Essay by Eric Worrall
Associate Professor of Philosophy Michael Brownstein thinks you can lead your neighbourhood to climate activism by riding a bike and installing a heat pump.
The surprisingly simple way to convince people to go green
Advice by Michael J. Coren Climate Advice Columnist
December 5, 2023 at 6:30 a.m. EST…
Your trusted inner circle is one of the most potent and overlooked weapons to stave off the worst of climate change. Our individual actions appear small, but they act as billboards for others looking for cues on what to do in their own lives. These social comparisons can add up.
The most powerful thing that gets people and politicians to support biking? Seeing other people ride their bikes, says Michael Brownstein, an associate professor of philosophy at the City University of New York. “It’s a shift of perspective to see yourself as a member of the community, as an entrepreneur of norms,”says Brownstein, who studies societal change.
While policy, regulation andclean technology are essential to reduce emissions, they aren’t sufficient. Humans evolved, says Brownstein, to pay incredibly close attention to what others are thinking and doing as models for their own behavior.
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There’s an assumption that good data speaks for itself. In reality, it usually whispers. Take vaccines. About 21 percent of eligible Americans say they still haven’t gotten a coronavirus shot. “Maybe we underinvested in behavioral research,” Francis Collins, then leading the National Institutes of Health, said to “NewsHour” on PBS in 2021. “I never imagined a year ago, when those vaccines were just proving to be fantastically safe and effective, that we would still have 60 million people who had not taken advantage of them.”
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For now, unfortunately, we just don’t know what’s going on in people’s heads, says Fischhoff. Few rigorous studies have been done on why people change their climate behaviors. “We don’t know how people are making these decisions,” he says.
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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/12/05/improve-sustainability-help-climate-change/
I can’t help thinking the professor has over generalised his theory of human behaviour.
I get that a lot of people copy others, otherwise there wouldn’t be any fashions or trends. But there are plenty of the other kind of people as well.
The Covid vaccine is an interesting case in point. I didn’t decide to reject the vaccine because President Trump said “make up your mind”, or some big name Conservative expressed doubt, I rejected the vaccine because I read studies suggesting previous SARS vaccines created horrible immunological complications, and concluded that accepting an untested SARS vaccine, which had every chance of being just as broken as the previous SARS vaccines, was a risky idea. Covid, or SARS-CoV-2, is very much a SARS virus. Many of my friends took the vaccine, and I respected their choice. Some of my friends listened to me, when I mentioned I had some concerns, but they didn’t blindly take my word for it, they demanded to see some research.
What about climate claims? Here it gets even more interesting. Surveys repeatedly rate climate change dead last in terms of life priorities. So most of those follower types who claim to take climate change seriously appear to be somewhat less than totally committed to the cause. They might buy a bike because the neighbour is riding around parading his virtue, but that bike stays in the garage next time it rains.
Being contrary, demanding evidence before acting, is not an impediment to action, it is very obviously necessary, a critical human survival trait. In a dangerous situation, perhaps jumping off a cliff is the only option, but jumping off that cliff is dangerous. People who follow the leader off the cliff are helping to ensure the survival of their tribe. But those who refuse to follow, who stay behind to face whatever is causing the scary rustling noise, they are also helping to ensure the survival of the tribe. Both kinds of people are necessary, a successful evolutionary survival strategy which has passed the test of time.
A friend of mine bought an EV a few years ago.
I laughed and told him he would regret it and that he was just following a fad.
Yes.. it is possible to talk common-sense into friends.
He now has a Holden SS V 6.2L Sportwagon 🙂
I’m currently doing a driving holiday. We did a toilet stop in a run down Aboriginal gang ravaged town in the Aussie outback, where the only thing which isn’t boarded up or smashed is the pristine looking EV chargers. The EV chargers look brand new because they are – the service guy I spoke to is making a fortune rebuilding the charging stations every few days after the local gangs wreck them.
The thought of spending a few hours in such a place recharging an EV is almost as absurd as taking an EV into the Aussie outback in the first place.
Yup…..the last thing you need in the outback is an EV. My Diesel Patrol on the other hand………
Yep, 4WD or bust on those roads, unless you fancy crawling along. Gasoline availability is also an issue, and big distances between gas stations. Also there’s the frequent risk of colliding with wild goats or kangaroos, all the roadsides are littered with animals which came off second best after running in front of a truck. We got lucky though, most of the time the temperature stayed around 100F, instead of its usual 110F+.
Australia is having a lot of success in their efforts to replace Germany as the “least wise” energy country in the world.
Canada has you Aussies beat. Unwise energy policies and nut-less brass monkey cold on top of that…
Sounds like Wilcannia? If it was, you are braver than I am. Passed through Wilcannia maybe 30 times but never even had the urge to stop.
Right … he bought an EV and nobody copied him.
Wasn’t there a recent WUWT story about EVs gathering dust on dealership lots because nobody wants to buy them.
The trouble with leftist theories is that the leftists are congenitally incapable of comprehending the reality that surrounds them. If it doesn’t work for EVs, it won’t work for heat pumps.
