Thread: An inconvenient truth

Al Gore’s Personal Energy Use Is His Own “Inconvenient Truth”
Gore’s home uses more than 20 times the national average

Last night, Al Gore’s global-warming documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, collected an Oscar for best documentary feature, but the Tennessee Center for Policy Research has found that Gore deserves a gold statue for hypocrisy.

Gore’s mansion, located in the posh Belle Meade area of Nashville, consumes more electricity every month than the average American household uses in an entire year, according to the Nashville Electric Service (NES).

In his documentary, the former Vice President calls on Americans to conserve energy by reducing electricity consumption at home.

The average household in America consumes 10,656 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year, according to the Department of Energy. In 2006, Gore devoured nearly 221,000 kWh—more than 20 times the national average.

Last August alone, Gore burned through 22,619 kWh—guzzling more than twice the electricity in one month than an average American family uses in an entire year. As a result of his energy consumption, Gore’s average monthly electric bill topped $1,359.

Since the release of An Inconvenient Truth, Gore’s energy consumption has increased from an average of 16,200 kWh per month in 2005, to 18,400 kWh per month in 2006.

Gore’s extravagant energy use does not stop at his electric bill. Natural gas bills for Gore’s mansion and guest house averaged $1,080 per month last year.

“As the spokesman of choice for the global warming movement, Al Gore has to be willing to walk the walk, not just talk the talk, when it comes to home energy use,” said Tennessee Center for Policy Research President Drew Johnson.

In total, Gore paid nearly $30,000 in combined electricity and natural gas bills for his Nashville estate in 2006.

http://www.tennesseepolicy.org/main/...article_id=367

I just watched it this weekend and I loved it, very educational and the kids and I all learned alot of new stuff

Gore a hypocrite over power bill
By KRISTIN M. HALL, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 1 minute ago

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - Al Gore, a leading voice in the fight against global warming, is being called a hypocrite by a conservative group that claims his Nashville mansion uses too much electricity.

A spokeswoman for Gore said the former vice president invests in enough renewable energy to make up for the home's power consumption.

Gore's documentary film "An Inconvenient Truth," which chronicled his campaign against global warming, won an Academy Award on Sunday.

The next day, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research put out a news release saying Gore was not doing enough to reduce his own consumption of electricity. The group disputes whether global warming is a serious problem. "We wanted to see if he was living by his own recommendations and walking the walk," said Drew Johnson, president of the think tank, which pushes for conservative economic issues.

Utility records show the Gore family paid an average monthly electric bill of about $1,200 last year for its 10,000-square-foot home.

The Gores used about 191,000 kilowatt hours in 2006, according to bills reviewed by The Associated Press spanning the period from Feb. 3, 2006, to Jan. 5. That is far more than the typical Nashville household, which uses about 15,600 kilowatt-hours per year.

His Nashville home is more than four times larger than the average new American home built last year — about 2,400 square feet, according to the National Association of Home Builders.

A spokeswoman for Gore said he purchases enough "green power" — renewable energy sources such as solar, wind and methane gas — to balance 100 percent of his electricity costs. "Sometimes when people don't like the message, in this case that global warming is real, it's convenient to attack the messenger," Gore spokeswoman Kalee Kreider said.

Gore participates in a utility program that sells blocks of "green power" for an extra $4 a month. Gore purchases 108 such blocks every month, covering 16,200 kilowatt-hours and helping subsidize renewable energy sources.

Johnson said it's unclear whether global warming is caused by humans, and he said the threat outlined in Gore's documentary is exaggerated.

The think tank said that Gore used nearly 221,000 kilowatt hours last year and that his average monthly electric bill was $1,359. Johnson said his group got its figures from Nashville Electric Service. But electric company spokeswoman Laurie Parker said the utility never got a request from the policy center and never provided them with any information.

Parker said Gore has been purchasing the "green power" for $432 a month since November. The Gore home is also under renovation to add solar panels, Kreider said.

Gore also owns homes in Carthage, Tenn., and in the Washington area.

