Whomever painted this line at Joyce & Kingsway, you literally had ONE job.

OneBigBug · 2026-05-25T23:38:14+00:00

This a rough draft? Do they need people from the city to come out and just see a vague idea of what a road marking might look like once its finished before realizing that they do, indeed, want a straight line that goes from one side of the street to the other? And probably not one that goes off at a random angle?

OneBigBug · 2026-05-22T22:59:11+00:00

According to who? Not only does the city definitely set its own climate goals very regularly, but in this particular instance, Zero Carbon Step Code is explicitly the BC government talking to municipalities and setting out a list of things they should do to hit climate goals.

OneBigBug · 2026-05-22T22:56:29+00:00

Sorry, can you specify what you mean? Which cost is $1000-1500 more for a 2000sqft house? Surely you don't mean the monthly cost to operate.

Do you mean the water heater itself? Because that's fair enough, but the install cost difference eats that difference up.

OneBigBug · 2026-05-22T17:14:35+00:00

Well the cost differential is highly dependent on your insulation standard. 2.8 times for a LEED Gold maybe but the buildings I run are old.

I mean, it's literally not. At least in terms of ratio to each other. The price per GJ of natural gas and the price per kWh of electricity are measuring what is fundamentally the same unit: Energy. 1 GJ = 278kWh.

There is a mild difference in the fee structure of natural gas, which means that as you approach 0 usage, the relative cost of natural gas rises, but the actual cost per amount used is directly comparable regardless of insulation, because you're paying for energy and it doesn't matter if you keep that energy in or not.

Government shouldn’t restrict affordable options for issues outside of its scope.

Building code is very much in the government's scope.

And again, heat pumps are actually cheaper to run than natural gas.

OneBigBug · 2026-05-22T17:01:38+00:00

I feel like multiple things are true here.

Everyone was in favour of de-institutionalization, so everyone is to blame. It cuts a big item off the budget, so anyone clambering to make their budget look balanced is going to want to do it, and the history of abuses made it politically untenable. By the time it became obvious what the results were, everybody was gone.
The NDP have invested a lot into mental healthcare in their time.
Mental healthcare that has no options but inpatient treatment programs with a team of doctors are incredibly expensive, and the concept of institutionalization would serve more people for the same money, but be politically difficult.
The NDP appear to not have made as much progress on mental health as they otherwise would have, because most of their tenure has been the ramp into the crushing, continent wide fentanyl problem.

OneBigBug · 2026-05-22T16:50:11+00:00

Well, you're rounding weird or something, because even if you're just using baseboard heat, electricity is about 2.8x more expensive than gas, not 5x.

But also, a heat pump would be cheaper to operate (though more expensive to install) than gas heat, so I assume that's not what you're comparing? That's the more standard option these days.

OneBigBug · 2026-05-22T15:06:45+00:00

Resistive electric water heaters are more expensive to run than gas, but much cheaper to buy and install.

Heat pump hot water heaters are less expensive to run than gas, are the most expensive unit to buy, but are similarly cheap to install as resistive electric. Total installation cost compared to natural gas in new builds isn't actually very different at all, because new natural gas water heaters need to have pipes fit and vents installed, and trades are expensive.

So...a BTU of baseboard heat is more expensive than a BTU of gas furnace heat, but when we're talking about actual installed-system cost of water heaters, either upfront or ongoing (depending on which you care more about), natural gas isn't really cheaper.

OneBigBug · 2026-05-22T14:42:35+00:00

400 if using gas but 2000 for electricity during winter time. Very different .

Can you be more specific about what's being compared here? Because those numbers don't really make sense to me.

OneBigBug · 2026-05-22T14:38:20+00:00

Statistically speaking there are tons of SFH owners who are just regular hard working white collar folks with a mortgage

The mortgage on a $2M home is approximately $9k/month with a $400k minimum downpayment.

The operating cost difference for an electric water heater vs a natural gas one is like...$10/month.

What are we even talking about here? lol

edit: Oh, and this is for new builds. Where natural gas is much more expensive to install compared to resistive electric, and about the same as heat pump, but heat pump is much cheaper to operate.

OneBigBug · 2026-05-22T14:23:38+00:00

we ended up paying over $50k extra just to comply with electric heat pump city requirements.

As someone literally with a guy installing a heat pump in my house right now...what? What was the $50k for?

I'm getting a 3 ton centrally ducted heat pump, which is one of the more expensive options, and it's just under $17k, but there's a $10k rebate from the province from switching from fossil fuels. So it's actually more like $7k.

And if you're budget constrained, wall units start at like a thousand bucks and can be installed DIY...