Two-thirds of Republicans under 30 support the “climate change” agenda and about 42% of Republicans overall support finding new energy sources. About 61 percent of Americans support the “climate change” agenda. The brainwashing has been quite effective on liberals and conservatives alike.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/08/09/what-the-data-says-about-americans-views-of-climate-change/
You seem to believe that there is some kind of correlation between Republican and conservative.
Only until it wallops them in the wallet. But then they have not heard of the actual costs because state media won’t honestly reveal them.
What is the reason that, at least in the UK, heat pumps need to be installed in Front Yards…where they’re accessible to thievery???
You have to find somewhere to put a water tank….
Who in their right mind would want to steal a heat pump in Britain??
Even the ‘professional’ thieving community’ (you all know who they are) won’t touch them as there is no market.
The people who steal heat pumps are the people who deal in stolen copper.
Easier pickings at the recharging station points set up on council car parks.
I suspect that there is more copper in a heat pump, also there are a lot more heat pumps.
People don’t steal pipes or heat pumps = they steal large chunks of metal they can sell to a local recycler.
I bought my house in 2011 at the end of the great recession. While I was looking I saw heat pumps and air conditioners gutted leaving only the compressor and outer case. in some houses they pulled the wire out of the walls and coper plumbing. Others even had the breaker box cleaned out.
To prevent this, builder installed lights to exposed anybody who shouldn’t be there, locks on the breaker boxes and installed cages around the air conditioners/heat bumps to make access to them more difficult. It is incredible the work people will go through to steal a few pounds of metal that doesn’t fetch a premium price because it isn’t “clean” metal. Insulation and alloys draw a lower price when compared to cans which can’t be alloyed as it reduces the ability to shape the metal during manufacturing.
That can’t be true: 2 houses with heat pumps in my village (both regretted, by the way) have their pumps behind their houses.
Ease of enforcement in the future?
This is really getting pitiful. Where are the expert climate scientists? Shouldn’t they be the ones making the CAGW case? These guys are scraping the bottom of the barrel. I don’t give a damn about the opinions of philosophers or psychologists or anyone else trying to push ideas that have so little actual hard science backing it up. These guys are an embarrassment.
Don’t worry the border states will bus up a heap of social norms for good perfessor et al to get some moral leadership on what a fossil fuel free NY can be like-
‘Crashing of leftist dogma’: US Illegal migrant crisis causing ‘unsightly mess’ (msn.com)
Bob, I take your point on the opinions of philosphers and psychologists – even though many listen to them. However, the designation expert climate scientist is misleading.
A climate scientist is actually a jack of all trades and master of none. He is not a scientist in the strict sense of someone who has majored and done post graduate studies and research in physics or chemistry, geography or geology, meteorology or oceanography, and so forth. While all of these make use of maths and statistics and computer programming, in each of these sciences their focus is within their field. Unless they become a university lecturer or school teacher they will not remain a generalist but specialize within their field of science.
A climate scientist cannot be a master or expert on climate because he has to depend on inputs from a range of sciences without having the ability to test the veracity of each input. If he happens to be strong in logic and careful reasoning, he may be able to pick out some scientific errors but will need to have them confirmed by others in that disicpline. The more he depends on others, the greater the risk of errors creeping in.
Engineers, who are interested in getting things to work and not simply theoretical models, are among the best people to see the flaws in the assertions of a climate scientist. But so too are those in fields like physics because of their logic and reasoning. A climate scientist treats climate as an amorphous entitity and is interested in averages and tiny deviations from these and of course many artificial models. A geographer has insights into the 30 climate zones and sub-zones and deviations from the Köppen climate classification. A climate scientist wants to simplify climate and model it, while all the sciences needed to understand these climate zones and changes illustrates the massive complexity. A climate scientist who pushes climate alarmism and believes we can, with enough money, engineer an ideal climate, is on a fool’s errand.
Javier Vinos started out as a microbiologist. He is pretty impressive after spending a lot of hard work getting up to speed.
Yes, “expert” is not something I would ever associate with “climate scientist.”
That would be like calling a doctor who has gotten every diagnosis over the last 50 years wrong an “expert.”
The geologists are the true climate scientists.
Of course you are right but they think they are experts and I want to know where they are. They need to show up and prove their case.
Jack of all trades? That’s being generous, most of them would struggle to qualify as a duece.
That is a bit mean.
Perhaps you should have written “struggle to qualify as a troglodyte.”
“For now, unfortunately, we just don’t know what’s going on in people’s heads, says Fischhoff.”
I’ll let you know what’s going on in my head. I’m holding an internal referendum on whether to get one ribeye or two sirloins tomorrow…
Go for the ribeye…Sir Loins might not be pleased about itc
I’ve got a heat pump in my house, installed by the previous owner. I do my best to convince my neighbours not to make the same mistake.
Just get them to read fine print in spec…
Guaranteed minimum output at cold tempature: nothing
Heat pumps are extremely popular here in Florida – practically everybody has one in their home, office or place of business. They make a great deal of sense here where the summers are long and hot and winters are short and very mild, very rarely dropping below the mid 40s F, and rarely needing space heating to be comfortable indoors.
