Comment by Spooky23 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Spooky23 | Hacker News Reader

I’ll be frank - I don’t buy this stuff because there are well funded agendas behind it. We find ourselves in an era where electrical utilities have shifted from widow & orphan dividend stocks to growth companies… and shockingly the environmental people are fully mobilized with gas everywhere.

Asthma is clearly correlated to urban areas with exposure to various pollutants. We’d see those same clusters in suburban populations with gas stoves if these indoor pollutants were elevating risk.

I live in New York. The utility in my region successfully lobbied to hike delivery rates for electricity by 40%. My spring electric bill is $300/mo, as much as my peak August or January utility bill a decade ago. 3-5 years ago, various foundations were bussing hundreds of protestors to lobby for climate change legislation that is essentially outlawing new natural gas service. They also prevented construction of pipelines to serve NYC and New England with additional capacity. All new construction must be electric only.

There are well funded agendas behind literally any study that makes it in front of you. An agenda is not inherently bad or corrupt. Even if it works to their advantage, if the health information is accurate, then you need to take it seriously. Your lungs do not care who funded it.

I have an agenda to better my life. It’s important context, but it doesn’t make me inherently corrupt or untrustworthy, let alone wrong.

To really drive this home: You have an agenda to advance your career and better your life. I would never dismiss you outright simply because of that.

TL;DR: “It’s funded by a GROUP with an AGENDA” is a lame, invalid, hand wavy excuse to ignore substance. Context matters, but the substance is ultimately what should be assessed.

Edit: I’d also be curious to see sources for “New York can build electric only” and all these bussing claims (mind you bussing protestors is not a bad thing, it depends if they are actually involved or paid actors, which oil and gas companies have no problem using - https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/05/05/608785751...)

I don’t think that bussing protestors is a problem per se, but it’s useful as an assessment of how much cash is behind an issue. I used to be an officer of a union that did that regularly. It was very obvious what our agenda was and how it was paid for.

I don’t like environmental activists in general. They tend to attract well meaning people focused on a narrow aspect of an issue and pivot to a broader or specific policy goal.

I resent people in warm and cozy grandfathered in buildings in NYC making engineering decisions for me. Air side heat pumps are not ideal for upstate, and it’s making it impossible to build housing units.

> but it’s useful as an assessment of how much cash is behind an issue

But is this inherently a problem?

You’re getting mad at a caricature. Unless you have some sources showing there is some larger issue with “bussing in protesters,” I’m sorry I just don’t think your argument holds any water. An organization mounting resources to organize people who are legitimately interested in their cause is not a bad thing, and as someone who’s worked with a union I’m a surprised at this take. I’m sure people said the same thing about MLK JR’s million man march. Do you think those people all just paid for a ticket and showed up?

Obama’s campaign did “souls to the polls,” which was so effective republicans banned voting on Sunday in several states lol. But ultimately, it was a completely fair play and helped people exercise their vote. People oppose these things because they don’t want certain people voting, plain and simple. Same goes for protesting. Somehow protestors are always “doing it wrong,” it just so happens critics also disagree with the causes by total coincidence.

Fair, I am mad about it. My folks utility bill for a 1100 sqft home is now $700/mo all winter. That’s more than double over 5 years, and most of that is delivery cost, not commodity.

Observational evidence is confounded by numerous variables, to say that “urban centers have clusters of asthma and rural centers don’t” ignores all of the extant factors of the urban environment. Studies have found that gas stoves could play a role in development of childhood asthma. It may not scale to the magnitude of that seen in urban cores, with the addition of other sources of air pollution, but it’s weird to discount the studies entirely as a propaganda campaign by Con Ed.

> I’ll be frank - I don’t buy this stuff because there are well funded agendas behind it.

... Hold on, you're worried about the vast economic/influence powers of the domestic appliance industry... but not the oil and gas industry?

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