I was primarily responding to the often repeated yet totally false assertion that heat pumps aren't good for cold climate usage or are much more expensive up front. As I noted, neither are true for new construction these days.

Operating cost comparisons vary VERY widely, as you note, but in MOST areas heat pumps are basically cost neutral with natural gas. That isn't true with particularly high electric rates and low natural gas rates.

And if you don't have natural gas, I'd be hard pressed to name any areas that heat pumps won't be significantly cheaper to operate compared to other fossil fuel options you might have.

There are many residential great pump units that can operate well down to deep subzero f temperatures. Backup electric resistance heat for truly extreme events is very cheap.

I've designed many all electric whole house heat pump systems in Maine. It's not necessarily a big upcharge in New construction. It can be harder in retrofit if existing ducting is not adequate, and air to water for hydronic systems is currently still a more significant upcharge.

it's pretty easy for competitors to see what each other is charging and "collude". We actually call that the free market, but that's what it is.

Believe it or not being the absolute cheapest is not the only thing. So you bump your price as high as you think you can still sell for. If it's a little over someone else, they can do the same.

Sure if someone comes along and is half your price you have to respond. But in stable markets things do not magically fall to a minimum viable profit magically and that's because big companies don't decide to drive each other into the ground... By colluding.

This is a wildly unfounded statement. It will eventually be true for old enough cars, but not for anything you'd buy used today unless it's like Gen 1 leafs, which you wouldn't want simply because the tech has iterated so much in the meantime they would be essentially worthless.

I drove a 2013 volt for 8 years with no noticeable drop in battery capacity. Cold climate no special battery management tricks.

These packs do not degrade quickly.

The US has a federal tax credit for home charger installation that made mine essentially free.

Uh, I've been driving ev for awhile. It's absolutely true you can chew a set of tires faster than any ice car I've ever had.

It's influenced by what model you're driving, how aggressive of a driver you are, and how regularly you stay on top of rotations and alignments.

While it's not a particularly good argument against evs, they definitely need to stay on top of tire care or you can absolutely chew tires up, and pretending otherwise is just incorrect.

I lived with an l1 charger for the first month I had an EV. It was January in Maine. I could reliably recharge 3 to 4 miles of range per hour on the charger.

That profile may not work for everybody, but considering it's pretty trivial to ensure that the car is charging 10 to 12 hours a day for most commuters, I found level one very adequate. Especially since even in cold weather I have more than 180 miles of range so if they don't pick up all of their driving EVERY day there is buffer capacity in the battery that evens out over time.

There's a couple level two chargers downtown near me (walking distance) as well, so if I got into trouble I could park it downtown for a few hours and catch back up.

I did end up installing a level 2 charger at home because with the tax credit and car company charger rebate it was free, and it was more convenient to not have to think about it and just be fully charged every morning.

Point being there is a learning curve and having access to faster rate charging is important, but I'm pretty sure the level one charging will actually solve the needs of most daily drivers. Unless your commute is particularly long.

Wouldn't the bigger question be about, you know, the rest of the two or three trillion, as opposed to a small investment that likely pays for itself very quickly if it loosens up any kind of economic growth whatsoever, as it seems like it would have to at a ratio of 7 private dollars for every public dollar spent?

Fwiw, I intended to reply to the parent, not you. Apologies for the confusion.

Vague feeling?

We're starting to hit the boundaries of literal human survivability in hot climates during heat waves now. One grid failure at the wrong time and millions dying is a reality that is way closer than it ever was. Like, we were damn close to it last summer. In the southern US, among other places.

The collapse of ocean ecosystems. That's important for food too you know. That's a thing.

Maybe not a food issue but destroying our coastal cities is also a "vaguely bad" result of warming.

Wait a sec, compare apples to apples. Your plumber will likely have 4 to 6 years of earning by the time your software engineer is out of school, and no significant student debt.

The comparison is not as bad as you think.

Also the job sites don't usually track business owners as typical jobs. So yeah if you work for someone else as a plumber you have those salaries. If you go on your own after a few year's working, like many do, you will blow those numbers out of the water.

I know several later career tradespeople clearing 200k a year, in Maine and protip Maine is not California. That's comparable to high paid professionals for sure.

Do not look down on trades. If you're motivated and smart you can do as good if not better there than in most other career paths you can mention, and their job security moving forward is absolutely guaranteed.

Evaporative cooling water is not returned in a closed loop. I'd be shocked if it's even legal for these centers to use evaporative cooling in Phoenix AZ but if the article is correct about that, this is a problem.

Well, maybe. There are so many gas stations because there is so much demand for gas. But as demand drops, the big issue is what happens when you get to major replacement time at the gas station? They last roughly 20 years. Replacement is not cheap. At some point, whether ice cars exist or not isn't the issue, it's whether they cost justify the maintenance of the fueling infrastructure.

As that process continues, gas will rise in price and stations get less common.

Right, fix all the zoning laws so we can do dense development, then build all those housing units to that would allow us to affordably live in dense areas that are worked and served by great public transit, and you will have some kind of a point. Until then, America is built around car travel and that is not something that will change quickly.

"close or equal to"?

really. wow, that's amazing. I would love to hear more about how the pollution involved with manufacturing solar panels, which will then generate many times their energy of manufacturing over the lifetime of the panels, is somehow "close to, if not equal to" that of, say, burning oil for home heating oil, or as gas in cars, or coal for electricity, including THEIR extraction and refining externialities.

be sure to show your work, cause that's quite a doozy of a statement. It reeks of complete bullshit, actually. How many people per year die of solar panel manufacturing related pollution and manufacturing, vs oil production AND POLLUTION AND USE? do the words "orders of magnitude apart" mean anything? check out "smog related deaths" sometime. it's illuminating. and those are generally just talking about people who actually die from the immediate consequences of smog inhalation. now consider the impact on lung disease as a whole. very small doses of critical thinking are all you need.

markets cannot adjust for externialities in any truly meaningful way without very heavy educational loads, especially for complex questions. it is why a slavish devotion to free market principles is childish and shortsighted. it's a frightfully flawed model if actual human welfare is of concern.