For places with long cold winters, where space heating is a need for months on end, heat pumps don’t make sense – they end up kicking on the resistance coils which actually uses more relatively expensive electrical energy than the equivalent gas space heating energy.
That used to be true, but modern heat pumps work well down to about 0F (-17C).
The only place heat pumps don’t make sense from a financial standpoint is if the house has natural gas or if it stays really cold for a long time.
Could you provide an output curve for BTU heat provided per KW electric input for the VERY BEST unit down to 0(-17).
Thanks, that would be nice.
When it comes to heating equipment, I want something that works no matter how cold it gets.
A heating appliance that “works well down to zero F/17 C” has to be backed up with something that WORKS, period.
Requiring two systems to answer the same need is as stupid as building wind mills that only produce electricity when the wind blows within a certain range, or building solar panels that only produce electricity when the Sun is shining on them (AND assuming they aren’t covered in snow, etc.).
Just another station on the Stupid Train.
Where did the idea that heat pumps are better for the environment and ‘greener’ to run come from?
Certainly they have been used in Scandinavia where there is large hydro generated electrical capacity so probably fewer emissions of CO2 than with gas heating.
With any electrical system that uses fossil fuels for the dispatchable generation then the same is not true. Dispatchable generation increases output in line with demand and as installing heat pumps adds to demand then CO2 emissions must rise.
The other common myth is that heat pumps are very efficient, confusing Coefficient of Performance with efficiency. They are not the same. True efficiency has to take into account all the losses in generation and distribution and it is a significant amount.
Basic science says that no device gives more than the energy applied to it so figures of 300% efficiency are simply grossly wrong.
The 300% goes like this. You apply the same amount of current to either resistive heating or to a heat pump. How much heating do you get for it? In the case of the heat pump, if its ground source, you get roughly 3 times what you get from resistive. The reason is that the current is not being used directly to heat, its being used to transfer heat from the ground to the house. This is why you can get more heating per unit of electricity from a heat pump than from resistive. All that heat in the environment is free if you can find a way to extract and transfer it.
Its also why in very wet soil you can produce permafrost. Extract enough heat and the ground freezes. This is why you need a very extensive pipe network for ground source. Or bore holes.
Similarly with air source, though they are much less efficient. Here you are extracting heat from the outside air and transferring it to the house. Seems not to work at very low temperatures. Its essentially air con in reverse.
The problem with heat pumps are that its lower temperature and so you need much bigger rads and larger piping. Also much better insulation and draft proofing. So for old housing stock, as in th UK, you can easily have to spend several times the cost of the heat pump on new windows and doors and roof and wall insulation to be able for the pump to keep a house warm. Also because of the lower temps it doesn’t do hot water. And when it gets real cold the air source ones ones switch to resistive heating mode, which costs a fortune.
Heat pumps seem to work fine in Scandinavia with very well insulated houses. And hydro. Don’t know if they are ground or air source.
The green fantasy is that we convert electricity generation to wind and solar, and at th same time we convert heating to heat pumps and cars to EVs. But this has too problems, one there is no viable solution to intermittency of wind and solar, and two that if everyone did convert, the local power grid would be unable to deliver the required power.
Scandinavia also has gets a major contribution of energy from wood. They do excellent forestry and use it the resource efficiently. If only we’d do this in North America! Unfortunately too many forestry haters here.
I remember when President Trump was promoting European forestry practices and recommending that California do what the Europeans do, in order to reduce forest fires.
Right- he’s the ONLY American politician I’ve ever heared say anything positive about forestry.
When you say that the heat is “transferred” from outside to the interior of the building you’re not providing an adequate description of the process involved, which is simply the refrigeration cycle. In heating mode the liquid refrigerant is flashed into the evaporator, which is located outside. Turning a liquid into a vapor requires the absorption of heat. The vapor then goes to a compressor which pumps it into a condenser. The energy involved here is that needed to compress a gas to the point where the heat used for the compression can be removed by the passage of air over the condenser and then released into the heated space. The electricity needed to operate the compressor and ancillary motors involved in air movement, both inside and outside, isn’t free. There is also a loss of efficiency in the process in that less than 100% of the energy supplied to the motors can be used to compress the refrigerant gas and move the air. It works adequately in the cooling mode, a reversal of that described above, but less so in the heating mode. The heat pump just isn’t an energy panacea and really is unsatisfactory in cold climates.
They’re still cheaper to run than electric resistance heaters. In most places they’re cheaper to run than propane or oil furnaces.
That could be a true statement, depending on one’s definition of “cold”. Modern heat pumps work without using resistance coils down to about 0F.
Please provide a KW per BTU curve to 0 for these magical heat pumps you keep talking about.
My mom has an open ground source HVAC system. The heat pump is for heating and a water coil is used for cooling. You have the cost of the compressor, FAU blower and well pump for heating and just the well pump and blower in the summer.