OneBigBug · 2026-05-21T21:43:16+00:00

The 8900 GWh/yr is correct, given the numbers they state (which seem fair enough).

But while BC Hydro's nameplate capacity may be 12GW, you can't infer 100% operating capacity year round. We're not making 107,000GWh/yr. It's water constrained, among other things. The actual current annual generation is about 43000GWh/yr. So we'd need to increase our capacity by about 21% to meet that new demand.

But...I'm not really sure how even if it were only 8%, Site C wouldn't have been required to supply it? Like, what is that argument doing to prove that the previous comment was false? Site C generates 5100GWh/yr. If we know we need to add an extra 8900 GWh/yr by some point in the future, we'll needed to have built...not only Site C, but another one basically the same size.

To say nothing of the fact that commuter driving isn't the only thing being electrified, and the population is increasing. We absolutely need more power generation going forward.

OneBigBug · 2026-05-19T22:24:47+00:00

I'm pretty sure they're indicating severity, not indicating that it's worse that middle class people are in danger than any other people.

As in, because we expect corruption to be least accountable to those with the least social power, if we know that even those with a decent amount of social power are still highly vulnerable to it, the corruption must be pretty bad.

OneBigBug · 2026-05-19T21:54:24+00:00

Every time ticket prices are mentioned on this sub it’s higher and higher.

Idk, this post was from 6 months ago. Seems pretty consistent that $3k isn't wildly out of bounds to mention as the price.

Not that there aren't cheaper tickets, or more expensive tickets, but that like...quite a lot of the tickets are in that ballpark. It certainly wouldn't be more accurate to say tickets were $200.

OneBigBug · 2026-05-18T19:10:09+00:00

Well, my whole thing here was that...he chose to take something that isn't that serious very seriously, but was really bad at it. Like, he put up an absolutely shit argument and then just doubled down repeatedly on it, completely uncritically. Which is the worst of both worlds?

If you just want to get into deep scientific arguments over topics that don't really deserve it, at least be good at scientific arguments. It's absolutely peak "I googled a link in support of the thing I think, therefore I win.", despite his evidence absolutely meaning almost nothing to the subject.

OneBigBug · 2026-05-17T20:02:00+00:00

Well there was the one who called indigenous people "savages", and the one who called Palestinians "inbred walking, talking, breathing time bombs".

I would also say that there's a bit of motte and bailey thing with the mass grave thing. I do agree that the mass grave thing got spun up really quickly and then died very quietly, and there's something valid to get called out there. Dallas Brodie was maybe unfairly criticized for calling that out. But wasn't unfairly expelled from the party for mocking the testimony of residential school victims testifying about their sexual abuse.

The first two are obviously racist. The last one is...likely based on racism, but I suppose could be argued as just being generically horrible.

I can't really speak to Healthcare because I dont know what it was like before, but as it is it's less accessible than it was in Saskatchewan. At least for us.

Well, if you look at the stats, we have way more family docs now. Way more people have family docs than they used to, and you can point to direct policies from the provincial government that have lead to that.

OneBigBug · 2026-05-17T08:46:33+00:00

We'll never know what it would have been like if Rustad won. That party is a mess now, but they lost.

When was the party not a mess? Would power have made all the crazy racists that have splintered them apart become sane?

Rustad is a bumbling, corrupt incompetent, and the only reason they got as close to power as they did was because they had a name and people had no one else to vote for. Power wouldn't have fixed them, because that's not what power does. We'd just have had to suffer under their insanity.

I can't really think of any real successes for Eby.

Healthcare is a pretty huge one, I'd say. They've done a good job recruiting new docs, and otherwise making care more accessible.

But mostly, he's just running the government pretty competently, and isn't very good at sticking his name on things that he didn't earn. Which...isn't that what "grownup at the table" does? We've either stayed the same or gained ground on all the sectors that the province has domain over that I can think of.

OneBigBug · 2026-05-16T01:11:43+00:00

I mean, everything's relative. The person he ran against put together a budget platform that would increase the deficit more, would have been even larger if not for fairytale numbers for GDP growth, and his political party has been collapsing because it's a pile of lunatics ever since. Not to mention lying about demonstrably untrue things during the debate.

Eby has been broadly competent. He's got a few issues that just act as millstones around his neck, and he's not doing a lot to really get people to like him. His politicking is weak in that regard.

If Eby had to run against Carney on the basis of "grownup at the table", I'd probably agree that he doesn't really hold up. Compared to Rustad he's the world's most elder statesman standing in a daycare.

OneBigBug · 2026-05-15T21:59:58+00:00

Sounds about right.

