Heat pumps are one of the easiest ways for homeowners to fight climate change | Hacker News Reader

Heat pumps are one of the easiest ways for homeowners to fight climate change

theatlantic.com

16 pointsepistasis8 comments

Off-topic: what is it with The Atlantic and articles that rotate between 3-5 different headlines in their first ~24hrs of publication? I think I've seen 4 different headlines for this piece - you can even see it in this submission (OP's submitted title is "Heat pumps are one of the easiest ways for homeowners to fight climate change", vs. what's actually shown on theatlantic.com right now, at least for me - "You're Thinking About Home Heating Wrong"). At one point I saw a slightly different variation on the one that explicitly mentioned heat pumps, and a fourth one that invoked Tesla.

Is it an A/B testing thing? Sometimes I'll even catch one headline rendered briefly before it's replaced with something else in the same page load.

The podcast How to Save a Planet had a good episode about this subject. I liked the part about how the interview subject planned to finance this very beneficial technology for the masses.

Check it out here: https://gimletmedia.com/shows/howtosaveaplanet/mehklx8?utm_s...

I'm confused, isn't this just a high power AC unit, common in many other countries? In many countries they are used for both cooling in summer and heating in winter. Am I missing something?

It’s the same principle, but in the US I expect a “heat pump” to run well in both directions where an “air conditioner” might not have a reversing valve at all, or won’t really defrost the outside coils in cold weather.

This is correct. 'Heat pump' typically refers to the units with reversing valve although technically 'air conditioner' is also a heat hump in its generic sense.

Technology Connections posted this just an hour ago.

https://youtu.be/7J52mDjZzto

Refrigerant leaks are common and very significant sources of greenhouse gases. Common refrigerants are thousands of times more efficient than CO2.

"Thousand of times more efficient than CO2" is not a relevant comparison though. How much leakage is there versus the intended amount of burned CO2 from natural gas furnaces? How much is it versus the ~1% of methane that gets leaked from the natural gas system as it gets delivered, because methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas than CO2.

A typical line set of 1/4 tubes, running 50 feet, versus how many therms of natural gas for a winter?

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