She is in Taxachusetts and has ever higher electricity rates BUT her bills for her all electric house are under $300 a month. She does not have the capability of using the heat pump for water heating so that is resistive, with 45 F well water, so is expensive.
Heat pumps are rated on the BTU of cooling effect delivered during a cooling season divided by the electrical energy required, which ratio is called the “Seasonal Energy Efficiency Ratio”, or SEER. These ratios in modern units typically exceed 14 SEER and may exceed 20 SEER.
The reason that heat pumps can produce more cooling power in BTU than the electrical power supplied is that heat pumps produce cooling power by transferring the existing heat energy in air inside the space being cooled to an exterior space. That is a typical “air conditioner”. Heat pumps also have the ability to operate in reverse – extract existing heat energy from outside air, making the exhaust to atmosphere colder than the supply air, and transfers that existing heat energy to the space being heated.
The heat pump does not convert one form of energy to another – rather, it transfers the same form of existing energy from one space to another space, which consumes far less energy than converting one form of energy to another form of energy. The electrical energy consumed by the heat pump is the energy required to compress the refrigerant plus the frictional losses within the system.
Electric resistance space heaters, and gas or oil fired furnaces are necessarily less than 100% efficient because they directly convert one form of energy (chemical or electrical) to another form of energy.
“The heat pump does not convert one form of energy to another…”
What? If the heat pump has no electrical supply will it still transfer energy from one place to another?
The word pump should be a giveaway.
Heat pumps are in fact very much like pumps that move heat energy from once place to another utilizing the phase change of the refrigerant. The bulk of the electrical energy input is used to drive the compressor, with additional energy to make up for mechanical losses in the rotating equipment, and of course like any forced air system, driving the ventilation fans.
The heat pump does not convert one form of energy to another
It certainly does. It converts the energy of the supplied electricity into the mechanical motion of the compressor, which uses electrical energy to raise the pressure of a gas so it can be changed to a liquid, and ancillary air movement motors. The heat pump won’t do anything without electrical energy supplied from outside the system. The fact that the consumption of fossil fuels is taking place somewhere down the highway and out of sight doesn’t eliminate them from the equation.
Pumping up a bicycle tire might give you some idea of the outside energy required to raise the pressure of a gas.
No it does not. If refrigeration units or heat pumps converted electrical energy, then the SEER would have to be <1. Instead, the SEER on all modern units exceeds 14 and can go as high as 20+.
The energy already exists in the air to be heated or cooled – it is just transferred from where it exists in another air mass. It begins end ends with heat energy.
Energy conversion is taking one form of energy, such as in burning a fossil fuel – chemical energy – to produce heat – thermal energy. Or converting nuclear energy in a reactor to thermal energy in the reactor and then converting that thermal energy into electrical energy.
And a heat pump converts electrical energy to mechanical energy in the PUMP.
Heat pumps are only ‘efficient’ when compared with other electric heaters, because they can use about a third kWh to produce the same heat output and therefore cost less to run. When compared with natural gas, that greater efficiency is not there, so you need just the same electric energy as gas energy. Most heating in Britain is gas. Most electricity – 50% to 60% – is generated from gas and run continuously as back-up even when not supplying the grid. Heat pumps therefore, de facto run on natural gas, as do BEVs.
The Nordic area has a very cold climate, and cold lasts for months. Houses traditionally have been built to accommodate the climate, thus well insulated – the cost defrayed by the advantage.
Britain has a temperate climate, so very cold/very hot are overall rare, and the benefit of well insulated houses would not exceed the building cost. Recent ‘carbon neutral’ rules to increase insulation in new houses has added significant cost. To mitigate this, construction companies are building smaller houses.
British houses are brick or stone built. Some date back over 200 years, many built in the 19th Century. They are either double brick-skin, cavity wall, or single brick/stone skin.
Insulating them is expensive and can, if not done properly, cause significant problems with condensation fungus and mold growth – as many people have found to their cost.
Britain was rich in coal and from the 1960s natural gas from the North Sea. Until the last decade, energy – electricity and gas – were abundant and low price.
Heat pumps are still more efficient than gas heaters (whether space heaters or water heaters) simply because the combustion of natural gas wastes a large proportion of the conversion from chemical energy to thermal energy. Burning natural gas does have certain advantages over heat pumps, such as delivering much more rapid energy transfer, and generally requires less maintenance than a gas heater. But heat pumps are still more energy efficient.
Heat pumps are somewhat effective when taking the heat from one’s neighbours provided they do not copy this trick.
So, if I bought an EV everybody else would buy one.
Personal finances have no bearing on it…
The whole thing is actually a sly bit of reverse pseudopsychology. I think it works like this:
“Research” has shown that there is a subset of consumer known as the Early Adopter. The same “research” then remarks on how Early Adopters tend to do better financially, have higher social standing etc etc. As a marketing toll, this has grown in popularity in recent years, as can be ascertained by the phenomenon of The Influencer.
So now this particular supercilious sod has taken upon himself to shame you into becoming an Early Adopter, hoping to get this triangular ball rolling?
