Interesting question, I actually have a fair amount of respect for many of the sceptics on this site. What I tend to respect is honesty and politeness above anything else.

MAXX I always find to be polite and respectful, we’ve communicated via email and I believe him to be a very decent person. He’s always been courteous and when I made a silly error he politely pointed it out. Our opinions on climate change couldn’t be further apart but that doesn’t mean I have any less respect for him.

OTTOWA MIKE raises some interesting points and is respectful to other members, he seems to genuinely want to know more and I’m impressed by that. I find that his questions can be interesting and well constructed.

BILLY / JOSE DE has a very different outlook on many things but he stands by his beliefs and is always courteous, polite and intelligent. I don’t agree with the things he believes in but I respect him for being a decent person.

RAISIN KANE is clearly an intelligent person so that automatically gains my respect, he has contributed some worthwhile points for consideration.

KOSHKA is always very polite and asks interesting questions, she doesn’t judge or insult people. She’s open minded and willing to hear all sides of the debate.

3DM I’ve included even though he hasn’t been on here for a few years. He was a knowledgeable person with whom one could have a meaningful and enlightening discussion about climate change. It’s a shame he’s no longer active.

OTHERS There are various other users that I have differing levels of respect for that I haven’t mentioned above, there are very few that I have little or no respect for,

The people that I least respect are those that insult other users without provocation, are derogatory and demeaning to others, frequently lie, level unsubstantiated criticisms at other users, assume they know far more than they actually do, are close-minded etc.

It changes depending on what type of criteria is being meet. I hate to tell people like Baccheus that there are so many simple examples that oppose physics. Though his opinion may be mathematically/statistically correct, it still can't be accomplished through physical endeavor or repetition.

ed: d/dx+d/dy+d/dz,, gcnp58, and pegminer, the first being less bias and more knowledgeable then the others. The second and last lost context to relative meaning. Nether started out that way, now both are looking for the death blow. It's a shame that all that knowledge is lost solely for personal vendettas.

I just consider it as human nature. Really it's a crying shame.

That's an interesting question.

I probably have the most respect for jim z, who I believe has an excellent knowledge of geology. I think if we were walking across the landscape together, beating on rocks and steering away from politics, we'd get along just fine.

I think graphicconception has a solid background in a technical field, as does Raisin Caine.

Koshka is not on any "side", but she wants us to get along with each other and respect each others' views. I'm not religious, but if I were I think the Bible refers to people like her as the "Children of God."

I would say Trevor has an encyclopedic knowledge about some things but I seem to seldom agree with him on AGW.

Pegminer knows his stuff

Jeff M seems determined to learn all he can about the issue and like most Canadians, he is usually extremely polite.

Note:

Bacheous, I can't help it if you can't figure out the difference between your politics and science. Believe it or not, your leftist political beliefs have nothing to do with Physics and my skepticism of significant or harmful AGW has nothing to do with a denial of physics. I know you are simply upset because I hit too close to home. You want so much to believe that you believe in AGW because you are informed. Bacheous thinks everyone in the science world follows his doomsday belief system. Obviously, since I am an actual scientist, he lives on a different planet from me.

Raisin Cain --

>>I don't doubt that the climate scientists are trying to perform science. While I do think they are biased and their bias enters their studies, everyone is biased<<

Twenty years ago, the scientific consensus was skepticism of AGW. Were all of the scientists biased then? Is it just a coincidence that the majority scientific opinion changed simultaneously with the availability of more high-quality scientific data?

The bias argument might have at least been possible historically when most of the world’s scientists could fit in one building, but it is not tenable in a world where you can’t throw a rock without hitting some kind of scientist, where the data are accessible to everyone, and where the greatest financial and professional rewards would go to the person(s) who could provide a scientific explanation for the observed data that did not involve atmospheric CO2 or that demonstrated manageable effects.

