They're great. They work well and my power bills d dropped. (Just in case anyone wants a personal review).

I had radiator heat previously, haven't seen how well they heat yet, but the AC was definitely a lot cheaper than window units all summer

I have three air sorce heat pumps, installed to replace electric baseboard heat. They cut winter electric bills in half, but still more than I wanted to pay. I installed a natural gas boiler, and the heat bills were cut in half again. On the other hand, I have to admit that the ASHPs are great for summer cooling — amazingly inexpensive.

"...thanks to a combination of high interest rates, rising costs, misinformation and the cycle of home construction..."

All of that seems to be behind a lot of our difficulty in making the transition away from CO2 emissions, especially the mis (dis?) information.

...it doesn't make sense to upgrade to a heat pump. In a hot climate (such as NOLA) you won't use it very much, so it will take years to justify the investment. In a cold climate, it is often too cold for the heat pump to keep up -- they can only effect a 40 degree F or so temperature shift -- so they require conventional extra backup heat anyway. It might make a big difference if everyone magically switched to heat pumps, but in this case "magic" is a synonym for "money." If ever there was a good reason for an individual home government subsidy, this would be it.

They provide air conditioning as well as heat.

...although they are about 1.5x as expensive (at least last time I was shopping) for a heat pump equivalent to an AC, as they are more complicated to build and install. This is compared to a typical small house (I have 1600 sqft) self-contained heating-cooling package with a dedicated AC and electroresistive heating using the same ducts, blower, etc.

I could drop a heat pump in its place when I replace that central air/heat system, but it would be more expensive, and would still need electroresistive heat to come in when the heat pump can't do it. If my neighborhood had LNG hookups, the LNG would make any electric heating seem anemic by comparison. It's also terrible for the environment and the fuel is expensive, but you can't complain about the performance even if you need a 70F heating boost during a snowstorm. A heat pump simply can't do that, at all. As heaters they are cheap to run and great for the environment but they can't do more than about a 40F temperature increase. You need a very expensive 2-stage system or backup conventional heat just about anywhere it snows more than once every year or two.

If it's not part of your all-house system, backup heat also often takes the form of room space heaters, which are also quite dangerous compared even to room window A/C units, where you have to give a little more thought to their power and mounting needs.

Whenever a new highly efficient heat pump model gets good reviews on social media sites such as YouTube those models are immediately sold out and back-ordered for many months.

If you are building a new house, or if your old furnace, water heater, or air conditioner quits working one day, you want it NOW, whatever they've locally got in stock.

Whatever they've got at Home Depot looks pretty good when you are taking cold showers or you can see your breath when you get out of bed in the morning or are soaked in sweat

Leading edge heat pump technology is still in the domain of those who have comfortable "disposable" incomes and some patience.

The massive trillion dollar "investment" in solar panels has done nothing to address the extreme global heating we are experiencing. The accumulation of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide in the planetary atmosphere is accelerating, not decelerating.

Statements to the contrary are Trumpian in nature, bald face lies.

Heat pumps are one stitch on a tapestry much of which will need to be changed. They do help, although there is debate as to how much and whether it's enough to justify throwing the money at them instead of some other stitches that might give a better ROI. I tend to think heat pumps are not worth it compared to other places we could be spending money, but to say they don't work or help at all is also untrue and unhelpful.