Gore has said he leads a "carbon-neutral lifestyle." To balance out other carbon emissions, the Gores invest money in projects to reduce energy consumption around the globe, Kreider said. "For every ton of carbon they emit, he offsets that by doing investments in renewable energy sources," Kreider said.

Johnson said those efforts were unconvincing. "In general, I applaud his efforts to reduce energy consumption, but if he is going to be a spokesman for global warming, he has to be willing to make the same sacrifices," Johnson said.

Johnson said Gore's home has gas lamps lining the driveway, a heated pool and an electric gate, all of which would be easy to do without.

Kreider confirmed that Gore's home has a heated pool and an electric gate, but noted that the gate is important for security and that the driveway has only one gas lamp.

Focusing on Gore's personal electricity consumption misses the point of "An Inconvenient Truth," Kreider said, which is that governments and the public can work together to reduce emissions.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070228/...GkR7t7iR.s0NUE

___

On the Net:

Tennessee Center for Policy Research http://www.tennesseepolicy.org

"An Inconvenient Truth" movie site: http://www.climatecrisis.net/

A spokeswoman for Gore said the former vice president invests in enough renewable energy to make up for the home's power consumption....

... Focusing on Gore's personal electricity consumption misses the point of "An Inconvenient Truth," Kreider said, which is that governments and the public can work together to reduce emissions.

In other words - do what I say, not what I do ....

So, gee, all that flying he does on a private jet versus commercial airlines really cancels it out. So, I guess what he is preaching is cancelling out good vs bad, rather than actually doing something to make a change. Yep, sounds like a politician.

Rebooting the Ecosystem
Global warming is real. We did it. Now it's time to talk about repairs.
– David Wolman

Repeat after me: We humans have screwed up our planet. Feels better, doesn't it? Now that we've accepted this reality, at least we don't have to argue about it anymore. Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are at the highest they've been in at least 800,000 years. Greenland's ice sheet is melting fast. Some – probably a lot – of the current warming trend is because of us, and so are the consequent threats to ecosystems, food supplies, coastal cities, and all that other stuff from An Inconvenient Truth.

Of course, that means we're responsible for repairing the damage, but stopgaps like carbon sequestration just aren't going to cut it. Luckily, a growing number of scientists are thinking more aggressively, developing incredibly ambitious technical fixes to cool the planet. These efforts to remedy the accidental experiment of climate change with intentional, megascale experimentation are called geoengineering. Thus far, ideas include reflecting sunlight with gazillions of orbiting featherweight mirrors or by saturating the stratosphere with sulfur, or increasing the volume of microbes that eat CO2 by fertilizing the oceans with iron.

Harebrained? Well, maybe. But somebody has to save the world. Typically, sober environmentalists have looked askance at geoengineering. In fact, they mostly think it's nuts. All the ideas on the table reek of foolhardiness. We have only one Earth, and it is a system of unparalleled complexity (in other words, no one knows exactly how it works). What if we muck it up? "If you go down the path of geoengineering, it leads to taking ever-increasing environmental risk, and, eventually, you'll be unlucky," says Ken Caldeira, a climatologist at Stanford University.

What's more, many greens worry that just talking about geoengineering could deflect funding and focus from the task of cutting greenhouse gas emissions. They'd rather we legislate higher fuel-efficiency standards and design better photovoltaics. Enviros are right about the urgency of kicking the fossil fuel habit – that's a no-brainer. The problem is inertia; the changes we have wrought in the atmosphere will play out over decades (or longer) whether we junk all the SUVs tomorrow or not.

That's why it makes sense to start thinking seriously about radical countermeasures. One of the biggest boosts to the idea of climate manipulation came last summer from Paul Crutzen, an emeritus at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry. Writing in the journal Climate Change, Crutzen, who shared the 1995 Nobel Prize in chemistry for work examining ozone depletion, described a plan to shoot massive quantities of sulfur into the stratosphere. In theory, the sulfur would reflect sunlight – just as particles blown into the air by the eruption of Mount Pinatubo did in 1991 – cooling Earth and buying enough time for civilization to shift into green gear. Crutzen's not crazy, and he's no renegade terraformer. "Until a few years ago, I would also have been against the idea," he recently told an Australian newspaper.

