Launched a newsletter yesterday about climate (and other rural upstate NY problems).
I'm so heartened by the response to this thing so far. You people are the best.
Twitter being still up today is gravy. Crossing my fingers it lasts.
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Lissa Harris
@lissaharris
climate reporter. firefighter. upstater. barbaric yawper. ex-, she/her 
@lissaharris@mastodon.lol
@lissaharris@mastodon.lolLissa Harris’s Tweets
Not that much for the public to do right now. (Don’t pick up dead birds or animals!).
But there is much to do now, before it’s too late, by the authorities to try to keep it that way. Best defense is preventing a human outbreak from happening, or greatly lowering the odds. twitter.com/robert_aterman
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Let's put it this way.
The things proposed in the piece, like shutting down mink farms, vaccinating poultry/pigs, stepping up surveillance and response to STOP a human outbreak NOW so it doesn't happen is how we avoid all the things people are still fighting over with COVID.
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who is it over for? you already know: you hoes
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Replying to @lissaharris and @BryceJohanneck
I’ve been AWOL from my newsletter since the holidays, getting over Round 2 of ye aulde COVID, but working on my glorious return even as we speak
empireofdirt.substack.com
back in my day, pal, we kept the house in the 50s at night
and we learned to drive the old fashioned way: on a stick shift, parked on a hill, weeping at an unsympathetic family member in the passenger seat
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ahahahaha
living my best energy transition life, I have never in my life kept the house at 72 before heat pumps 😎
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Energy transition proponents need to quit the thermostat pics showing 60°F indoor temps
Y’all aren’t selling this very well
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Living in a reddish-purple rural area, I have literally never gotten a nasty comment about my e-bike.
Old guys in VFW hats smile and go “nice bike!” Moms in minivans ask me endless Qs.
My fire dept bros haze me very gently like “where’s your bike?” if they see me driving. 😂
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"Denver’s e-bike rebate program was so popular that the September round of the rebate program was claimed in nine minutes of its opening. By the end of 2022, more than 4,700 e-bike rebates were issued with nearly half going to low-income residents." thedailybeast.com/forget-tesla-a
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To clarify, because I’m using nerd words: “Decarbonize” means we have to stop burning fossil fuels. Quickly. And probably also do carbon removal at scale on top of that.
How we get that done? We’ve got options.
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finding out mid-dinner that your date is not of age for a beer: awkward!
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tbh I can roll with you answering a WSW ad as a trans man, but for the love of all that is holy do not misrepresent the fact that you are an actual teenager
I think I was 26 at the time? I sent that boy home to his mama 💀
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hey twitter, what's the worst queer date you've ever been on?
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Pete makes a good point. There are a lot of ways to fix climate problems.
We can choose to decarbonize in ways that hurt vulnerable people, or in ways that benefit them.
The science says we must decarbonize or suffer. Politics is what decides who the costs fall hardest on.
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Replying to @PeteSikora1 @panamaredhat and @lissaharris
For example: as I read it, requiring a shift to heat pumps starting in 2030/2035 would potentially lead to large rent hikes in NY rent regulated housing. There are about 1M rent regulated apartments in NY. Landlords can stick rent hikes on tenants for capital improvements.
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We're up to $5848.53 now after the first day of our "Housing is Healing" tee shirt fundraiser!
If we can raise another $1151.47, that will bring us to 10% of our goal for keeping 120 unhoused neighbors sheltered until March 31st. twitter.com/granolaharrow/
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Every time I think that humanity can solve major problems I see what humans are googling and question that belief
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Since my 100% unaided heat pump system test is over, and I got my data and am satisfied these thangs will get me through the worst cold nights, I made a fire for Hector.
He likes that.
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Pre-heat-pumps me to visiting pals in January: uhhhhh, would you like to borrow a cat?
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Maybe my NYC friends with their steam heat apartments stuck at 75 all winter will visit me more now. 😝
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Something to keep in mind with heat pumps: They might enable you to stop underheating your house.
That means less savings and more grid challenges. But also very tangible quality of life benefits to people, especially on the lower end of the income spectrum.
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Replying to @JoanneLuc6 and @PeteSikora1
My biggest electric bill this year was about $300. I figure $200 was heat.
Last winter, I spent about $2200 on propane and wood, kept the house at 55 at night and hauled wood around the clock to keep the woodstove running.
This year: 68, set and forget.
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If NYSEG rates stay around 14 cents/kWh, I spent about $20 on heating the house (and other electric use) in the past 24 hours.