Psychology truly is the root of magic, but, like with everything else, it has fallen into the hands of the intellectually wanting psions of entitled financial mafiosi. I.O.W: make-work for the cacastocracy’s otherwise unemployable brats.
I suspect they have the cause and effect backwards– being an early adopter is expensive, so only those who have both a sense of adventure and the cash can actually do it.
Yep, who among us still have digital optical disks and a player laying around?
I knew a guy who had one, but he was a bachelor and could afford the NEW thing. He also had multiple movies that could be copied because the disks were made before software was in the mix to prevent that.
That technology progressed to CDs and is now Blu-ray.
Nor affordability
There’s a psychological term for this. It’s called the “mimetic behavior”. People do something because others do. It explains irrational behavior such as installing beige wall-to-wall carpeting, attending NFL football games and driving an EV.
UK ‘smart meters’ are in the vanguard…
headline:“Nearly three million smart meters are not working properly due to ‘technical issues’ as customers see wild changes in their energy bills
UK’s Daily Fail
If you go tehre and read the story, you’ll find that these ‘issues’ involve these ‘smart’ meters making up wildly excessive energy bills for customers and without word of warning, emptying their bank accounts
(Sounds just like NASA doncha think)
Yeah right.
To some of us it’s quite obvious that the utility companies involved, when a spike occurs in the spot-price for energy, are draining the punter’s bank accounts to ride themselves over the unexpected (financial) demands they face
Yeeeeeeesss, they do refund the overcharge but while the money was removed from your bank within minutes of them needing it, when you need it it takes months to come back again while your ‘Credit Score/Rating’ is irretrievably wrecked.
Meanwhile, the affected meters do still work as actual meters and you can ‘manually’ send readings to your supplier.
Only to discover those manual readings are ignored (more technical issues of course) and they still send you wildly inflated ‘estimated’ bills
Somehow I don’t think (m)any UK folks are advertising widely how clever they were by installing such hideous & mendacious contraptions – under Government coercion,
While and just like the EV makers, the utility companies (consumers actually) are fined by Government for not making/selling/installing sufficient numbers of these crapheaps
are there still any manufacturers of ‘guillotine’ on this planet.
If so, buy shares now.
Just finished reading A Tale of Two Cities by Dickens. Apparently one guillotine can off people at quicker than one a minute, so they will probably only need a few hundred total, then no more since they will last practically forever, with just a little sharpening on occasion.
Place one in the US Capital rotunda, and in central locations in every national legislature worldwide as a reminder of what COULD happen.
A heat pump is an air conditioner that runs in two directions. Nothing magical about them. They are pumping energy uphill and this takes a lot of energy.
For years we ran a freezer on propane in the tropics. We got about 3 months on a 15kg gas bottle. Our neighbors with electric freezers had to run their gensets an hour a day.
Politicians recommending heat pumps have never tried them. The are speaking from ignorance.
I had a heat pump and it worked. They’ve only gotten better too; people use heat pumps in Alaska now. It’s cheaper to run a heat pump than a propane furnace, and a lot cheaper than an electric furnace. If you’re going to have central air, then installation is thousands less, because a heat pump is only a couple hundred more than an AC. The main downside to heat pumps is the air coming out of the vent isn’t warm. So they run more and take longer to warm the house.
Now if your house has natural gas, then a gas furnace will be cheaper to run.
Propane refrigerators are neat; I have one in my RV.
I have a Mitsubishi mini split of pretty good size, only 4 years old. As a heating source in Northern PA, it ain’t worth a damn when it’s really cold. Below 20 F, it falls off rapidly, and below 10F it mostly generates noise. At 0F, worthless. And, the owner’s manual admits this.
“a lot cheaper than an electric furnace”
In a location where it is so cool that an AC is never required and is gets so cold that the heat pump will quit working, and I call bs on your to 0 C, provide HOW the cost of the heat pump and associated ductwork, etc. is, over the life of the system, cheaper than just plain electric baseboard heat.
Please provide your work, no Manning the data.
I recently installed a mini-split (which I believe is a heat pump) in a 200sf outdoor building, decently insulated. It did a great job over the summer keeping things cool – 98 outside, stayed under 70 (I had it set to 68).
Now I have it set to 65 and it’s doing a good job keeping things right around there most of the time as we move into winter. even in the mid-30’s it stays around 65.
A week or two ago when it got down to 23 outside, the inside temp dropped to 55.
I’ll make a note to take readings over the coldest part of winter so I have that info next time this subject comes up.
Thanks Tony, note that old Bob has not answered any of my requests for more info on his magic heat pumps.
He reminds me of another Bob, Bigoilbob, who will never answer about who is going to pay to “retire” all the wind and solar. His big complaint was about the oil industry not retiring their wells, of course a total fraud.
But if it gets cold enough, not so much. Then you better have a backup system.
Once that gets factored in, not cheaper than anything.
This GroupThink nonsense regarding CAGW doom-and-gloom (especially if Trump is re-elected) has reached an idiotic level. Reminds me of the dame from Hollywood who said “how did Ronald Regan get elected President? No body I know voted for him!” Out of touch and oblivious and proud of it and driving their EV’s down the Highway to Hell.
