So we’re citing spam glurge now?
So what you’re saying is Al Gore is one of the major consumers of solar power in Tennessee. How does that make him a hypocrite?
You’re being deliberately obtuse. You’re not going to admit that Gore is not a hypocrite any more than the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth would admit that Kerry is a war hero. You’re just here to smear. You should get paid for that. Why give away PR work for free?
Is it okay to use jet fuel to get people to change governmental policy to help stop global warming?
Isn’t the real issue that you think AGW isn’t real and you want to discredit it in any fashion you can? Is it possible that you are artificially raising your level of outrage at his energy bill to prove a point?
Do you honestly think that someone can give speeches across the country on a tight schedule without jet fuel? Is that realistic to you?
Which is why it is good that there are people like Al Gore who are not too price-sensitive around and willing to pay the large cost increase. Such people are needed to get the market going before economies-of-scale start to lower the costs.
Well, it is interesting that you don’t seem to mind people not paying the costs associated with dumping CO2 into the atmosphere but are sensitive about any subsidies that are going toward helping new energy sources compete that are not resulting in significant CO2 emissions until they can begin to realize their economies of scale. (And, by the way, do you have cites to back up the price claims that you have made here? I am willing to believe they are correct but I would be curious to know where these numbers come from.)
Since you seem so pessimistic about getting off fossil fuels, I wonder what you think is going to happen when we run out of them. Is the world economy just going to collapse under the weight of the higher energy prices that this will force on us?
What are you talking about?
This was your post:
You specifically put my screen name in your post by using the quote feature. Why is unreasonable to assume that your comment was addressed to me?
Is this more of your inscrutible sarcasm?
What is Gore’s offical response to all of this jet and house talk? It appears to be “ignore it”. Is that true?
Hannity has a jumbo-sized hard-on for that jet.
That may very well be the case, depending on the circumstances.
If a wealthy politician advocates for a tax increase in order to benefit poor people while simultaneously moving his wealth offshore to avoid taxes, then I would have a problem if he were awarded a Nobel Prize for his advocacy work.
That may very well be true too. In the same way, I would guess that a lot of people didn’t really care whether Clarence Thomas really sexually harassed Paula Jones. (Or was it Bill Clinton and Anita Hill?)
But it doesn’t change the fact that Gore is a hypocrite.
The only response I could find is this blurb on ThinkProgress (which is why I didn’t bring it up at first, commie lefties that they are):
Sure why not? Logically, it’s still a lot less carbon per person. The only “good” reason I can think of for a leader of the environmental movement to use a private jet is if he has a serious and contageous disease.
Perhaps, but “whenever possible” strikes me as a vague and self-serving phrase. Anyone can claim that they use public transportation “whenever possible.”
It depends what you mean by “solid evidence” To borrow from court proceedings, I would say that there is proof by a preponderance of the evidence of his hypocrisy, but not proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
The problem is that he’s supposedly been big into the environmental movement for many years now. If he changes his lifestyle because he started catching flak from bloggers, it doesn’t absolve him in my opinion. Besides, from his use of the phrase “whenever possible,” I would gather that he still uses private jets on a regular basis.
What evidence? His office’s admission that he does sometimes need to use private jets? That’s hardly conclusive in and of itself; there’s a lot more detail neither you nor I have regarding reasons why he can’t take commercial flights, what he’s doing to lessen the impact, just how much impact there really is, and so on.
Or is it a case of “Hannity said it, I believe it, that settles it”?
I think it’s worth restating Gore’s message here: You don’t have to give up your life to make it more environmentally friendly. Unfortunately, Gore’s life requires that he sometimes use private jets and do other things that consume dirty energy. He’s doing what he can to minimize the damage, but his message all along has been that you don’t need to change your life and that you shouldn’t change your life.
Please take your personal attacks elsewhere.
Earlier in this thread, you claimed that Gore’s critics were “ignoring the fact that the Gores signed up for TVA’s Green Power Switch program”
The fact is that there is ample evidence to support his hypocrisy even ignoring his electricity use.
That’s not a fact. You haven’t proven jack shit in this thread, except that you’ll say anything to smear Al Gore.
Yeah, you’re one to talk about personal attacks.
If you think that’s a personal attack, report it to the mods. Then respond to my question that conveniently broke your reading comprehension circuit.
What Exit, wrt your earlier response, you and I are nearer of mind on this than you might think. Points duly noted.
Next time I need some cherries picked, you’re my gal. If you have a problem with Lindzen, you must have seen he was just one of a number of respected professors and researcher mentioned (it was late Friday and I wasn’t about to list everyone I’ve read over the months that have written in protest), the point being that there is an appreciable contingent that have issues with Al’s exaggerations and, therefore, maybe it would be worth an individual’s time to look at what they’re pointing out to see if it has merit. If you really want to see the film eviscerated, go read Marlo Lewis, Jr.'s A Skeptic’s Guide to An Inconvenient Truth. While I don’t buy into all his claims either, it will go into more detail than the nine to eleven points of contention referenced elsewhere. Reasonable articles are to be found in abundance; A Skeptic’s Primer…, Geological Society of America articles, etc, etc, etc. Combined, they help provide a sense of relative balance so you can make your own mind up on what’s accurate and what views as sensationalism.
