Category: Climate Change

The incompetence of HVAC installation and maintenance in Massachusetts

by philg

The 11-year-old high-end Carrier system at our old Harvard Square place failed in the hot summer of 2024. It was probably some sort of leak in the outdoor unit, but it was tough to say for sure. In Florida, this would have been repaired for about $6,000 via installation of a new outdoor unit and recharge. In Maskachusetts I got estimates from $24,000 to around $40,000 to replace both air handler and the outdoor unit. (This might have been a $12,000 project in Florida for top-of-the-line variable-speed gear.)

The company that quoted $24,000 was rated 4.9 stars in Google Maps. They’re an authorized Carrier dealer. They said that they needed to do $thousands in additional items in order to satisfy the building inspector. My suggestion that a building permit wasn’t needed because they were just replacing existing equipment was laughed off. They ran new coolant lines and, despite me begging them not to, decided to monkey with the hydroair system that sends hot water up from a basement gas-fired boiler into the attic where the air handler lives. Because the attic is technically unconditioned space, even though it never gets very cold (poor insulation in the old wooden house underneath allows heat to rise), the circulating water must have some antifreeze in it.

When the winter arrived, the hydroair system didn’t work. The only heating was from the heat pump, ruinously expensive at some of the nation’s highest electric rates. The company came back and said that we needed about $10,000 of work. The circulation pump was failed, which is why fluid wasn’t circulating. The boiler was from 2003 and should be trashed. At a minimum, everything attached to the boiler needed to be replaced. I called the plumber who’d installed the boiler. He came by and said “Your HVAC people are idiots. They will the pipes with 100% glycol, which is too viscous for the pump to move. I drained it and refilled it with 50% glycol like it is supposed to be and everything works fine now. Your boiler doesn’t need any service and is working perfectly.” He sent me a $1300 bill (would have been $500 in Florida, but this guy is kind of a genius and Massachusetts is truly a paradise for anyone competent in the trades).

It’s finally time to sell the old unit. The market for short-term rentals in Cambridge never recovered to its 2019 level. I was never going there except to fix stuff. The family wasn’t interested in spending time in Maskachusetts. What did the lawyers working on the closing find? The HVAC company never closed the building permit that they pulled in 2024 and for which they said that thousands of dollars of extra work were required. (Ultimately, it did get closed, but not without multiple follow-up emails and calls from me. The HVAC company called the inspector and he actually did come by within a week, but he marked it as a “rough inspection”. The permit wasn’t closed and the HVAC company never checked to see if it was closed.)

(Note that the cost to heat and cool this 1400 sqft. condo, thanks to high utility rates in Massachusetts and low quality construction, is actually higher than the cost to heat (one week per year!) and cool (to 72 degrees; no Jimmy Carter austerity here) our 5400 sqft. house in Palm Beach County.)

Loosely related… this lamppost sticker from Harvard Square would make a good tagline for an HVAC business:

Also, a friend’s daughter got into a summer math program at Boston University. She is required to live in a BU dorm as part of this program. Faculty, staff, and students at BU are such experts on Climate Change that there are 31 pages of results from Google when searching for this string on the BU site:

How did the climate change experts prepare their own campus for the brutal heatwaves that are now hitting Boston regularly? (example) They failed to install air conditioning in their dorms.

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When do rising sea levels make Florida beachfront real estate less valuable?

by philg

Ten years ago, here on this blog… Are markets so inefficient that global warming isn’t being priced properly?:

During our two weeks in Ft. Lauderdale we learned that a beachfront house costs between $3 and $8 million. Most of these are approximately the same height above sea level as a crushproof cigarette pack. If the seas are rising up to swallow Florida, as the climate change doomsayers predict is imminent, why are these houses still worth so much?

The beachfront houses of Ft. Lauderdale aren’t worth $3-8 million anymore, just as the Climate Doomers predicted. The price to live in a house that Science proves will be swept away soon is $5-40 million. Is there any new Science that could explain this meteoric rise in the nominal price? “A Global Perspective on Local Sea Level Changes” (Journal of Marine Science and Engineering 2025) looks at IPCC predictions vs. observations. The paper says that sea level worldwide is rising at about 1.5 mm per year. How does that compare with the Climate Doom narrative from the IPCC? The authors say that the observed sea level rise is somewhat lower than predicted and dramatically lower for Florida: “the overestimation along the Atlantic coast of North America is 4 mm/year to 5 mm/year; the highest overestimation found anywhere”.