Trump does say a lot of crazy shit. Too bad he can’t tone it down a bit.
Trump likes to drive the radical Left crazy.
Like him saying last night when asked by Sean Hannity at a town meeting, if he would be a dictator, if elected, Trump said he would be a dictator for one day and on that day he would shut down the border and drill, drill, drill. Obviously, Trump was not saying he would be a real dictator, he was having fun with the leftwing claim. Btw, Trump was not a dictator the first time he was president.
This morning, all the leftwing news outlets are saying Donald Trump says he will be a dictator if elected.
Trump did say that, but that’s not what he meant.
You need to be careful to separate what Trump actually says and means from the way the radical left describes his meaning. They protray him in the worst way possible deliberately, in every case.
So if you don’t hear it from Trump’s mouth, don’t believe it.
“The most powerful thing that gets people and politicians to support biking? Seeing other people ride their bikes…”
I’ve been riding bikes since I was 5 and now I’m 74. Year after year. So far, I’m not aware anyone decided to ride a bike after watching me. So I wouldn’t depend on that method to spread the habit. Too bad, not in order to save the climate, but because it’s fun and good for you.
Several years ago some of Tony Heller’s videos inspired me to dust off my bike. That was when he lived in the same area.
It is enjoyable and good for one’s health and sometimes around here one can ski in the mountains in the morning and bike on the plains in the afternoon.
I hate this force something that has specific uses on every one. I like heat pumps especially mini-splits, but there are limitations. I bought a home last year in a 7b climate. It had 2 heat pumps which were old and failing. You can’t get the refrigerant for anymore, thanks government. So, I replaced them with 5 mini-splits. They are great for individual room control. I have reduced my energy consumption by 40%. I was able to remodel the basement and remove the ducting giving me more room.
The cons are they cost $25k to be installed, which would never break even if replacing working units. They won’t work below -4F, which got tested last year in a freak cold snap. They need an exterior wall to be mounted on for the drain line to run down hill, and you will have conduit running along the house. I only have coverage on about 85% of the house, because of this and isn’t too annoying. You need to run power to where the outdoor unit is. I was remodeling the basement so I opened the ceilings up. You need to learn how to tear them down and clean them once a year. Paying someone to do that will cost $150 a unit, and there goes your savings.
Ducted heat pumps aren’t all that great, without propane or gas heat. I had them in the Pacific Northwest when I lived there. They never took the damp out of the house so it always felt chilly. They also stop working around 30F and go to aux heat which is like burning money with the giant power draw. That’s another drawback, you need a lot of power for a heat pump, 150 Amp or more. So good luck replacing a gas system. With my mini splits I freed up a 40 amp breaker.
I have a 4 ton unit for a 2,000 square foot house in Phoenix. The breaker is 50 amp and normal current draw is under 20 amp at 220 volts. It’s not going to pull the water out of the air when heating but the humidity is pretty low all year around. it will operate a bit below 30F but I suspect your climate is a bit cold for it unless you have gas aux heat.
I don’t think mini splits would be a good option for me as half the house is one large room and three of the bedrooms are 10×14. You really have to look at the house and climate to determine what would work best in each case. A single unit to replace the existing one would be best in my case but all the duct work was well done and is in place. Your case is a good deal different.
All these heat systems are tools. As we all know one needs the right tool for the job. The problem is idiot bureaucrats don’t know a screwdriver from a hammer so their edicts are just as idiotic as they are.
Yes, the professor is moronic to the extreme.
He is trying to make riding bicycles and installing heat pumps, a climate Veblen good – i.e. something people do or buy just to show they are rich (in virtue).
People following a good example???
Now using a bicycle in an urban or suburban environment here in the USA can be a viable solution as I did that for 12 years from 1999 to 2012 without a motor vehicle or even a drivers license. Denver, CO has an extensive network of bicycle only paved trails throughout the urban and suburban metro area where one can get most anywhere without dealing with a motor vehicle. I used those trails daily commuting on a bicycle to various places of employment in every type of weather that Denver had.
For 10 of those years, I used the standard diamond frame two wheel bicycle that most everyone is familiar with. After a work injury, I switched to a recumbent tadpole tricycle, one with two wheels in the front and one wheel in the back. In 2012, I used that tricycle to travel 2,600 miles from Denver, CO to Pensacola, FL on both regular roads and bicycle only trails when I could find them. The Katy Trail in the State of Missouri is a state park that goes from near Kansas City in the West to St. Louis in the East.
Oddly enough, I now live in the boonies of northern Florida where riding a bicycle (much less a recumbent tricycle) is extremely dangerous on any of the paved roads around me. The only road with a designated bicycle lane (US Hwy 90) is 20 miles away. The local paved roads have no shoulder with high speed traffic. The local farm roads are graded dirt with no services of any type anywhere. While the farm roads are an option, dealing with the loose dogs and other wildlife is a challenge. Seeing someone on the roads around here on a bicycle is a very rare occasion, maybe once or twice a year.
