103
this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2024
103 points (97.2% liked)
Climate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics.
5212 readers
564 users here now
Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.
As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades:
How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world:
Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:
Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
In most (sane) numbering systems, you can use a k in place of thousands, m in the place of millions, etc. Becuse all the numbers around the scale of energy use involving the entire monthly power consumption use of a heat pump in a cold climate as well as solar production and storage needed are in thousands, you will note I wrote all the relevant numbers with the abbreviation k, so 5,475 kwh is equivalent to 5.4k kwh.
Admittedly 5.4 mwh would have been more clear, but because megawatt hours is less commonly used and would involved useing two diffrent units next to each other I used thousands of the same unit for consistency. Please go back and re-read all of my comments with this new knowledge in mind.
Yes, many heat pumps are installed in warmer climates, though that is changing, but blowing through the entire yearly national average in three weeks and then doing it again is lot of power for a climate contentious and thusly presumably well insulated off grid modern house to use. (Also, if we go back to what this conversation is about, the original commenter gave no indication that they were in a very cold climate with thousand dollar a month heating costs in the first place.)
For a modern well-insulated structure, sure. But a lot of US housing was built without insulation. And people live in it and would prefer to retrofit.
We are literally talking about whether it is practically possible for a major renovation to a lifelong dream home. If they are in love with an old poorly built and insulated home in a very cold area then yes, in a few decades when this do this they will have to have it insulated to at least modern standards and of doing so it’s likely worth it to go to far better, but that is a very long way from your position that no one could even think about it being feasible for anyone in a few decades.
Can I be sure what will happen decades from now? No, but I can say for sure that at the moment, if you want to add insulation to an existing older structure, and not do a complete rebuild, you end up with a structure which isn't anywhere near as well insulated as a newly-built structure designed for efficiency.
Again, where are you getting the idea that the original commenter has to be talking about being set on a old, poorly insulated home?
That's pretty much what most retrofits in the US look like.
What I'm mostly getting from this conversation is that you've never actually owned a single-family house, or paid to heat or cool one.
Nope, live in a modern-ish single family house in a northwestern state bordering Canada with a diy grid tied solar system plus smart thermostat that gives me plenty of metrics and have spent plenty of time in an off gird cabin.
Mostly what I’m getting from this conversation is that you think your experience must by extension be universal for everyone, everywhere, all the time, and of course that if you can’t refute the quick skim of an argument, statistic, or claim you just ignore it and all context in favor of a scenario where it might not apply and then pretend the conversation was actually about that specific scenario all along.
Given this conversation about a third party’s offhand comment has been going on for nearly a day and is far two deep in replies that Memmy won’t render them let’s just agree to disagree and save our time for IRL stuff or commenting on how unified major cooperations are in greenwashing destroying the planet or something.