The authors found little evidence of acceleration of sea level rise (Conclusions), but the same section seems to contradict the above map: “Empirically derived long-term rates of sea level rise in 2020 were in majority found to be in excess of the contemporary projected rates of rise. The current generation of projections can therefore be considered conservative”. Maybe someone here can read this more carefully and figure out how most of the rates based on local measurements are lower than the model predictions while at the same time the model predictions are “conservative” regarding doom.

The IPCC:

[Global mean sea level] GMSL from tide gauges and altimetry observations increased from 1.4 mm yr–1 over the period 1901–1990 to 2.1 mm yr–1 over the period 1970–2015 to 3.2 mm yr–1 over the period 1993–2015 to 3.6 mm yr–1 over the period 2006–2015.

GMSL will rise between 0.43 m (0.29–0.59 m, likely range; RCP2.6) and 0.84 m (0.61–1.10 m, likelyrange; RCP8.5) by 2100 (medium confidence) relative to 1986–2005.

If we take the 1.5 mm/year rate of the new paper and a 50-year time horizon for beachfront house ownership, the sea level rises 3 inches in Fort Lauderdale over the next 50 years. If we use the 3.6 mm/year rate, the sea level rises 7 inches. In other words, the acceleration prediction by the IPCC would need to materialize in order for the sea level to rise by half a meter (20 inches).

Our house is at 11′ above sea level (approximately 3 miles inland within Abacoa) so I think we need a rise of about 7′ (2 meters) before it becomes impractical to occupy (need a bit of buffer to handle storm surges). Even under the Doomiest Doomer’s prediction, that will take so long that the house will have required reconstruction, potentially elevated by a few feet, purely due to age.

From September 2024, WSJ, regarding a (present-day) sea level house too shabby to be left standing:

(Imagine the environmental impact of dumping all of those almost-new solar panels into a landfill!)

Finally, let’s look at the climate change alarmists. Here’s Democrat Senator Merkley saying “Climate chaos is the existential threat of our time. We need bold climate action now, before it’s too late” less than a year ago:

Today, however, he/she/ze/they demands that gasoline be as cheap as possible so that people will maximize consumption and CO2 emission:

(Curiously, the tweet complaining about “Trump’s illegal war” was posted a day after Trump had announced the U.S.’s surrender to Iran (“ceasefire”), i.e., when the war was already over.)

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Why are Climate Change alarmists also Strait of Hormuz alarmists?

by philg

If you believe in climate change, shutting down the Strait of Hormuz is the best thing that ever happened to Mother Earth because it reduces fossil fuel supply and, thus, reduces CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuel. Bizarrely, however, people and organizations who’ve been reliable climate change alarmists describe the closing of the Strait of Hormuz, and the resultant obstruction of oil and gas exports, as a catastrophe. Example from today’s New York Times:

Here’s CNN. For a Follower of Science, the headline should be “Key method of destroying our planet shut down” and high oil prices should be welcomed as a spur to conservation. Instead, we learn that high oil prices should be “fixed” (i.e., oil should be cheap enough to burn in a profligate Earth-destroying CO2-emitting-as-fast-as-possible manner) by Trump and that the strait being closed is a bad thing.

An Obama-generation Democrat in 2022 says that he wants to make it illegal for people to purchase gasoline or, at least, the cars that burn gasoline. This will be an “important climate change policy”:

A few years later, Gavin Newsom is excoriating Trump for causing an increase in the price of the product that he thinks should be outlawed because use of that product is harmful:

Here’s a representative young Democrat saying, in July 2025, that we need to take climate change seriously:

Here is the climate change alarmist, less than a year later, saying that gas prices should be lower so that people can afford to buy and operate that 12 mpg SUV:

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AI catastrophists will feel better if they become climate catastrophists?

by philg

A friend in San Francisco is an AI catastrophist, as least as far as the economy is concerned. He’s not worried about robots taking over and, after reflecting on the damage that humans say that humans have caused to Mother Earth, killing all of the humans. He’s concerned about the value of his three-unit building in San Francisco. I said, “Why don’t you become a climate change catastrophist? You won’t have to worry about the trajectory of the U.S. economy if all cities except Denver are inundated by melting in Greenland and Antarctica.”