As a geologist, I certainly have no problem with getting the word out on AGW. We’re exposed to a lot of discussion simply due to the nature of our industry through reading articles in the GSA, AAPG, etc. My issue is with the accuracy of documented, specific claims and representations about AGW in a widely seen movie that represents itself as an unbiased documentary because, when it wins a Nobel, many viewers will expect and consider (and rightfully so) those claims to have been factual. Party man Al get’s a hall pass on inaccuracies because he’s a politician, not a scientist? Okay. Let’s sprinkle that with some hyperbole and alarmism and call that our consensus Nobel laureate. Sorry, doesn’t pass my smell test.
Al made a good documentary. The basic premise is sound but he does lose credibility for including too much alarmist fluff. I’d rank his effort as being far more deserving of glorification than Farenheit 911, but less scientifically accurate and belivable than March of the Penguins.
Some of us can admire his aim but not his method…
and the Nobel was pure politics.
Sounds good, I agree, there is much wrong with the documentary as far as accurate science and at it has much alarm. I looked at it as a tool to get people to take a serious look at AGW. As a **Green ** I applaud his efforts, more than I applaud the film.
As far as the Nobel Peace Prize goes, I thought it was more often than not political in nature. This council’s attempt to use their high profile award to support what they think is right or correct. I assume most NPPs have a political slant to them. I could be wrong, but I have always taken them with a grain of salt.
Jim
Al Gore is not demanding that everyone us no more than a certain amount of energy, but rather to reduce their usage by a certain percentage. If every Amercan reduces their usage by, say 30%, then the entire country will have reduced its usage by 30%, and that will have an impact on global waming.
Has Gore reduced his consumption by 0%? Is he every bit as profligate in his usage as would have been if he had never heard of global warming or didn’t care?
I’ll bet the real reason he’s asking the rest of us to use less energy is so he can have it all to himself!
It appears that there is no dispute that he has regularly used private jets in the past and continues to do so today.
Nor does it appear that there is any dispute that he maintains a private swimming pool and uses a large amount of natural gas to heat the pool and the rest of his house.
Yes, you can speculate and cook up scenarios to defend his actions, but again - it’s like finding your husband naked in bed with another woman. The burden is on him to explain things, which he has not done satisfactorily.
Hannity said it, and Gore hasn’t seriously denied it. Hannity’s claims were apparently based on publicly available records. Any green is free to look up the records and prove that Hannity is a liar. Which doesn’t seem to have happened.
That’s enough to come to a reasonable, if tentative, conclusion.
Cite?
I have done so. If the mods do not require you to change the tone of your posts, I will be responding in kind.
Which question is that?
vibrotronica, none of your posts have quite crossed an explicit threshhold, but you are letting this get far too personal. Dial it back and stick to the topic, not the posters.
[ /Moderating ]
Sean Hannity wouldn’t know the truth if it bit him in the ass and fucked his dog.
I don’t really understand your point here. To provide a fact-check on Gore, you direct us to an article by Marlo Lewis Jr., who has no more scientific credentials than Gore himself and works for a right-wing think-tank known for its strong views and deceptive discussions on the issue and a large recipient of funds from Exxon-Mobil. You admit this article might be a bit extreme so you direct us to what you consider a more reasonable article (the Coyote Blog one). However, reading this article, I find it to be riddled with inaccuracies. For example, take just the first 3 sentences of the overview:
Here, we find several errors:
(1) I know of no basis for the claim that man is responsible for no more than half of the warming over the last 100 years. The IPCC says that we are very likely responsible for most of the warming over the last 50 years, which is about half to two-thirds of the warming over the last 100 years, that we may have been responsible for a part of the warming in the early part of the 20th century (and furthermore, that the warming due to greenhouse gases in the last 50 years would likely have been greater if it hadn’t been counteracted somewhat by negative forcings such as aerosols and more warming would still occur if greenhouse gas levels were stabilized tomorrow because the earth is out-of-equilibrium with current levels). So, while responsibility for (a little) less than half of the warming in the last 100 years is possible, it is also quite possible that it is more…and that some of the warming that we would have seen due to greenhouse gases either has been masked by the cooling effect we have produced due to aerosol pollutants or has not been seen yet because of the slow equilibration times.
(2) Contrary to the claim that there has been less warming at the poles, the warming in the Northern polar regions has actually been larger than average, as is expected. And, while the limited data over Antarctica suggests that much of it may be warming less than average, the northernmost part (peninsula) has warmed very rapidly and this is a significant concern. (Noone believes that significant melting of the ice sheets of Antarctica near the South Pole will melt or disintegrate…The worry is about the northernmost parts of the ice sheet.)
(3) Contrary to the claim that positive feedback effects have not been observed, there is in fact some data on the biggest positive feedback effect…the water vapor feedback. For example, here is a paper discussing the fit between data and models for the cooling due to the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo with and without the water vapor feedback. And, here is a paper directly measuring the signature in satellite data due to moistening of the upper troposphere.
His coverage of the Mann Hockey Stick graph is even worse as he essentially relies on the story as told by Mann’s critics, ignoring the subsequent work on such reconstructions and ignoring the National Academy of Sciences report on the subject in favor of a report written by statisticians for a Congressional Committee that weighed in on only a very narrow statistical question regarding Mann’s work (which turns out to be largely irrelevant since the Mann results can be reproduced without using the statistically-flawed technique).
And, his claim that scientists haven’t given serious consideration to solar effects is just wrong.
So, overall, I think you are trying to provide balance to a presentation that most scientists in the field seem to think is broadly accurate, if a bit overwrought on a few of the details, with presentations that most would say are not broadly accurate at all.
While your at it, respond to mine. The one you ignored.