Nick Palmer <ni...@wynterwood.co.uk> wrote:
> think Limbaugh crossed with Beck and Inhofe, except he's smarter and his > arguments are not as crassly stupid as those of the US types. I am not familiar with Beck et al.'s oeuvre, but "not as stupid" can't be saying much. This guy claims that back-up generators run 24 hours a day, using up fuel. That's pretty stupid! I suppose they might idle, using a little fuel. They don't, however. It takes them 10 to 30 minutes to start up, according to this source: http://www.environmental-expert.com/Files/6709/articles/5647/evaluationofpermitting.pdf Weather reporting is very accurate these days, even to local areas, so the likely output from a wind farm can be predicted hours ahead of time, giving plenty of time to start up gas turbines and other generators as needed. Speaking of weather reports, tornadoes are predicted for Atlanta tonight. It is kind of scary. The other day, a large, 70-year-old tree in my yard was twisted like cork in bottle, and it broke right off. Not much damage, fortunately. In my opinion, the only smart person among the anti-environmentalists is Bjorn Lomborg. He is the most rational sounding, and the most dangerous, in my opinion. The smartest cold fusion opponent was John Huizenga. (I believe he is now senile.) Tied in last place were Taubes and Hoffman. Hoffman had a terrific amount of useful technical knowledge about spectroscopy and other subjects, and as Abd points out (and I pointed out in my review) his book makes some useful contributions. But boy was he stupid! Taubes does not know enough anything to find his way out of a paper bag. Lemonick of Time Magazine is also pretty dumb. There are not a lot of bright lights in the opposition. Rifkin wrote an interesting book about the effects of technology on work, "The End of Work." This is similar to http://www.thelightsinthetunnel.com/but the latter is better and makes more realistic recommendations in my opinion. Because Rifkin believes that a labor-based economy is already obsolete, and work as we know it is fading away, he might come around to support cold fusion, once it becomes inevitable. I do not know of any environmentalist support for cold fusion except our poor lonely friend Nick Palmer here, but I doubt that environmentalists will be strongly opposed to it. Some have even come to support conventional fission reactors lately, although they may have had second thoughts after the Fukushima disaster. I sure did. We will get support from mainstream environmentalists and politicians soon after we no longer need it. They give support the way bankers lend money. - Jed