His journal article – and his clout – gave geoengineering an almost instant credibility boost. Soon other heavies, like Ralph Cicerone, president of the National Academy of Sciences, were also writing in favor of the concept. Their message: Geoengineering isn't, and shouldn't be, fringe science. "Given that the climate-change problem might be more serious than we previously thought," says Tom Wigley, a mathematical physicist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, "we should consider these radical solutions more seriously." Stanford's Caldeira is keeping an open mind – he's even helping to organize an international geoengineering meeting at NASA Ames Research Center.

The shortsighted mistake here would be getting mired in the details of these wild plans. (Crutzen's scheme would mean we'd have to start loving smog – but imagine the psychedelic sunsets!) Yes, these ideas sound crazy. But we're in the earliest stages of what is potentially the single most crucial new science in history. Let's give the researchers a minute or two to get their PowerPoint slides in order and, more important, grab a slice of the admittedly modest budget for climate-change research. Just remember: Advocating the study of geoengineering does not mean campaigning for the deployment of every ludicrous notion that comes along.

Smart people finally convinced us that we need to stop burning fossil fuels. Let's do that. But because what has already been set in motion tends to stay in motion, we need a well-researched, measured plan to get us (or, more realistically, our grandchildren) out of this mess. The real worst-case scenario is some kind of Bruce Willis-movie scheme deployed at the eleventh hour, after the climate shift has already hit the fan.


http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1...tart.html?pg=3

I agree that it is time for everyone to change

Editors: Note nature of language throughout

Leftist hate: Gore fans abuse, threaten Gore foes
By DEROY MURDOCK -- Scripps Howard News Service
2007-04-05 00:00:00

NEW YORK -- The Tennessee Center for Policy Research recently generated headlines when it announced that former Vice President Al Gore's Nashville estate "devoured nearly 221,000 kilowatt-hours" of electricity in 2006, "more than 20 times the national average."

This free-market think tank's phones lit up when it analyzed Nashville Electric Service's public records and identified an inconvenient gap between Gore's conservationism and his energy consumption. The research center's one-page press release was greeted with enough megawatts of hatred to power the South.

"I was accused several times of being a 'stupid, redneck bitch,'" recalls Nicole Williams, who fielded numerous calls. "I repeatedly was called a 'whore' and asked 'Whose whore are you?' for three days straight, almost as if those were talking points ... I was shocked by these sexist insults _ basically attacking my gender."

The calls continued beyond Williams' Nashville office. "I had to change my home number and get an unlisted number," Williams says. "I got about 10 death threats by phone. I got the 'I'm gonna get you'-type threats more than 100 times ... I worried I would get shot walking to my car."

Williams discovered her obsolete address posted online. "If they could find my old home address, it would not be so hard to find a current one."

Gore's defenders also spewed venomous e-mails. They sent the research center nearly 3,000 Gore-related messages that exhibited the very bigotry the Left routinely denounces. Warning: These offensive, often-vulgar, and occasionally unschooled comments reveal the vitriol behind much of today's "progressive" rhetoric.

_ Many e-mails displayed Dixiephobia - an intense disdain for the South and Southerners.

"Why don't you all go back to shooting one another across the hollows instead of trying to make people think anyone in Tennessee has an ounce of intelligence?" Roger Miller insisted. "Get your snaggle tooth grins capped and learn to read and write."

"W.T.F. difference would it make if he was (sic) using 1000 times more energy than the average household if it came from clean energy?" Thomas Grinnell wondered. "Don't think about that too much. It will give your southern mullet a headache."

"You really should concentrate on what Southerners do best," D. Hunter advised. "Sodomizing and impregnating little children!"

Christopher LaBarge declared: "I hope you all die slowly and have your hearts and brains trampled to pieces you small-minded, ignorant, backwoods ideologues."

