’s 45Âș F. That’s part of the reason why, as we have pointed out previously, wealthy New Englanders, when going through expensive home remodeling on Thie Old House, chose gas heating systems. We have also previously noted that it “seems that everybody wants a gas range,” even though the climate activists don’t want people to have that choice. Today’s left appear to be pro-choice on exactly one thing.

Our remodeled kitchen, including the propane range! All of the work except the red quartz countertops was done by my family and me. Click to enlarge.

Us? We remodeled our kitchen — the whole house was a livable but nevertheless fixer-upper home when we bought it — in 2018, after the power-outage but still planned before it, and we added what my wife wanted, a gas, propane actually, since there’s no natural gas service in our rural area, range, a propane water heater — our electric one was on its last legs anyway, so we needed to replace it — and a propane fireplace. When it got down to -5Âș F over the Christmas holiday, and our heat-pump based HVAC really couldn’t keep up, that fireplace kept it nice and warm at home. When the floods of 2021 destroyed the old heat-pump HVAC system, the propane fireplace kept us warm.

We had, of course, learned our lesson in our previous home in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania. We got fourteen inches of heavy, wet snow on Christmas Day of 2002, and yes, the power failed there as well. We had a heating oil fired steam boiler for our heating system, but it still required a 110-voly, 20-amphere electric circuit to activate the boiler and run the pump. The power was restored at around 6:30 PM . . . on December 26th. We subsequently added a woodstove, which was easy enough, because the previous owner had installed a hearth and chimney for one.[1]If we had to replace that system with a heat-pump based HVAC one, it would have been very expensive. Not only would it need to be a system with 50% more capacity than the one we have here, because … Continue reading

A cheery fire in our wood stove in Jim Thorpe, December 18, 2016.

Would it be superstitious of me to note that we never had a subse-quent power failure of more than a few hours since we installed the alternate heating systems? 🙂

Naturally, I haven’t quoted every word of Mr Gebelhoff’s original, but, further down is this:

This is why heat pumps often save energy costs in the long term, even though they can be expensive to install, especially when replacing existing systems. Cost estimates vary widely depending on the size and age of a house, ranging from as low as $3,000 to upwards of $20,000.

How blithely he wrote that! Yes, heat pumps “often save energy costs in the long run,” but it’s that “expensive to install” part that one of the Washington elite just doesn’t get: you have to have the money to install them in the first place, and that “upwards of $20,000” part isn’t always easy for people. When 49% of Americans, hit hard by inflation in 2022, can’t handle an unexpected $400 expense, how does Mr Gebelhoff expect them to write a check for ten or twenty grand?

One last paragraph from Mr Gebelhoff:

Naturally, efforts to push consumers to embrace heat pumps have generated much anxiety on the right. Republicans in New York have panned their state’s plan as “radical” and claimed it will leave residents “in the dark and in the cold.” But policymakers must not flinch. Yes, retrofitting homes can be expensive. The answer is to offset the costs with subsidies, as many states are already doing.

With this, the Post’s columnist was right there on the cusp, right at the point of realizing that yes, the power can go out, but if he did realize it, he never mentioned it; there isn’t a single word in his column telling us what people who are completely committed to all-electric heat would do in sub-freezing weather — something fairly common in the winter in New York state, when the electricity failed. When Buffalo and Watertown and the other areas in upstate New York get hammered by three or four feet of lake-effect snow, power outages are frequent. If they happened to be dependent upon the type of fuel-oil burner that my family had in Pennsylvania, or the gas furnace my daughter had installed in her home in Lexington when her heat-pump powered HVAC system failed, a simple, gasoline-powered generator that can be bought at Home Despot or Lowe’s can provide the current the 110-volt, 20-amp circuit such systems use to keep their homes warm. A heat pump? The system I have here is on two separate — one for the exterior condenser and one for the crawl space unit — 220-volt, 50-amp circuits. That’s going to require a much larger, much more expensive generator.

Mr Gebelhoff isn’t stupid; you don’t get hired by The Washington Post if you’re an idiot. But, living in the liberal Washington bubble, he is seemingly ignorant about how many Americans live. Not to pick solely on him — his OpEd column is simply a catalyst for mine — but this is a common problem amongst the climate change activists: they simply do not understand the problems that so many Americans work, and can be completely airy-fairy about suggesting policies which will make Americans poorer.

References

References
↑1 If we had to replace that system with a heat-pump based HVAC one, it would have been very expensive. Not only would it need to be a system with 50% more capacity than the one we have here, because the house was 50% larger, but since the system in Pennsylvania was used steam radiators rather than forced air ducts, we’d have had to have those installed as well, in a house built in 1890.
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How wealthy New Englanders fight #ClimateChange

It was last January that we noted the Westerly Ranch House project on one of my favorite shows, This Old House.

The [ughh!] Magnolia Network is, this Saturday morning, running reruns of This Old House, season 41, originally broadcast in 2019-2020, a major, expensive, remodel of a home in Westerly, Washington County, Rhode Island. Westerly is a beach resort town which in the 2020 election gave 55.6% of its votes to Joe Biden; Washington County as a whole voted 58.57% to 39.20% for Mr Biden.

And what did the obviously wealthy homeowners, in liberal Rhode Island, in a show originally meant for the liberal Public Broadcasting System, choose for this project? One episode shows the installation of a 1,000 gallon underground propane tank, for their heating system, their water heater, their range, and their fireplace.

Now we return to another This Old House project, the Seaside Victorian Cottage, in Narragansett, Rhode Island. According to Wikipedia, voters there gave 5,333 votes, 59.1% of the total to Joe Biden, and only 3,551, 39.3%, to President Trump in 2020. Now, I don’t know how the obviously well-to-do homeowners specifically voted; there’s always a chance that they were smarter than the majority of their neighbors and voted for Mr Trump.

