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Comment by MAGZine | Hacker News Reader

Sf did a similar ban because gas infrastructure is leaky over time. Expensive to maintain, bad for your health, bad for the environment.

I'm not sure who these people are that sit around and scheme about how to craft laws who fuck over people they'll never meet.

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> scheme about how to craft laws who fuck over people they'll never meet

No one, they just don't consider that effects on peoples' lives. Sure, natural gas isn't great for indoor air quality, but it's easily mitigated by cracking a window or some airflow. Getting stuck with a cheap electric cook top makes cooking a lot more miserable and unreliable and there's nothing you can do to improve the situation if every apartment is built that way.

I love cooking on my gas stove but it's also worth noting that Julia Child filmed The French Chef on electric coils. They are certainly not ideal but they are also far from the worst thing you could be forced to deal with in the kitchen.

Saying that one of the most famous chef's ever cooked on a crappy range is a poor argument for legally banning the alternative. You, as you've mentioned like myself prefer a gas range. I gladly acknowledge that induction is equally suitable. However banning gas in new apartment construction forces people by law to use the thing we both agree isn't very good, sine few building will be built with induction.

I honestly don't know all the tradeoffs here. I lived with electric coils for a few years when I was in a rental apartment and somehow we were still happy. It's not ideal but I can certainly picture criteria under which it's the optimal policy.

The point about Julia Child is that she was creating works of art using this supposedly unusable tool. If she can manage that, your average Joe should be able to bang together some burgers and saute some vegetables on one.

That doesn't really follow. An inferior tool may be prohibitively hard to use for a beginner while an expert effortlessly compensates.

It doesn't follow in the sense of being a formal logical syllogism, but it is nonetheless true. You can learn to cook on electric coils. Millions of people have. You can make both beginner and expert food on them. And Childs' use of them is evidence, but not proof, of this fact.

Hello, rdI*

r*d*l*?

I didn't know what the big deal was and thought it was silly until I actually lived in a place with a gas stove. Definitely motivated me to cook more. Induction also excellent. I'm not saying I physically can't cook with electric but it's unpleasant

A cheap gas cooktop is by far the worst possible stovetop out there, far far worse than electric. They are so slow, ineffectual pieces of crap. At least electric can always get really hot. But there are so many gas ranges these days that don't focus the heat in the right place by having bad grill designs. Id take the average cheap coil electric range over gas any day. And id take induction over that.

And by comparison, a nice gas range is significantly superior to all of the electric cooktops I've ever used. By nice gas range, I mean one of the 6-burner types on one side, griddle on the other, and double side by side ovens. I'd happily electrify the rest of the building if it was economical to do so (it's still not in many places), but having gas for cooking is the one hard, non-negotiable feature I have in a property.

I suspect the average lawmaker does not take cooking seriously, which I think is fairly sad.

I’ve read that gas cooking produces about twice as much PM2.5 as electric cooking.

Some of that can probably be mitigated with good fume extraction, but it’s a consideration.

Induction has huge advantages over gas, I’m seeing it increasingly used in newer high end homes. Gas wins out on lower end luxury builds given that a gas stove is much cheaper than an induction stove.

> but it's easily mitigated by cracking a window

Uh, the air pollution of a typical urban street is a _disaster_.

Not in NYC where the AQI hasn't been above 50 for more than 3 years and often hovers in the mid 20s. Your indoor air-quality is almost certainly worse.

Saying you can just open a window takes the problem too lightly, I believe gas stoves like the risk of childhood asthma by the realm of 40% [1]? I think we’re going to at least be talking about mandatory hoods over the range considering they contribute to a significant amount of all respiratory issues despite reasonable alternatives existing.

Gas sure bets induction especially when filling up a large skillet with food. People can adopt though. It really wasn’t very long ago when cooking was mostly done with wood.

Personally I would just impose a tax on new hookups and more regulations before I actually banned gas though, but there is justification for government intervention when people are pumping highly flammable toxic and environmentally destructive gases into businesses and residences for the sake of making a better omelette.

The only really strong argument I see for gas is that reducing heating expenses has a substantial effect on local poverty.

[1] https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/42/6/1724/737113

On one hand you got people that think the government is always scheming against them. One the other I have a couple of friends that actually served on various governmental boards. The latter think wealthy influential crooks are usually the ones scheming.

No, my claim was that city governments often pass laws without thinking about how ti might effect average people.

My claim is that's because you don't pay any attention to what your city government does and so you only notice when they mess up. But never when they don't.

I pay a lot of attention and do notice when they are effective, but that's mostly expected.

Also SF is bad at infrastructure safety- https://missionlocal.org/2021/12/gas-lines-embedded-in-concr...

It doesn't get cold in SF.

I don't understand why people say things like this. According to a quick search, it's 8°C right now and is forecasted to be as low as 3°C later this week.

I know that it's not Montana, but the vast majority of people aren't walking around in T-shirts in almost-freezing weather. These temperatures are pretty objectively cold, if you ask me.

FWIW, I've been to SF, but have never lived there. I am from (and currently live in) a much colder city. Even during summers where I've been to SF, I've experienced significant wind chills which have forced me to wear a hoodie.

> I don't understand why people say things like this. According to a quick search, it's 8°C right now and is forecasted to be as low as 3°C later this week.

That's still above freezing, which some may not consider "cold".

For example, even 'basic' heat pumps, the ones that look exactly the same as AC-only boxes, can typically work down to 5C. However once you drop down freezing and into the negatives (C) you tend to need mini-split systems. That's what the GP may mean when the word "cold" was used.

It's not everyone else's job to work around someone using words incorrectly to make nonsensical comments.

What's a mini split system?

> Mini-splits are heating and cooling systems that allow you to control the temperatures in individual rooms or spaces.

* https://www.fujitsugeneral.com/us/residential/what-is-a-mini...

> A single-zone (also called a mini-split) ductless system allows you to control the temperature of one room by connecting an outdoor unit to an indoor unit, with no ductwork needed. An outdoor mini-split unit is placed outside your home and is connected to an indoor mini-split unit by small cables and a refrigerant line through a hole in the wall.

* https://www.trane.com/residential/en/products/ductless-syste...

> A multi-zone (also called a multi-split) ductless system connects an outdoor unit to an one or more indoor units, letting you control the temperature in several different zones of your home. Variable Refrigerant Flow (VRF) systems are a type of multi-zone ductless systems. VRF systems are energy efficient, and they can be used to heat one zone while cooling a different zone at the same time.

* https://www.trane.com/residential/en/products/ductless-syste...

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