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Comment by colanderman | Hacker News Reader

What a bullshit article. Every low-flow toilet I've ever used clogs far less than my mother's 1980s toilets (and flushes more quickly, no less). 120°F is the MINIMUM water boilers are allowed to be set to; typically they're at 130°F or 140°F (which I personally find scalding). In Brazil, you can't even flush toilet paper due to poor sewage systems.

I stopped reading there. This guy clearly has an agenda to push. Reminds me of a similar BS article a couple years ago bemoaning the lack of phosphates or something in soap, and calling out "government overreach" every other sentence.

If there is a scientific case to make for these supposed household woes (which I don't think there is), it can be made without appeal to a political ideal.

EDIT: Oh shit, I forced myself to keep reading and he got around to phosphates. It's probably the same guy.

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Yeah, plus Phosphates are absolutely terrible for the environment: https://www.epa.gov/nutrientpollution/problem

But of the amount of phosphates making it into bodies of water almost entirely come from commercial farming, not people's houses.

Removing it from commercially produced soaps is insane if commercial farming isn't also prohibited from using it.

It would be nice if Mr. Tucker mentioned that in the article.

Some people have to rationalize their stuck-in-the-1950's, environmentally-destructive, post-truth lifestyles with gusto somehow. How else to explain expanded fossil fuel consumption/exploitation, anthropogenic methane output (ie fossil fuel industry, flooded rice cultivation, animal agriculture/CAFOs), palm oil plantation rainforest burning, microplastic pollution/gyre garbage patches and other similar ecological-destructive behaviors? Oh but, let's bitch about not wasting as much water because a few cheap, low-flow toilets were purchased without evaluating better alternatives because it's all conservation's fault. (Sarcasm.) Yeah.

http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/research/energy/downloads/methaneuk/...

He is pushing an agenda. The organization that employs him and publishes the article is Koch-funded. (They're a member of the State Policy Network).

http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/global-warming/climate-deniers...

They push the standard Koch agenda- impugn government so that the rich can pay lower taxes, and so corporations don't have to spend money to protect the climate. So this article is standard fare for this type of organization.

As you say it's too bad the article overlooks how much better toilets are today. The article also misses how fuel efficiency regulations failed, and how a high gas tax in 1970 would have been a great way to reduce American petroleum dependence. That example of regulatory failure doesn't often get mentioned by Koch allied organizations, however, because they never want to say taxes are good -- the very wealthy really want to avoid paying tax.

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