After Al Gore's documentary film "An Inconvenient Truth" won an Oscar last week, Tennessee Center for Policy Research, a conservative think tank, blasted him as an environmental hypocrite and pointed out that Al Gore wasn't as green as his image:
From ABC News:
Armed with Gore's utility bills for the last two years, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research charged Monday that the gas and electric bills for the former vice president's 20-room home and pool house devoured nearly 221,000 kilowatt-hours in 2006, more than 20 times the national average of 10,656 kilowatt-hours. ...
The Center claims that Nashville Electric Services records show the Gores in 2006 averaged a monthly electricity bill of $1,359 for using 18,414 kilowatt-hours, and $1,461 per month for using 16,200 kilowatt-hours in 2005. During that time, Nashville Gas Company billed the family an average of $536 a month for the main house and $544 for the pool house in 2006, and $640 for the main house and $525 for the pool house in 2005. That averages out to be $29,268 in gas and electric bills for the Gores in 2006, $31,512 in 2005.
The blogosphere was abuzz, as it is wont to do, about this: The conservatives pointed out that Al Gore uses twice the electricity in one month than the average household does in an entire year. (I haven't done the math myself).
The left shot back, saying "oh yeah, that's nothing compared to Dick Cheney's $186,000 electricity bill, which the US Navy footed."
we wish that you come to lebanon & do the same pleaze & we love you soo much
from the students Of our Ladys Peace Schoool - akkar (the7 grade)
"Actually, there’s more money in proving global warming wrong than there is in proving it right. Exxon and other oil companies are paying any scientist they can get big bucks to manufacture the science they need to say global warmng is fake"
Actually, that is not quite true. Most research dollars come from government. When H.W. Bush was in office $185 million annually was dedicated to researching climate change, today that number is well over $2 billion annually.
What is the difference in having one group that you perceive as having an agenda funding research, like the oil companies - as opposed to another group that you perceive having an agenda funding research, like the "Global Warming is mans fault crowd." In reality both camps have an agenda and will pull funding from scientists that show results other than the ones they are looking for.
The notion there is a consensus of scientists that support Gore's theories that increased CO2 levels in our atmosphere cause global warming is not true for one, there is no consensus, there are plenty of scientists that do not believe man is causing global warming.
But, just for a moment let's say there really is a consensus of scientists that say man is causing global warming. Does this automatically make it true.
Not, exactly. There was a time when there was a consensus of the leading minds on the planet that believed the earth was flat.
Life was tough for those few minds that bucked the view of that consensus, they were ostracized and in some cases tried as heretics.
I see the same thing happening today to scientists that buck the trend of the "global warming is mans fault" consensus. Any scientist that disagrees with the norm, is ostracized and accussed of being in the pocket of Big Oil, when in fact many of them have never received a penny from Big Oil. The funny part is that many in this blog have accused scientists that don't believe man is causing global warming of being in the pocket of Big Oil, yet not one of them has offered one iota of proof to these allegations.
One example, is a UK Produced Documentary called "The Great Global Warming Swindle" There are plenty of award winning scientists that offer Good, Strong, scientific evidence that Gore has it wrong, with regards to his contention that Global Warming is caused by increased CO2 levels in the atmosphere.
According to this film and some independent data I've viewd from other sources, Gore correctly identifies there is a correlation between global temperature increases and increased CO2 levels in the atmosphere, the problem is, he has backwards.
If you study the charts of global temperatures and CO2 levels in the atmosphere over a given period of time, it is quite apparent that increased CO2 levels in the atmosphere have traditionally followed increases in global temperature. If Gore's contention that increased CO2 levels in the atmosphere is the driving force behind global warming, just the opposite would show on the charts. It would show increased levels of CO2 in the atmosphere then increased global temperatures over a given time.
I found one major thing lacking about Gore's documentary, anything showing the effects of the suns effect on global warming. Could it be that it didn't fit into his agenda, so it wasn't showed.
Having watched both documentarys, frankly I found the UK documentary to be more convincing.
In closing, I would like to quote a few paragraphs from lecture given to at Penn from Penn professor of geology Bob Giegengack, says of Al Gore's film, 'An Inconvenient Truth', "It's a political statement timed to present him as a presidential candidate in 2008." And he added, "The glossy production is replete with inaccuracies and misrepresentations, and appeals to public fear as shamelessly as any other political statement that hopes to unite the public behind a particular ideology." This from a guy who voted for Gore in 2000 and says he’d probably vote for him again. In other words, to gain political power.
Giegengack clicks a button on his powerpoint presentation, and three charts come together. The peaks and valleys of the Milankovi´c cycles for planetary temperature align well with the ocean-floor estimates, and those match closely the records of carbon dioxide concentrations and temperature indications from ice cores. So, the professor maintains, these core samples from the polar ice and ocean floor help show that the Earth’s temperature and the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have been in lockstep for tens of thousands of years.
Of course, that was long before anybody was burning fossil fuels. So Giegengack tells his students they might want to consider that “natural†climatic temperature cycles control carbon dioxide levels, not the other way around. That’s the crux of his argument with Gore’s view of global warming — he says carbon dioxide doesn’t control global temperature, and certainly not in a direct, linear way.
Gieg has lots more slides to show. He points out that within his lifetime, there was a three-decade period of unusually low temperatures that culminated in the popular consciousness with the awful winter of 1976-77. Back then, scientists started sounding the alarm about a new ice age.
I challenge any of you who are drinking from Al Gore's Global Warming Kool-Aid to take the time to watch this UK produced Documentary, which has several award winning scientists from all over the world disputing the Gore's conclusions on the cause of globa warming. It's 1.25 hourse long, but well worth the time it takes to watch it.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4340135300469846467
"The energy of the jet that Gore uses is balanced by carbon off-sets. Think that’s bull? Why do you think acid rain has decreased so dramatically in the US? Because the system of off-sets and credits used to regulate sulfuric acid emissions from coal plants worked. The truth is that off-sets and credits work for pollution that doesn’t come from a point source (i.e. pollution that diffuses rapidly into the environment, rather that pooling near where it is released)."
As I rap, rap, rap on Brians head, I say, "Hello McFly is there anyone in there???" You can't really believe the tripe you typed here can you??? Acid rain reduction has absoultely nothing to do with that feel-good crap, carbon-offsets.
You want to know what led to the reduction of acid rain in the US??? It was EPA mandates that cole producing plants, industry, and automobiles be outfitted with technologies that either filtered pollutants out, or broke down those pollutants into their base elements before being released back into the atmosphere.
That's right McFly, that catalytic converter that has been on every car produced in the country since 1975 converts carbon monoxide and other nasty pollutants into non-pollutant base elements like hydrogen, oxygen, water, and dare I say, carbon dioxide, before being released into the atmosphere.
The same type of technology is used on a much larger and more complicated scale for smoke stacks in industry and cole burning and producing facilities. This has been going on for years and acid rain has not been much of a problem in the US since the late 1980's. Long before this stupid feel-good carbon-offset idea came about.