The winter climate here in northern Florida is quite mild with the lowest temps rarely in the teens (F). Of course, this being the Deep South, spring, summer and fall temps and humidity are quite high. This area is almost completely electric based with some people using those outside sausage propane tanks for heating & cooking. Three years ago, I bought a top of the line 20 SEER air sourced heat pump for both heating & cooling my 1,600 sq.ft. house to replace an ancient heat pump that ran constantly. My electric bills dropped $40 to $80 a month with the new heat pump. Funny thing is that my 20 SEER heat pump is only one of two in the area even after 3 years, least according to the technicians that service it.
I know of not one single person that followed my example of riding a bicycle or buying a better heat pump.
From the article: “Humans evolved, says Brownstein, to pay incredibly close attention to what others are thinking and doing as models for their own behavior.”
This is true to a certain extent.
When humans lived in small tribes, they survived because the leaders/elders of the tribe had the knowledge to survive in the circumstances they found themselves in, so for new members of the tribe (children), it was very beneficial for them to listen to their elders and learn how to survive from them.
So going along with the conventional wisdom is a survival instinct in humans from long ago.
But, especially nowadays, we have freedom of thought, and we have lots of sources of knowledge to avail ourselves of, so we are much less dependent on going along with the crowd, but there are a lot of people who do so automatically, without really thinking about it.
This is why appeals to authority are effective for many people. If 97 percent of scientists believe something is true, then it must be true, is the logic. The fact that the 97 percent is really only about three percent is lost on the general public. So we have to keep reminding them. 🙂
but there are a lot of people who do so automatically, without really thinking about it.
That’s why virtue signaling has gotten popular – each practitioner is counting on copycat groupthink to strike a blow in favor of whatever political delusion he/she is enjoying that week.
As long as my neighbors do not cause me problems or conduct criminal activities, I don’t care what they do. When I lived in San Diego, many of them drove hybrids and several drove Teslas. I kept my Suburban.
Heat pumps were a fad in Illinois in the late 70s. But we got over it.
With regards to neighbors and heat pumps, not long ago my husband was talking to our next door neighbor. The neighbor said that when he bought the house 20 some years ago, all it had was electric baseboard heat. He had that removed and had a heat pump installed because the electric baseboard was very expensive. But yet he apparently failed to realize that on cold nights, he is still using electric resistance heat….sure, he’s using less of it, but still.
He would have had to have ducting installed (this was 20+ years ago, when ductless units were not available) along with the price of the heat pump itself. For the life of me I couldn’t understand why he just didn’t have a propane furnace with an AC coil installed – much cheaper and can run in very cold temps without any electric resistance.
Having heard his story and as I was walking away, all I remember thinking was “What a dummy!”
I think that way about anyone around where I live who installs a heat pump….
The copy-cat nature of humanity is NOT A VIRTUE.
If you want a good deal on a kayak, for instance, just put up a notice in your local convenience store, thousands of couples bought matching kayaks — just like the Jones’ down the street — and then discovered that kayaking takes time and energy and can be cold and wet and, for many people, just plain boring. One can pick up those kayaks almost anywhere in the country for a almost nothing (sometimes, people would just like to reclaim the space in the garage).
Expensive bicycles are the same. Peleton indoor spinning (riding) machines anyone?
In my area, the Northeast US, I asked a friend, who is a contractor, about a heat pump for my home. I told him I didn’t think there would be any that would heat and cool my house economically because we can have really cold winters. He assured me that heat pump technology had advanced and that we could install one. The cost > $ 35,000. and would save me several hundred a year in heating costs….
Nothing like advocating peer pressure to show the depths of your desperation. Why not? It works with school children.
“Our individual actions appear small, but they act as billboards for others looking for cues on what to do in their own lives.”
Dear Professor: they also act as billboards for looking for cues on what NOT to do. For example:
I think mr goldsteinman has a valid point. After reading an earlier WUWT article concerning yachts I had the very strong conviction that I should also get a yacht and become sustainable. I’m hitting a brick wall on facepage marketsquare though.
WaPo needs more staff cuts like the recent one.
In 2010 we bought a water furnace geothermal system. It was the best purchase we’ve ever made
The sad thing is people who are running out of money are asking family visitors not to turn up the heat because they can’t afford the bill.
Humans evolved, says Brownstein, to pay incredibly close attention to what others are thinking and doing as models for their own behavior.
And sure enough, once the motor car appeared in a reliable and economic form – with its abilities to haul multiple passengers and freight – the abovementioned herd mentality spread worldwide as the average citizen abandoned the donkey, the horse and buggy and the bicycle for the vastly superior benefits of the auto in overcoming time, distance and back pain.
And if Brownstein thinks that merely trying to reverse that decision, without providing any benefits superior to fawning green reporters clucking their admiration, he can rightly and safely be ignored.
If a neighbor of mine bragged about installing a heat pump, I’d tell him to enjoy freezing his ass off when it gets cold.
I wouldn’t repeat his stupid mistake.