As a starting point towards transitioning (always a beautiful process!) from AI Doomer to Climate Doomer, here’s a 2015 article on how even Orlando (100′ above sea level) is doomed once Greenland and Antarctica melt:

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Climate change alarmist pays $200 million for a sea level house; time for new envy level?

by philg

May 2017, Harvard Crimson:

Mark Zuckerberg’s Commencement address at Harvard

How about stopping climate change before we destroy the planet and getting millions of people involved manufacturing and installing solar panels? … We get that our greatest challenges need global responses too — no country can fight climate change alone or prevent pandemics.

(The last part is my favorite. In 2017 he predicted that the lavishly funded UN and WHO would, three years later, be able to prevent a SARS-CoV-2 pandemic via muscular action, Scientific interventions such as saliva-soaked face rags, etc.)

February 2026, WSJ:

Billionaire Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, are the latest California billionaires to buy a home in South Florida. … THE PRICE: While it isn’t clear exactly what Zuckerberg and Chan are paying for the nearly 2-acre property, local real-estate agents said it would likely trade for $150 million to $200 million. Last year, an undeveloped Indian Creek lot of roughly the same size sold for about $105 million.

A peasant to whom $200 million is real money might look at the contrast between the 2017 statement about climate panic (“destroy the planet”) and the 2026 sea level waterfront house purchase and shout out “Hypocrisy!”. But maybe instead it is time for a new level of envy. What if Mark Zuckerberg believes what he’s been saying about climate change and bought the house anyway? That’s the real estate equivalent of driving a $600,000 Ferrari Purosangue to an elementary school with two kids and a bag of drive-thru breakfasts in the back. The owner knows that the kids are doing $200,000 of damage to the interior and simply doesn’t care. Zuck expects the above house to be washed away in 5-10 years, in other words, and is indifferent to the consequent loss of $200 million.

Envy 101: being bitter about the people who can afford to buy beachfront mansions and pass them down to their kids and grandkids

Envy 303: being bitter about the people who can afford to buy beachfront mansions and treat them as disposable

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Climate Anxiety therapy canceled due to Climate Emergency

by philg

A four-hour mental health session for climate anxiety caused by the climate emergency was scheduled for today at MIT:

The emergency.mit.edu web site, yesterday afternoon:

I.e., the folks who needed four hours of therapy because of their anxiety caused by the ongoing climate emergency suffered the cancelation of their therapy due to the climate emergency that had caused their anxiety in the first place. #irony?

I rescheduled my JetBlue flight from yesterday afternoon to Saturday night. Here’s our front yard yesterday as the snow was ramping up throughout Maskachusetts:

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Bill Gates: Climate change is a crisis, but not such a bad crisis that anyone should stop flying Gulfstreams

by philg

Happy World Immunization Day to those who celebrate (not to be confused with World Immunization Week, which WHO says is the last week of April). Let’s turn our attention on this sacred day to one of the world’s leading vaccine scientists and covidologists: Bill Gates. From the World Economic Forum, April 2020:

“Because our foundation has such deep expertise in infectious diseases, we’ve thought about the epidemic, we did fund some things to be more prepared, like a vaccine effort,” Gates said. “Our early money can accelerate things.”

It turns out that Prof. Dr. Bill Gates, M.D., Ph.D., also owns a company that fuels Gulfstreams (WSJ):

Also, “Bill Gates shifts tone on climate, criticizes “doomsday view,” drawing mixed reaction” (CBS):

In a memo posted online, Gates wrote that while climate change is still a major problem that needs to be solved, “People will be able to live and thrive on Earth for the foreseeable future.” Gates, who has invested billions developing green technologies to cut greenhouse gases, says doomsday climate scenarios over-emphasize cutting emissions while “diverting resources from the most effective things we should be doing to improve life in a warming world.”

Is it possible that Bill Gates has personally done more to accelerate climate change than any other human? He and his wife-turned-plaintiff have worked tirelessly for 25 years to accelerate human population growth. And Bill Gates will continue to try to maximize the number of humans emitting CO2 on this planet, says CBS:

The lengthy memo essentially argued that we should continue to innovate and back climate breakthroughs but not at the expense of funding for global health or development — “programs that help people stay resilient in the face of climate change.” He argued for putting “human welfare at the center of our climate strategies,” including improving health and agriculture in the world’s poorest countries.