>> But what I can say, is that they place entirely too much faith in their models.<<

You can say whatever you want, but that is just a Denier talking point – one that conveniently, and intentionally, ignores the empirical evidence that was used to identify and define AGW and that continues to accumulate in multiple scientific fields documenting environmental changes consistent with AGW.

Climate models are dynamic on-going experiments and no one understands the probabilistic and confidence issues better than the specialists who work in the field. And, in any case, the models are quantitatively and qualitatively far superior than Deniers (most of whom could not tell the difference between the general linear equation and Newton’s law of gravity) claim.

A accept that humans are causing the warming. Of the other side, the one regular for which I have the most respect would be Raisin Caine. Unlike most "skeptics" he does use science rather than ad homs. Ottawa Mike would be a runner up.

I have nothing against questions. The truth can handle questions. It is lies and slander which I despise.

I respect all on the other side of the debate with the exception of Hey Dook who never brings anything new, different, interesting or useful to my questions. Gary F is quickly closing in on that status in addition to being probably the most rude.

Trevor

I don't agree with him. He seems to think that the warming is going to be worse than it actually is, and he overly excuses the poor performance of climate models.

BUT, generally I think he is trying to understand the science, accurately stating that there are still many areas where much more research is necessary and avoiding any claims of certainty, insults, or extreme alarmism.

Some others like pegminer, I have moderate respect for. At least they seem to know some science.

The person whose name rhymes with Ney Nook, continues to insult people whilst blocking everyone who disagrees with him, is rather low on my list. I still respect him as a person, but my respect for his opinion is starting to drop so low, that even reading his posts is pointless.

Dook,

What are you talking about? You keep bringing up the Academy of Science and the survey. I agree with the Academy of Science and the survey!!! So why would you bring up this study? It doesn't show you are right, it just shows that you are unable to read the sites you provide as a link. I agree that the earth is warming and mostly due to man. I just disagree on teh amount of future warming we can expect and note that many warmers on this site talk with far more certainty than the data warrant.

Look, I don't doubt that the climate scientists are trying to perform science. While I do think they are biased and their bias enters their studies, everyone is biased and people like myself have to use double-blinded studies to avoid bias, something that the climate scientists cannot do.

But what I can say, is that they place entirely too much faith in their models. I have worked with entirely too many models in my life to place much faith in them. Sure they are great to use as a guess, but modeling out a chaotic system over 100 years??? COME ON. You think I am wrong for not having faith in this??? And how many models have you worked with, that leads you to place faith in modeling??? I am going to take a wild guess, you have worked with less models than I have.

Darwinist and maybe som1has2b, the one I dislike the most is Trevor, I take no notice of Hey Dook and Gary F their verbal abuse has no effect on me, but Trevor is very knowledgeable and clever with words he is able to imply, twist and contort the truth without actually lying and sounds convincing even thougth he is talking a crock of sh!t

There is no "other side". There is physics, then there is a hodgepodge of anti-physics.

Billy claims a conspiracy of lizard gods.

JimZ claims physics is a conspiracy of Marxists, and that great scientists are "imbeciles', "garbage" and "idiots".

Ottowa Mike just wants to make jokes, and then claims that the researchers are made the original hockey stick are climate change deniers (you can't make this stuff up, but he can.)

Maxx lies with every post and makes stuff up about what researchers publish.

Sage just rejoices in being an igornorant redneck.

Then there is the National Academy of Science and every body of science in the world. To claim there is some debate between these groups is to not deal in reality.,

Thinking of the regulars on this site, who do you have the most respect for from the other side?

I could have asked who do you have the least respect for, but that would probably get deleted. You could always say who wouldn't make the short list though ....

Sorry but debate goes on in science all the time on every aspect of AGW, what deniers are doing is not by any real definition debate.

They through up theory after theory and spice that up with lots of conspiracies, they still try to beat up issues like climategate long after it was shown to be rubbish.

They make personal and frankly spiteful attacks on Gore, Mann and Hansen as if Mann and Hansen had conned all the other thousands of scientists. To me you could not have a clearer example of how little deniers understand how many scientists are and have been working on this for decades.