"We should have flattened the South when we had the chance!" wrote Mount Laurel, New Jersey's Robert Dodelin. "If ever you confederates (sic) want to leave the Union please do. We Nothen (sic) states would love to stop having to subsidize you with our tax dollars."

This anti-Southernism mystifies TCPR President Drew Johnson. "Some people must believe the Mason-Dixon Line runs between our office and Gore's mansion," Johnson says. "No one would call Gore a redneck, but when we uncovered his hypocritical energy use, it somehow made me a sister-dating hillbilly. That's quite amusing, since Gore and I live in Nashville, less than five miles apart."

_ Some e-mails, like Benjamin Greuel's, reflected anti-religious bias: "Go f_k yourselves you neo con, non-secular, bible thumpin, anti-science dumb f_-k pricks."

Similarly, Anthony Black wrote: "You bunch of stupid hick red-necks. I am sure you are quite religious, yet you have no problem destroying His creation with pollution; and, rather than addressing that, you cast dispersions (sic) on Al Gore's home energy use.

_"How about you have a do (sic) humanity a favor and have a stroke," Russ Smith recommended. "You silly metrosexual twit, need some more hi-lites in your hair?"

Another gay-hater wrote: "You guys are the faggiest fags I've ever come across. How do you get any work done, what with all the c_k sucking and such?"

_Two e-mails feature chillingly violent imagery.

"You people are such slime," TJ Williams noted. "You are a total waste of skin and air. Help the environment and jump off a cliff."

Bob Beaver urged: "Find a hole and stick a knife in it."

Such anti-intellectual intimidation reflects the high-octane hate that fuels so much Leftist discourse. Rather than simply argue that Johnson, Williams, and their colleagues are ecologically misguided or misinformed, these bullies call them barefoot, same-sex-loving, Winchester-wielding whores and evangel-yokels. Remember this whenever liberals crow about diversity, tolerance, and open-mindedness.

(New York commentator Deroy Murdock is a columnist with Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University. E-mail him at deroy.murdock(at)gmail.com.)

http://www.shns.com/shns/g_index2.cf...RDOCK-04-05-07

Forecaster blasts Gore on global warming
By CAIN BURDEAU, Associated Press Writer
2 hours, 29 minutes ago

NEW ORLEANS - A top hurricane forecaster called Al Gore "a gross alarmist" Friday for making an Oscar-winning documentary about global warming. "He's one of these guys that preaches the end of the world type of things. I think he's doing a great disservice and he doesn't know what he's talking about," Dr. William Gray said in an interview with The Associated Press at the National Hurricane Conference in New Orleans, where he delivered the closing speech.

A spokeswoman said Gore was on a flight from Washington, D.C., to Nashville Friday; he did not immediately respond to Gray's comments.

Gray, an emeritus professor at the atmospheric science department at Colorado State University, has long railed against the theory that heat-trapping gases generated by human activity are causing the world to warm.

Over the past 24 years, Gray, 77, has become known as America's most reliable hurricane forecaster; recently, his mentee, Philip Klotzbach, has begun doing the bulk of the forecasting work.

Gray's statements came the same day the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change approved a report that concludes the world will face dire consequences to food and water supplies, along with increased flooding and other dramatic weather events, unless nations adapt to climate change.

Rather than global warming, Gray believes a recent uptick in strong hurricanes is part of a multi-decade trend of alternating busy and slow periods related to ocean circulation patterns. Contrary to mainstream thinking, Gray believes ocean temperatures are going to drop in the next five to 10 years.

Gore's documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," has helped fuel media attention on global warming.

Kerry Emanuel, an MIT professor who had feuded with Gray over global warming, said Gray has wrongly "dug (his) heels in" even though there is ample evidence that the world is getting hotter.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070407/...K4AvLUQZOs0NUE

Can You Translate Al Gore ?

Methinks he has been inhaling too many carbon emissions from his private jet:

"Art, music, film, dance, poetry — all the arts — have long been our greatest tools to explore the regions of imagination that defy our efforts to think rationally about subjects that our emotions tell us are too painful to contemplate."

-- Al Gore at the opening of the Tribeca Film Festival

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18328819