john_shafthair

No. A heat pump requires a significantly higher amount of electricity to function.

An average gas furnace blower motor draws around 7A at 120V.

A heat pump can require between 20A-40A at *240V* PLUS the air handler which is the same as above. A heat pump air handler is just a furnace without burners. If supplemental heat strips are needed they can be on a 50A breaker at 240V.

That's not really true elsewhere. Using in-ground oil tanks is an antiquated practice that isn't used anymore. Any modern heating oil installation has the tanks either in the cellar or in the yard behind the house. Either one would immediately reveal a leak so it could be remedied quickly. Yes Seattle is full of shitty bungalows with in-ground oil tanks that have to be condemned, it is a problem and one of the many reasons Seattle sucks. I did a stint at AWS so know the area. You can get away with a heat pump or baseboard electric in Seattle because the outdoor temperature rarely dips below 30F in winter. Go to a place like Maine where the vast majority of houses use oil. There is no natural gas infrastructure and heating with electric is impractical. 30F is a 'warm' winter day. A heat pump cannot effectively deal with the frigid climate in the NE and electric space heating would be insanely expensive. Many thousands of homes are heating with oil in the northeast everyday and not turning their yards into superfund sites. There are many compromises that work for the milquetoast PNW that won't work elsewhere.

That seems pretty stupid.

While they're at it, why not update the SSH warning banner with a list of what we do and don't log on this system. As a courtesy to their adversary.

This sudo message has been the same since the dawn of time. There is literally no reason to correct it. This is the one place you don't want to be pedantic, leaking security configuration via stderr.

I agree with everything you said except there has been a war on heating oil since before this tiff with natural gas. So even suggesting that is anathema because it would be career suicide for the politicians pushing this. You can certainly use an oil furnace as a second stage, though oil is more often used as a boiler for steam or hydronic.

Literally the first sentence of their rebuttal admits it's all performative:

> Well, the risk for the environment, it's more about what gas stoves have come to represent. And that's the practice of burning natural gas in homes.

It's very possible, and might be impossible to upgrade a large multi unit building. In most jurisdictions a large renovation would force you to upgrade such things. In this case I would assume simply disallowing a gas stove without proper venting. Though I suspect the permitting process in NYC resembles something out of The Sopranos, assuming the proper permits were obtained.

Electric resistance heat is super inefficient. That's why it's often referred to as "emergency heat".

Ironically the best combo is a heat pump + natural gas furnace as a backup. Best of both worlds. But here we are making those illegal so we can pretend to save the planet.

They ARE required by code and have been for years. Parent's "luxury" apartment was not built to code. Probably one of those illegal NYC apartments where you tear open the walls and there's a whole other furnished room inside that isn't shown on the blueprints.

Not when the power's out for days - as often happens in winter storms.

You can run the blower and electronics of a natural gas furnace or boiler off a little camping generator for a week or even better a natural gas whole house unit in perpetuity.

So you don't, you know, freeze to death.