At making forward progress despite the tiny budget (the original project completion estimates were based on a much higher level of funding)

So you're relying on "herd" charging cable-icity? What if lots of people stop bringing a cable? We'll end up with an epidemic of dead batteries!

It had nothing to do with "the tight grip of the ice-houses". The first commercially available home refrigerator came onto the market in 1911 (a time when the vast majority of homes did not yet have electricity) and was powered by an external motor (or steam/internal combustion engine) that was often mounted in a different room. The first self contained refrigerator came onto the market in 1923, retailing for $714 ($9,700.30 in 2013). For comparison, the average yearly wage at that time was $1,066. These weren't devices that many people could afford. Mass production didn't really begin until after World War II, reducing the cost and making refrigeration accessible to many more people.

Automated fork lifts are already becoming fairly common in larger warehouses and factories. These are actually fairly easy, since you have a controlled environment and areas that can be marked as off-limits to humans. Airports have an *awful* lot going on ramp-side, so it would take a bit more effort to automate the fleet of trucks, tugs, and other service vehicles. I'd wager that self driving cars will be here before significantly automated air ports.

Exactly. You can use mirrors to keep an eye on your surroundings, but you should always take a quick glance over your shoulder to check for situations like that or, for example, a motorcycle that still manages to fit in your blind spot (even with your mirrors properly adjusted).

The Gates Foundation recently announced that they are also going to work on breeder reactors.

Yeah, why take any personal responsibility...

Do you really think it's more likely that essentially every climatologist on the planet is involved in a conspiracy/scam, rather than the possibility that the data is correct and the earth is warming?

If so, I'm curious: Do you discount all fields of scientific research, or only those that result in conclusions you don't like?

Actually, the oceans have absorbed quite a lot of the CO2 that humanity has released, but the rate of absorption is dropping rapidly as ocean levels of CO2 increase. cite

Yes. Carbon dioxide emissions have been generally dropping since around 2007. cite Some of that is due to the economic depression, but most is due to converting a significant number of coal power plants to natural gas. There are also many states that have required electrical utilities to produce a certain percentage of electricity generated from renewable sources. For example, in Minnesota, 25% of electricity will be required to be from renewable sources by 2025. There are also higher nationwide fuel economy standards that are phasing in over a number of years, though vehicle emissions are relatively small compared to utilities/industry.

Why does life have to have justice or meaning? That you can't bear the thought that there is not justice/meaning to life does not mean that there is.

No, if that were true then how would a dog bark, or pant? They couldn't if the lungs did not connect to the mouth. Dogs breathe between gulps of food (or just plain hold their breath), just like you do.

The light sensitive cells are on the back side of the retina. (Light has to travel through a few layers of cells before it gets to the light sensitive ones.) Also, since the nerves are on the front side of the retina, they have to go through the retina in order to get to the brain, so we have a blind spot in that location. If the light sensitive cells were on the front of the retina, our vision could be much sharper and more sensitive, with no blind spot.

The point is that free will doesn't exist in a fully deterministic universe. If the universe is deterministic, then free will is an illusion. In such a universe, you may feel that you made a decision that was all your own based on your experiences and state of mind, but those experiences/state of mind were always going to end up that way. You were always going to make that decision. It was never really a choice.

There have been processes developed that can take in electricity, atmospheric CO2, and water, and produce hydrocarbon fuels. If this were implemented at commercial scale, nuclear could be used for both base-load and peak load (the excess off-peak electricity could be used to create fuel.) Then you use this generated fuel for uranium mining.

Sure, there are other ways that mining is dirty, but fuel doesn't have to be one of them.