Reply #22: Um, I couldn't care less about what Pickens says about anything. [View All]

[NNadir]

My opinions on energy are not a function of what T. Boone Pickens says or doesn't say. It is true that I generally regard him as a liar, but this general position does not not mean that I have a blanket rejection of everything Pickens says.

This type of position, of which the anti-nukes are particularly inexpert at understanding is called, um, "critical thinking."

Unlike an anti-nuke, all of whom in my experience are notoriously bad thinkers, I can - should I so choose - avoid the logical fallacies of "http://www.fallacyfiles.org/guiltbya.html">Guilt by Association" and http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-authority.html">Appeal to Authority.

If, um, Dick Cheney says "peaches are tasty" that doesn't make them repulsive.

If Barack Obama says, "there is nothing that can be done about Dafur," that doesn't mean that doing something about Dafur is impossible.

Your personal remark about my level of understanding is, I assure you, greeted with a certain symmetry. I have never met a "renewables will save us" advocate who favors, as I do, an immediate phase out of all dangerous fossil fuels. I have never met any of them who I would regard as educated.

That doesn't by the way, mean that there isn't somewhere somehow one "renewables will save us" who doesn't favor the immediate phase out of dangerous fossil fuels. It just means that in my experience here, I know of zero examples of such a person.

Have a wonderful evening and weekend.