It’s human “development” that got us into this climate change mess, right?

So… climate change is a crisis, but it isn’t such a bad crisis that anyone should stop flying Gulfstreams or suspend efforts to increase human population.

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Boise boldly attacks what it calls a “climate crisis”

by philg

Happy Zero Emissions Day to those who celebrate.

Back in 2021, the City of Boise officially declared the existence of a “climate crisis”:

We’re the generation that must solve the climate crisis because our health and economy depend on us doing this now.

What does “doing this now” mean in the context of a “crisis”? It means “do it within the next 30 years or so” (“City of Boise Approves Bold New Climate Goal: Carbon Neutral by 2050″).

July 2, 2025, 10 pm, City Hall:

Note that all of the lights in the empty offices are blazing. A flagpole out front, July 2, 2025, earlier in the day:

A friend in Maskachusetts did his Zero Emissions share for 2025 by buying a Cybertruck and, due to the staggering weight of the vehicle, will be able to deduct 100 percent of it immediately on his small business tax form. He’s already gotten some hate from the Righteous, e.g., a Subaru driver shouting “Cybertruck is gay; Tesla sucks”. A friend who grew up in Brookline, Maskachusetts suggested “How about a big wrap with patriots beating Jessie Smolette, THIS IS MAGA COUNTRY, and Trump and Elon standing in solidarity – and Fauci behind bars?” Another anti-vandalism wrap idea: BLM banner or photo of Greta Thunberg combined with Palestine flag. Messages:

  • [teenage daughter] just cried to [wife] that she doesn’t want to get picked up at [elite private school, since MA doesn’t support gifted education] in a Cybertruck.
  • [wife] assured her she would pick her up instead

Separately, it’s International Day of Peace and the Islamic Republic of Britain is celebrating by recognizing the world’s most peaceful government and people: “UK, Canada and Australia announce formal recognition of Palestinian state” (BBC). It’s a little confusing because there already is a Palestinian state, i.e., Michigan, and I thought that the UK, Canada, and Australia already recognized Michigan. Also, the UK says that it doesn’t want Hamas to run any Palestinian state, which I guess means that the mullahs in charge of the UK prefer Palestinian Islamic Jihad?

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Could we shade the Earth or at least some cities now that Starship is working?

by philg

Elon Musk wants to go to Mars on Starship. What can the technology do for those of us who aren’t interested in living on Mars? How about improving our beloved Earth, or at least the biggest and richest cities, via space-based sunshades? If we wanted to help everyone on the planet we could put a 35kTon shield at the L1 Lagrange point (#Science).

But if we’ve learned nothing else from the Climate Change (TM) experts we’ve learned that the climate righteous don’t care about everyone on the planet. Greta Thunberg, for example, cares only about the noble Palestinians (today she sails to Gaza from Spain). Climate change alarmists in New York City were in favor of open borders when migrants invaded Texas and against open borders (“a crisis”) when migrants began showing up in NYC by the busload to claim their right to taxpayer-funded housing.

What about space-based sunshades funded by the richest and most densely packed cities that are aimed at cooling off only folks in those cities and only for the hottest months of the year? Grok says that New York City could be shaded for less than $5 billion. If we assume that 1 million NYC residents (out of 8.5 million) pay non-negligible taxes, that’s $5,000 per taxpaying New Yorker, essentially nothing. It’s also nothing compared to the NYC government’s $115 annual budget. Maybe Grok is wrong about the likely cost? Or Grok is budgeting for 20 years of improvements in technology?

Unlike air conditioning, a solar shade for the elite has the advantage that it will also cool off non-elite regions of the Earth, at least to a small extent. The constellation of sun shades for NYC could move to provide relief to equatorial cities in the spring and fall and then be repositioned to provide shade to Southern Hemisphere cities during their summer. Maybe a city could still hit 95 degrees due to being near a warm air mass, but there wouldn’t simultaneously be a blazing hot sun. Grok says we can get a 3.5-7-degree F local temperature reduction.

Where else could this work? I.e., what other cities tend to be too hot for some parts of the year, are densely populated, and are rich? Singapore, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Tel Aviv (cue the Jewish Space Lasers!), Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Miami, Doha, Tokyo?