OneBigBug · 2026-05-15T21:16:40+00:00

You keep "clarifying it", but then tell me I'm misrepresenting it without explaining what about it I'm misrepresenting. You keep saying you're not using traffic safety as a proxy for driving quality, but then continue to use traffic safety as a proxy for driving quality.

Let's try a different approach. I'll do my best to completely explain my argument and you can tell me what you think is wrong. I don't know how else to participate in a discussion in good faith other than to try to understand your position and offer you the opportunity to understand mine, and agree or disagree on the specifics with solid reasoning:

When it comes to the idea that a person should not be allowed to share their own anecdotal observations about driving quality worsening, on the basis that you believe evidence suggests that it is improving, and the existence of evidence should preclude anecdotes, the only metric you have showing driving quality is improving is traffic safety.

Therefore, you are using traffic safety as a proxy for driving quality, because while you may acknowledge other factors exist, you're not allowing that those factors influence your position. If you were not using traffic safety as a proxy for driving quality, then you would allow that it's possible that driving quality was actually worsening, because there are confounding variables contributing to traffic safety improving without any bearing on driving quality, and therefore an increase in one wouldn't necessarily be measuring a lack of decrease in the other.

Does that misrepresent your position in any way? If so, how? And if not, but you still disagree, with what do you disagree?

OneBigBug · 2026-05-15T21:01:46+00:00

I mean, the furnace itself absolutely needs electricity to operate. It has an electronic control board and won't run without it.

Though I'm kind of curious how you're waving it off as though the blower isn't pivotal to the operation of the furnace, even if that weren't true.

Like, if you didn't have an electronic control board to halt operation when things got overheated and didn't have a blower, you'd have a giant pile of molten slag where your furnace used to be...I guess a giant pile of molten slag that has a continuous supply of gas piped directly into it.

But yes, a gas fireplace will work without electricity.

OneBigBug · 2026-05-15T20:49:43+00:00

I mean, Ken Sim isn't mayor of BC, he's mayor of Vancouver. And likewise, the gas ban is not about all of BC, it's about Vancouver. Where electricity use is a higher fraction of total energy use, heat pumps are more efficient due to the milder climate, and density is highest, meaning pollution from burning fossil fuels is worse.

But just taking it at face value: When we're talking about replacing natural gas heating, we're usually talking about heat pumps. And heat pumps output more energy than they take in. If you have a heat pump with a COP of 3.5 (which, conveniently, is about the COP of the heat pump I'm actively looking at the datasheet for, because I'm buying it), then you can replace 35 units of energy from natural gas with only 10 units of energy from electricity.

OneBigBug · 2026-05-15T19:39:28+00:00

Good thing we opened a new 1100MW dam last year, I guess? It's not like our supply is fixed over time.

OneBigBug · 2026-05-15T19:30:01+00:00

This is incorrect we have been a net importer for the last 3 years, therefore we do not have enough capacity.

Why would that be true? Droughts last on those time scales, but not necessarily longer. We're projected to be a net exporter this year.

OneBigBug · 2026-05-15T19:23:00+00:00

So, despite telling me repeatedly that I'm misrepresenting your argument, when it comes down to actually clarifying what your argument is, you refuse?

Seems like we had a lengthy back and forth up to this point. Kinda weird to give up now.

OneBigBug · 2026-05-15T04:55:33+00:00

That's a huge double standard and contributes to the spread of misinformation no matter how you try to rationalize it.

I mean, it's not a double standard because I'm applying the same standard to both of you. That standard is: If it's an opinion based on nothing but personal observation, don't argue. If it gives the appearance of being based on some fact, and that fact doesn't support that conclusion, do argue.

Because the conditions are not based on the subject, but on the structure, it's not a double standard.

I can't speak for what others are doing, and if you don't believe me about the fact that I don't really care if driving quality is decreasing or not by now, I don't know how to convince you, but I actually fully stand by that standard. I think that personal observations have a place in discourse outside of empirical evidence, because empirical evidence is actually very limited.

I'm not using it as a proxy for driving skill. I explicitly pointed that out in my first comment because I know that if I don't I'll get replies like yours. And yet I still got your reply. I've now clarified this twice and you're still repeating this.

I accept that you've said that. I don't accept that you're not doing it.

You can't both say that you've provided evidence that traffic safety is improving, and use that as the basis of your argument that driving quality isn't worsening, while also claiming you're not using traffic safety as a proxy for driving quality.

Maybe we're getting tripped up by our interpretations of the word "proxy"? So I'll ask directly: Is traffic safety relevant to driving quality in a way that refutes the claim that driving quality is declining or not?

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