Scientists are certainly not perfect, but the few mistakes don't really out weigh the now vast amount of evidence of warming happening and us being the cause. There is no longer any real doubt in the science community on either point.

In the context of your question there is in effect no other side, there are the badly informed, the lovers of conspiracy theories and straight out trolls. None of who seem to have even a passing knowledge of science or how it really works. Instead we gets nonsense about communists and the Rothschilds.

To have deniers talking about the return of ice ages when we have just had a top 5 warmest year is the sort of comedy I've come to expect from them.

The gone on about the comment some minor official made at the U.N. a decade ago in some no name newspaper, yet will happily ignore the actual public position of the actual U.N. now and a decade ago.

Comment that border on straight out lying doesn't help the denier 'case' either claims that "all the models have proved to be wrong" is quite simply not true, ask any denier to back the claim with real science and the silence is deafening. They will happily quote reams of material from blogs like watts that uses as evidence quotes from yet more denier blogs, none of it real science.

As for what the models really have shown, they showed warming and we have warmed, the prime model used by the U.N. showed a decadal rise of 1.1c as a minimum and the actual rise from the 1990's to the 2000's was 0.2c, that is not (as denier claim) falling below the models at all.

For years now denier have claimed we have fallen below the 2007 model estimates for temperature rise, this is quite simply not true, these are the actual estimates

http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data...

Right now temp averages are around 0.6c above the mean this is not below the model estimates but in fact near the top, yet deniers continue to repeat this lie.

Then there's Arctic sea ice, again the models originally projected sea ice loss (in Summer) by the end of the century but at actual recorded loss rates this now looks likely to happen by ~2030.

So yes there was a mistake in this model but as it was a mistake that was going with the more cautious model, something the U.N has continual done despite denier claims.

Arctic sea ice continues to shrink, sea level continues to rise, sea level reducing it's rate of climb would be a simple sign of this claim of cooling deniers keep trying to make but it simply is not happening.

http://climate.nasa.gov/key_indicators#s...

Respect is something you have to earn and frankly I'm yet to see any denier even try.

now watch deniers ignore the point's I have raised, they have no answer to real science and it's sadly obvious whenever they try to ignore science in favor of rants about communists or Gore or greens or phony theories about the origin of oil (from our pretend geologist)

I have respect for free speech, but no respect for incessant liars in a pretend debate.

There is no genuine debate on whether the Holocaust happened, whether the earth orbits the sun, whether species evolve over millions of years, whether men landed on the moon, or whether climate change today is mostly real, mostly man-made, and mostly likely seriously negative for our economy for centuries to come.

There is NO real debate on the basic science of AGW, although the low-level deniers here pretend that there is one, and too many non-deniers are too chicken to be the little boy who called the emperor naked.

There are no bonafide "skeptics" either only deniers who deny that they are deniers and pretend that they are skeptics. The REAL skeptics were MOST scientists who studied climate from 1900 to 1960. THEY learned vastly MORE about climate THEN than any YA denier will ever learn and they did this before almost any denier here was born, and long before the fossil fuel industry decided to fight the consequences of learning about climate change by systematically lying about the science.

http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/...

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index...

U.S. National Academy of Sciences, 2010:

http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record...

“Climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for a broad range of human and natural systems.”

http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpine...

“Choices made now about carbon dioxide emissions reductions will affect climate change impacts experienced not just over the next few decades but also in coming centuries and millennia…Because CO2 in the atmosphere is long lived, it can effectively lock the Earth and future generations into a range of impacts, some of which could become very severe.”

http://www.physics.fsu.edu/awards/NAS/

“The Academy membership is composed of approximately 2,100 members and 380 foreign associates, of whom nearly 200 have won Nobel Prizes. Members and foreign associates of the Academy are elected in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research; election to the Academy is considered one of the highest honors that can be accorded a scientist or engineer.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_...

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/timel...