Here’s Grok’s answer after I asked about shading all of Florida and then just NYC:

Technical FeasibilityBuilding a space-based sunshade for New York City (NYC, approximately 800 km² land area) that deploys seasonally from June 1 to September 15 is theoretically possible but would require significant advancements in solar sail technology and orbital mechanics. Unlike global sunshades at the Sun-Earth L1 point (1.5 million km away), a city-specific system would use a constellation of smaller, lightweight reflective sails or mirrors in Earth orbit to provide targeted shading. This draws from early concepts like Hermann Oberth’s 1920s-1970s proposals for orbiting mirrors (100-300 km diameter) to weaken solar radiation over specific regions.

Modern adaptations could leverage “statite” configurations—solar sails that balance solar radiation pressure against gravity to “hover” over fixed points, such as high latitudes.

Design and Deployment: A constellation of 10-50 sails (each 10-50 km², depending on orbital altitude) could achieve 20-50% insolation reduction over NYC during summer daylight hours. Sails would use ultra-thin materials (e.g., polymeric films with SiO₂ nanotubes, areal density ~1-4 g/m²) for reflectivity. For seasonal use, sails could be oriented edge-on to the Sun (non-reflective) outside summer, or maneuvered into storage orbits using onboard ion thrusters or solar pressure. Deployment might involve launching folded sails from Earth, unfolding in orbit, and positioning via solar sailing—reaching operational orbits in weeks to months.

Orbital Configurations: To maintain persistent shading over NYC (40.7°N), sails could use inclined geosynchronous orbits (24-hour period) or Molniya-like elliptical orbits to linger overhead during daylight. Statite modes could allow quasi-stationary hovering by tilting sails to counteract gravity, enabling seasonal activation without full repositioning.

Studies on L1 sunshades show orbiting disks can mitigate seasonal temperature variations by ~0.5-1°C globally, suggesting adaptability for targeted summer cooling (e.g., reducing NYC heat by 2-4°C).

Size and Materials: Total sail area might be 500-2,000 km² for effective shading, far smaller than global proposals (3-4 million km²). Advanced sails (reflectance >90%) could minimize mass to 1,000-5,000 tons, deployable via reusable rockets like Starship.

Challenges and LimitationsEngineering and Launch: Solar sail tech is nascent (e.g., NASA’s Solar Cruiser prototype); scaling for precision control over a city requires breakthroughs in attitude control and collision avoidance. Launching via 50-100 missions (at $50-100/kg) could take 5-10 years, with risks of orbital debris exacerbating Kessler syndrome.
Cost: Estimated $500 million to $5 billion, based on scaled-down global figures ($5-10 trillion for planetary-scale).

This includes R&D ($100-500 million), launches, and maintenance. Seasonal operations add complexity, potentially increasing costs by 20-30% for repositioning fuel/thrusters.
Environmental and Ethical Issues: Targeted shading could alter local weather (e.g., reduced rainfall or photosynthesis impacts), affect solar energy production, or cause uneven cooling in adjacent areas. Global governance is needed, as unilateral deployment raises international concerns. Sudden failure (e.g., solar storm damage) could lead to rapid warming.

Current Status: No prototypes exist for regional shading; efforts focus on global concepts via groups like the Planetary Sunshade Foundation.

Implementation might be viable in 20-30 years with investments in reusable launchers and in-space manufacturing.

In summary, while conceptually sound and more feasible than Florida-scale due to NYC’s smaller size, this remains speculative geoengineering. Ground-based alternatives (e.g., cool roofs, urban trees) offer quicker, cheaper relief.

Sustained R&D could make it a complementary tool for urban heat mitigation.

Related:

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Americans who will reverse climate change can’t maintain a video display

by philg

The giant brains of New York University ($100,000/year to attend?) are going to reverse climate change. In “Follow the Carbon: Communicating the Path to Net Zero,” they will be assisted by experts from the pro-Hamas encampment at Columbia, from the folks at PBS who never received any federal taxpayer funds, and from politically neutral NBC. Following this meeting of experts people can sit through the Global Climate Change Film Festival. Here’s the video display these intellectually superior humans put together. Note the failure to raise the window shade sufficiently to uncover some of the segments and the Blue Screen of Death in the lower left corner:

Based on their demonstrating success at mastering the technology of video display, who is ready to give these technocrats the $50 trillion in funds that they seek for helping our beloved planet?

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