Which skeptic do you find the most and least tolerable?

What do you guys put the odds on jim z and bravozulu being the same person?  They've sounded almost identical recently.  A couple examples:





Both make a big deal about being scientists (jim moreso).  Both constantly use political terms like "leftists".  Both constantly make obviously false claims with no supporting evidence.  Both are arrogant and constantly insulting.  Jim has claimed that he knows bravozulu personally.  Jim has accused me and Paul of being the same person (psychological projection?).  Both also answer questions in the anthropology section.  They even have similar looking avatars.

What do you guys think?  Same person, or perhaps just a couple of like-minded numbskulls who mimic eachother?

Not the same.  They just read each other's answers and reinforce. 

So how do I choose a best answer on this one:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090901122336AACsmTw

The responses are what you might expect, non-skeptics generally having first-hand experience with peer-review and the skeptics not, with skeptics having semi-delusional beliefs about the process. 

So who's answer is best?  Dana, you don't really need the points, I'm tempted to go with Antarctica.  Any opinions?

James E, for ironic effect.

Hah well I'm glad James didn't win the vote!  There wasn't really a 'best answer' to that one.

Quote:
I spaced out selecting one.  Oh well.  The interesting thing is that none of the skeptics who answered have first-hand experience with publishing in the sciences, whereas many of the more reasonable IPCC supporters do.  It reinforces the notion that skeptics are skeptics because their scientific background is nonexistent. 

Inhofe.

Senator from oklahoma, israeli supports, rednecky, don't like him, far too conservative, hjates the environment.

I frankly find people like Al Gore to be nut cases. He writes books and makes speeches to convince people that we're responsible for global warming - at hefty speaking fees, of course. Yet he has a very huge home that consumes a lot of power, but he buys carbon offset credits. We heard not a peep from him about the Obamas using two jumbo jets and a 3rd jet for their trip to Denmark in a vain quest for the Olympics in Chicago. Thankfully it goes to Rio.

COAL can be a clean fuel for power plants and it is being used in other countries, yet the environmentalists here are unyielding. Why is that?  And they are strongly against use of Nuclear power. Windmills and solar panels will not solve all our energy needs, so we have to generate electric power some way. Natural gas is quite costly. Clean coal, dams, and nuclear generation seem the best current sources. But there are those who want dams removed for the sake of salmon. 
I love clean air and yet we don't have it in buildings where smoking is allowed. How many environmentalists are smokers, I ask.  I know some will consider me a wacko for speaking against smoking because it is a sacred right for them.  After we get concerned about the danger of smoking to the smokers and others around them, the clean air advocates or environmentalist may be more credible.
Finally, I am an advocate of Electric cars because I don't like buying gas from foreign countries that enrich the Arabs who finance the Muslims who want to kill Jewish people. We could have cheaper oil if ANWR in Alaska wasn't off limits despite the very tiny footprint and very slim chance of minimum pollution to a restricted area.   But electric cars are years away from being viable since most of them have a range under 50 miles.  OH, the issue of recharging is that they have to use electricity generated by evil coal or more evil Nuclear power. 
CARL

Oh boy, well let's go through those points one by one.

1) Gore's home is LEED gold certified, and he pays extra to get all his energy from renewable sources.

 

2) "COAL can be a clean fuel for power plants"

No it can't.  It can be made cleaner than it is now using scrubbers, and carbon can potentially be captured and sequestered, but there's a limit to the number of places and amount of carbon which can be sequestered.  Plus sequestration technology makes coal power economically infeasible, plus there's also the mountaintop removal and piles of coal ash.

Coal simply cannot be called "clean" by any stretch of the imagination.

3) "And [environmentalists] are strongly against use of Nuclear power."

No, many environmentalists support nuclear power.  Personally I oppose it because it's too expensive, not for environmental reasons.

4) "Natural gas is quite costly."

No it's not.  Natural gas is one of our cheapest sources of energy.

5) I don't know why you're talking about smoking, which is irrelevant to the subject of global warming.  Personally I don't know any environmentalists who are smokers though.

6) "We could have cheaper oil if ANWR in Alaska wasn't off limits"

No we wouldn't.  The amount of oil in ANWR is minimal and would have virtually no impact on oil prices.

7) "But electric cars are years away from being viable since most of them have a range under 50 miles"

Actually most which are approaching production have a range in the ballpark of 100 miles per charge.

I am a smoker, but I never do it in places where I would force other people to breathe it in. It is hardly a 'sacred right' to be able to inflict harm on others freely and without consequence. The exact same argument can be made for regulation of carbon emissions.