Propane’s about $3.50 a gallon, so that would’ve bought me ~6 gallons.
I feel pretty good about my choices.
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Time to answer the big Q! How much power did the heat pumps use in the cold snap?
I checked the meter around this time yesterday, and again just now.
Whoooeeee. 147kWh.
For comparison: I used 94kWh on Xmas Eve, when it got down to ~-5F. Typical January day: ~70kWh.
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Replying to
We have a fleet of cold climate heat pumps in Colorado. They all held their heat during the -16F cold snap in Dec. Sizing correctly is super important in cold climates!
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Note: This is the pipe that froze, and on the wall next to it, a typical example of some of the insulation solutions I inherited when I bought the house in 2013. 😂
It’s a process. I have work to do. 😂😂😂
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2 degrees out there, heat pumps gaining ground after dropping down to 66 overnight.
*sotto voce* …nice
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This kind of thing is why I wonder if the GOP’s seething hatred for clean tech will last.
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@70sBachchan on GOP green industrial policy wins:
-Wind and solar jobs are mostly in red states
-Big landowners and farming coalitions get major rents from wind and solar leasing
-The South is no longer the Bible Belt—it’s the Battery Belt.
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Live now: The inside story of the Inflation Reduction Act, told by two insiders who helped design the bill: and
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😂
No tech is perfect.
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Counter-narrative to "EVs don't work in the cold." ICE car wouldn't start, (Ditto our neighbor) but our used Leaf had no problems, and I was able to go borrow a battery charger from a friend.
EVs, more reliable in the cold.
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Update: Thrilled to discover that it’s only the hot water line to the kitchen that’s frozen, bathroom is fine.
Frozen pipes issues have gone from “a whole-house struggle every time it goes under 10 degrees” to “exotic polar vortex problem in some pipes.” Insulation works!
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Replying to
-1 in CoCounty, and my propane system is STRUGGLING to keep it above 65. Like, it has not turned off in the last hour.
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We also need to be real with the fact that power outages - mostly of the boring variety, with trees falling on power lines, not the dreaded overloaded grid reliability failures - already fall too heavily on rural NY.
Utilities need to be held accountable for maintenance.
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this is a thing I have really been enjoying about our heat pumps -- we've never been this warm in the winter twitter.com/lissaharris/st
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NY’s climate plan grapples with the fact that there are parts of the state where air source heat pumps — probably the cheapest building decarb solution overall — won’t cut it, especially in older construction. We’ll need ground source, we’ll need backup heat.
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Cold-weather air source heat pumps are great! I love mine real bad.
Last night tested them to their limits, and they did great. But if I lived in the ADKs, I would not rely on them without backup. Saranac was ~18 degrees colder than Margaretville last night.
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I’ve been in my janky old house for ~10 years, and every deep freeze reveals something else that needs attention. All the pipes used to freeze up in this weather til I did a strategic hit of spray foam in a kitchen wall.
Now the basement needs some love. Old house Whac-A-Mole.
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I find the conversations in this space lack context. In all asset classes you can find 8% returns and 20% returns. The 8% returns come with lower risk and the 20% returns with more risk. twitter.com/katearonoff/st
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Heat pumps, 1; duct tape in -13 weather, 0.
In all seriousness: I could probably use to put another mini split in the basement, but first I better fix that &@?!%ing window for real-real.
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Now that the sun’s up, and it’s a whole -8 outside, the house temp is creeping up again.
On the other hand: A crappy DIY fix for a missing window in the mostly-unheated basement failed. There’s a whole window open down there, and my hot water line froze. 🫥
Old houses! 🥶🤬
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Good morning, Catskills! It’s a brisk -10 out.
After a long night of temps ranging from -10 to -13, the first floor has lost a little heat. Deep negative temps bite into efficiency and capacity of air source heat pumps.
Upstairs bedroom: still toasty.
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In case you're keeping score at home...the 107 DEGREES BELOW ZERO at Mt. Washington, New Hampshire, is the COLDEST wind chill ever recorded in the US. The current air temperature is 46 BELOW ZERO. It is the top of a high mountain, so it does skew the numbers, but WOW.
#kywx
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Young Gen X here, and I waffle on whether the pandemic has made me 87 before my time or a dumbass 17 all over again.
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Do any other millennials feel like the pandemic prematurely aged you? Like sure, we weren’t the coolest anymore, but now we are all 60?
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Update: -11 out there, lost a degree.
No complaints here.
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