In the future, they will have sensors that optimize the flush cycle, and use a pressurized system to automatically clear clogs, while using far less water per flush. They will use electrically actuated valves...

And you think all that will make toilets MORE reliable? Haha. Most problems with the mechanical parts of toilets result from wear to the valves, wear to the flapper, and debris clogging the valves. None of that is going to be improved by adding all the doodads you suggest; they're just new things to break.

And of course most of the problems with toilets aren't in the mechanical parts at all, they're just caused by people putting stuff in it that shouldn't be flushed. None of your doodads are going to help that either.

The underlying assumption is that you have to live in a cave and eat tofu if you want to be green, to do otherwise is to betray your own principles. AGW is a systemic problem but fortunately the economic trend of renewables vs FF is becoming such that coal mines will be virtually worthless in the not too distant future.

So...you're saying it's a bad thing he puts his money where his mouth is, right?

I'm not sure that phrase means what you think it does.

As for TFA, I am an old fashioned "greenie", I believe in science based policy, I've never understood why people think that means I should shiver in the dark waiting for a clean energy utopia arrives? I don't want more/less energy, I want clean energy to fulfill my wants/needs and was prepared to pay a premium to get it. I say was because now I expect it to be cleaner and cheaper and will be installing solar PV on the roof of my new home later this year. They will pay for themselves in ~2yrs, after that initial investment it's virtually free compared to coal.

I don't understand why people like you are against market solutions: Simply make polluting more expensive than not polluting and the problem will go away. There's no conspiracy to take away your SUV, just common fucking sense that polluter's should pay to clean up their own mess.

What was wrong with the existing legal remedies?

"...reinserts it back into your searches"...at the top of the page.

Sorry but you have to be pedantic when gathering requirements.

Nothing against a utility promoting itself by pointing out what it has achived, such things do need community support. However promoting the current CEO is clearly a form of political advertising for the benifit of the CEO, not the utlility. The full amount should be recovered from the CEO, after he is sacked for (legalised) embezzlement.

Nothing wrong with subsidies provided everyone is subsidised equally. Subsidising FF and renewables is not the same thing, FF are already have a huge subsidy in that it costs nothing to pollute the commons. Any moron can construct a free market via regulation, the hard part is constructing one that doesn't eventually kill us with our own greed.

Fact checking is good advice, you ought to try it sometime.

An incompetent comedian blames his audience.

"Universe" = everything.
"universe" = everything observable.

But that grammatical rule breaks down if you put the word at the start of a sentence.

Probably wouldn't work with my dog, it would just eat the rubber band.

Yeah, confused the hell out of me too the first time I heard it back in the 80's. If you search the "starts with a bang" website you'll find a well written article that explains why. Oh and 46 is the radius from our POV, so it's actually 92 "across".

Objects cannot move relative to each other faster than light but the space between them has no such restriction. Hyper Inflation lasted until the universe was about the size of a basketball. The big bang didn't end with (hyper) inflation, it is still happening and the universe is still inflating. The boundary to our modern universe is expanding away from us at the speed of light. So, two observers on opposite sides of our visible universe will be speeding away from each other faster than light. Only an observer in our position can see that the two observers at the opposite "edges" existing simultaneously.

Big fan of Starts with a Bang for many years, I must ask Ethan why cosmologists have ruled out the idea that our universe is the interior of a black hole. Neil deGrasse Tyson claims Einstein's equations can be interpreted to mean there is a different universe inside a black hole but he doesn't elaborate. If anyone else knows of a good reason as to why our universe can't be the interior of a black hole then I'd love to hear it.

At least that explains why in this universe GWB doesn't punch himself in the face every now and then.

Indeed, there's a good reason the paper is known as the daily fail to people in the UK.