This series was hard dated: the initial walk-through was just prior to the COVID panicdemic beginning, and ran through the summer and into the fall of 2020, as the Democrats were running on global warming climate change, and touting their proposals to fight it and dramatically reduce or eliminate the use of fossil fuels.

But one thing I noticed, and for which I specifically looked, was the energy source they planned. And there it was, in the second episode — season 42, episode 6 — the remodeling contractor said that there would be a 1,000 gallon propane tank installed in the back yard. Richard Trethewey, the plumber and HVAC expert for the show, showing us in a later episode, that a new, modulating gas furnace was installed.

Yup, once again, those wealthy New Englanders aren’t going for electric heat pumps, but warm, dependable gas heating for the cold, Rhode Island winters. Their HVAC system appears to allow the large, new exterior condensers to be used for heating as well, but the gas furnace is new and in place.

More, the homeowners had a new, fairly sizable gas fireplace installed, as you can see in the photo to the left. More, they had a gas fireplace installed outside, on their backyard patio.

The kitchen features an oversized Wolf gas range.

Episode 9 has Mr Trethewey telling us about the water heating system. The homeowners are going with a more efficient ‘instant’ hot water system, but, anticipating higher demand, they’ll have three instant hot water units, all gas fired, linked.

The final show of the series showed us, very briefly, that a new, large propane-powered generator had been installed in the back yard, so the homeowners wouldn’t have to worry about losing sparktricity in a New England nor’easter.

Now, I certainly don’t begrudge the homeowners for the opportunity they had, and the money they were able to put into a dilapidated home. I was unable to find a value on the house, but similar homes in the area are valued at over a million bucks. But the city of Narragansett, which has an historical commission very interested in keeping the exterior of the home in keeping with the neighborhood, and local city permit agencies, apparently had no objection to the extensive use of propane in the remodeled home.

So, when I read how the climate change activists want to push people to “Electrify (their lives) in 2023 to fight climate change,” I note that the people who can afford to remodel extensively in high cost areas love them some natural gas or propane service!

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Our Betters are so very much smarter than we are that I’m certain, certain! that they have a plan for all of this

We noted Friday evening that Louisville Gas and Electric Company and Kentucky Utilities were asking customers to reduce their electric consumption during this bitterly cold snap, and even then KU was employing “brief service interruptions” to reduce demand. I’m not sure what good that does: as people’s heat goes out for an hour, that just means they’ll have to use it more after the sparktricity is restored to get their homes back up to the desired temperature.

Now there’s this, from The Philadelphia Inquirer, on Christmas Eve:

Bitter cold prompts call for electricity conservation until Christmas morning

PJM Interconnection is asking consumers to voluntarily limit their electricity usage until 10 a.m. Christmas Day to avoid the need to implement short blackout periods.

by Lynette Hazleton | Saturday, December 24, 2022

With winter storms raging and temperatures plunging to the lowest in decades, PJM Interconnection is asking consumers to voluntarily limit their electricity usage until 10 a.m. Christmas Day to avoid the need to implement short blackout periods.

“If we don’t have enough supply to meet demand then sometimes, on rare occasions, we will have rotating outages,” said PJM spokesman Jeff Shields.

During a rotating outage, different regions of PJM’s service area would be intentionally taken off the grid for about an hour. “We’ve seen that consumer conservation efforts can really help, and we need it now,” Shields said.

PJM is asking consumers to hold off using their largest appliances, such as washing machines and dryers as well as taking a shower and using hair dryers.

So dirty bodies in dirty clothes, right? Nope, no lovin’ tonight, honey.

PJM Interconnection isn’t an electric generation company itself, but a regional transmission organization which manages the power distribution grid serving all or parts of Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia. That does not include my part of Kentucky!

I’ve asked this question before, but I’ll ask it again: if the current electric power generation and transmission system cannot handle an unusual but hardly unprecedented bitterly cold snap now, how can it handle things when the Biden Administration is pushing for all new cars to be plug in electrics just 13 years from now, and the global warming climate change emergency activists want all new homes, and older homes as well, converted over to electric heat, as well as banning gas ranges?

According to Statista, slightly over half of the homes in the keystone State use natural gas as their primary home heating fuel, with another 15.88% using home heating oil or kerosene. My previous home in Jim Thorpe had a heating oil-fired steam boiler for heat, but we also added a wood stove as both a backup for times when the electricity failed — the boiler still required electricity to operate — and it evened out the heat in the one-zone boiler.

Only 23.5% of Pennsylvania homes were heated primarily with a heat pump or electric baseboard heat.

Our heating oil boiler ran on a single 110-volt, 20-amp circuit. I also installed two baseboard units, one in the living room and another in the kitchen, which were on 220-volt, 30-amphere circuits each. Now in the Bluegrass State, our primary heating system, an electric heat pump, is on two 220-volt circuits, 30-amps for the outside condenser, and 50-amps for the crawlspace unit, which does include ’emergency heat’ circuits for use during extreme cold. Of course, we also have a propane fireplace, which is not only a great back-up for when we lose electricity, but sure is nice when it’s bitterly cold outside.

So, just how the heck do the activists think that our power-generation capabilities, expanded solely with solar, wind and non-fossil-fueled sources, can handle greatly increased demand for power by increasing electricity’s share of home heating, and most automobiles being plug-in electrics?

Of course, Our Betters are so very much smarter than we are that I’m certain, certain! that they have a plan for all of this, right? Perhaps the fairy dust and unicorn farts they expect us to use do not emit CO2?