In the US there is a Natural Gas Engine powered heat pump for commercial and large residential buildings. The virtue signaling City of Las Vegas built 4 new fire stations using them for their air conditioning and heating needs. They work REALLY WELL and are way cheaper to run than electric heat pumps, even considering the maintenance requirements for oil changes, etc.
The smallest unit is 7 1/2 tons the larger 10 or 12, I can’t remember.
I looked into putting one on a 4300 sq. ft. house but it was prohibitively expensive as a retrofit.
I spoke with a Mechanical Engineer who designs residential systems, I was a plan reviewer and knew he is VERY good. I was already retired but he gave me a little time. He told me that initial costs is close to double a conventional AC with gas furnace installations BUT you get much more flexibility with multiple zoning and the ability heat or cool to a lesser extent areas of the house not being used. When you are using less output, you are still using the whole large heat exchanger on the outdoor unit so efficiency goes way up. Multiple compressors are run by clutches, off the engine specifically built to burn natural gas, so only the number of compressors (2 or 4 depending on the unit) needed are spinning at any one time.
With the cost savings from electric to gas he estimated that most McMansions would pay off the difference in about 5 years in Las Vegas, with better comfort levels in the areas being used.
In the heating cycle, the system uses exhaust heat from the engine to boost the heating output, a win/win.
You do have engine noise, not a lot, but McMansions have yard areas to mitigate that.
I actually called the system designers and asked why they did not build a small 4 to 5 ton package unit for rooftop installation. If you have ever flown into Las Vegas or Phoenix, you have seen the thousands of rooftop AC/gas furnace package units installed. Since power and gas are already there, a changeout to a engine driven unit would be really easy, and the gas engine would not be any more noisy than a typical electric compressor. The engineer I spoke with (it really is amazing who you can talk to just by asking) told me that that was a good idea, and they could think about that in the future.
He told me they were working on designs for the US military where the unit, of a specific size to meet the military specifications, would provide all the power, water heating, and space heating/cooling for a mobile mess and shower facility. The unit would be dropped in place, with an LPG tank or two dropped beside it and the remote base would be up and running almost immediately. This was 10 years ago so I don’t know what came of that.
So depending on the size, heat pumps COULD be really good, if run off of natural gas.
About 61% of Americans support the “climate change” agenda. Two-thirds of Republicans under 30 support it and about 40 percent of Republicans overall say we should find new energy sources according to a recent Pew poll.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/08/09/what-the-data-says-about-americans-views-of-climate-change/
You going to post this on every essay?
The good Associate Professor of Philosophy, somehow knows that CoVID vaccines are safe and effective when the data says otherwise and that we should try to get people onto bikes to reduce emissions when there is not data supporting that proposal.
I am an infectious disease specialist. I state that not to imply I should be believed in my area of expertise (you would have no trouble finding people with similar credentials stating completely different conclusions than mine), but to simply note that this is my wheel house and I spend a large part of my time learning about and working with the consequences of infections in the human population. My thoughts about it don’t come from CNN, Sleepy Joe or tictoc.
I knew with some certainty in early-mid 2020 that CoVID was a mild illness for the vast majority of people, that those who were elderly or had chronic medical conditions were most at risk, that we had no good evidence that masks, distancing and lockdowns were necessary or effective in stemming the pandemic and I was fairly sure that vaccines (not then available) were not going to play a significant role in ending the pandemic. I knew this because we had a large body of evidence and experience around acute viral respiratory infections in people including a collection of well-known human-adapted coronaviruses.
It was also evident that closing schools and businesses was going to be far more damaging than helpful. I would not have allowed myself to be vaccinated with an experimental mRNA vaccine that had not been in production nearly long enough to be adequately tested for safety and efficacy, had it not been for the fact that higher ups insisted it was that or stop providing medical care to my patients. Now I could easily have reached those conclusions in error in 2020, but I think that time and experience has shown I was largely correct. What is really surprising is how many lay-people were able to discern these facts without a specialists background during the CoVID pandemic and made rational and, in retrospect, wise decisions for themselves and their families.
In spite of that a large majority of those in charge at the time, and an
Associate Professor of Philosophy today came to completely different conclusions and advocated for policies that were an unmitigated disaster.
Sorry but the lack of edit function makes it impossible to correct when the enter button is accidentally pushed too soon.
Note his profession. As soon as philosophy professors reveal their employment, their credibility vanishes.
There is one class of people who do manage to emulate lemmings. Leftists.
Leftists are all about letting others do their thinking for them.
Leftists take great pride in doing what those in authority tell them to do.
>> Surveys repeatedly rate climate change dead last in terms of life priorities.
I couldnt care less about that. why should I trust any surveys often they are manipulated bs?
BTW “manmade global warming” is the term to discuss not “climate disruption” or any of those made up aliases.
And or course if the science supports various claims or not, survey.. pfff!
Reconstruction dubious, attributions not matching reality and models lack a validation process..
What is the basis for global warming science?
Some of my inner circle are complete morons who believe that they will be informed by the BBC and the Guardian, and the vax is ‘safe and effective’ and importing over 10% of energy is not a potential problem for our energy security.