And for the record clean air and smoking are public health issues, not really environmental issues.

I also am a smoker - shame but only for health reasons not to mention that whenever I visit the doctor he is on my back!

At 65 I still run most every day and exercise and am in far better health than most others far younger. My run consists of going 'up over the hill' behind our home and taking a long loop back - about 50 minutes. The butts always go into my pocket until I find a garbage can.

Like dawei I don't smoke where it will bother others - out of courtesy. Personally I am far more worried about fat people and their affect on the health system and the associated costs. 

The information I got about Al Gore's home was incorrect apparently. I did not hear about the LEED certification whatever that is.

I'm in the wrong forum to be debating about using coal to produce electric power since everyone here is totally against the use of it. And natural gas has increased in cost and I say that as a user of natural gas in my home.

We have a nuclear power plant in Oconee County, SC but I am too far away to be on their system and have not compared their power costs versus Duke Power.

As for smoking not being an environmental issue depends on whether your in a confined space such as a small restaurant with several smokers.  It adversely impacts the environment inside buildings and causes problems for others such as headache, burning eyes, respiratory problems, but again that seems not to be an issue with those in this forum.

I subscribed to ecohuddle primarily for the electric vehicle updates and have tried to find info on recycling things like vinyl siding - to no avail.  I'll probably not continue my subscription beyond the end of this year though.  BTW, at the bottom of this page is a link www.americaspower.org that advertises low-cost energy from coal. Meet 3 real people relying on low-cost energy from coal. I'll have to check it out to see if their opinions differ markedly from Dana's. 

@Kingsman42sc - After Gore got smacked down over his home one time he is smart enough to be aware of the PR mess so apparently took steps. I expect he basically bought his way out with REC's

I am surprised you have not heard of LEED - anyone watching building (green or otherwise) has to read about it.

Whether anyone likes coal or not it will be with us for many years to come - pure fact of life. Like Dana said - coal will never be 'clean' but it can be a lot cleaner. 

Your take on what Dawei and I said about smoking means you didn't bother to read the posts - It has been a long time since I have been anyplace where you can light up in a confined space.

Recycling vinyl siding? Sorry we could not help you. I have no experience with it and apparently no one else on the site dose either. I go through hundreds of sites and bing/google pages when I am trying to research something like that.   

The americaspower.org quote "AmericasPower.org is sponsored by the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), which is a partnership of the industries involved in producing electricity from coal."

Everyone/industry has the right to defend what they believe. Anyone that goes to an industry website for factual or unbiased information is not playing with a full deck. The coal industry is at one extreme - another group is at the other  - the truth is somewhere in between.

No actually he was in the process of renovating his home when he "got smacked down".  The power use from the renovation activities probably contributed to the large power bill that he was "smacked down" over, in fact.

Look, I'm no big fan of Al Gore, but people need to get the facts straight before making these kinds of accusations.  People seem to think that just because it's Al Gore, anything bad they hear about him must be true.  If I read on some right-wing blog that Matt Damon wears adult diapers, I'm not going to blindly believe it.

I stay away from the biased blogs from either the right or the left. Better to read fantasy fiction as it is more accurate.

I personally do not agree with the purchase of REC's to make oneself green. It is nothing more than a way to 'buy your way out' for rich people. I believe Gore still depends greatly on the REC's to achieve the rating.

Let the power company make a common price including the alternative sources for everyone. CA does have a better power cost structure than most places in the country. Not many utilities use 'time of use' for consumer power yet.

No, he participates in TVA's Green Power Switch program.


I also disagree with your opinions on RECs.  You should read the interview with Mike Jackson, CEO of Village Green Energy.

This is one of the items where we will always disagree - nothing wrong with that.

Got me Dana - I used the wrong term - Gore buys green power. He is still buying his way out though.

The energy efficient retrofits on his house are good. The geothermal heat pumps will cut gas use in the winter and should reduce AC costs in the summer. The 34 solar panels should provide maybe 30 kWh per day annual average - a lot to many but maybe 5 to 6% of his present consumption (after renovation).  

I read the interview. I also know how much the company I worked for in India liked carbon trading European style - they loved it as it was easy to game - milking the neighbor's cow. Different place, different people and all yes.

Still seems simpler to me if the power company split the cost of the renewables equally for all kilowatts sold. In Sept 2008 the TVA residential rate was 7.8 cents per kWh. Hard to get people interested in conservation with that price.