Al Gore's Movie

Walkinghairball · Post by **Walkinghairball** » Thu Aug 10, 2006 10:24 pm

Here's something.

Gore isn't quite as green as he's led the world to believe.
Updated 8/10/2006 10:44 AM

By Peter Schweizer
Al Gore has spoken: The world must embrace a "carbon-neutral lifestyle." To do otherwise, he says, will result in a cataclysmic catastrophe. "Humanity is sitting on a ticking time bomb," warns the website for his film, An Inconvenient Truth. "We have just 10 years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet into a tailspin."

Graciously, Gore tells consumers how to change their lives to curb their carbon-gobbling ways: Switch to compact fluorescent light bulbs, use a clothesline, drive a hybrid, use renewable energy, dramatically cut back on consumption. Better still, responsible global citizens can follow Gore's example, because, as he readily points out in his speeches, he lives a "carbon-neutral lifestyle." But if Al Gore is the world's role model for ecology, the planet is doomed.

For someone who says the sky is falling, he does very little. He says he recycles and drives a hybrid. And he claims he uses renewable energy credits to offset the pollution he produces when using a private jet to promote his film. (In reality, Paramount Classics, the film's distributor, pays this.)

Public records reveal that as Gore lectures Americans on excessive consumption, he and his wife Tipper live in two properties: a 10,000-square-foot, 20-room, eight-bathroom home in Nashville, and a 4,000-square-foot home in Arlington, Va. (He also has a third home in Carthage, Tenn.) For someone rallying the planet to pursue a path of extreme personal sacrifice, Gore requires little from himself.

Then there is the troubling matter of his energy use. In the Washington, D.C., area, utility companies offer wind energy as an alternative to traditional energy. In Nashville, similar programs exist. Utility customers must simply pay a few extra pennies per kilowatt hour, and they can continue living their carbon-neutral lifestyles knowing that they are supporting wind energy. Plenty of businesses and institutions have signed up. Even the Bush administration is using green energy for some federal office buildings, as are thousands of area residents.

But according to public records, there is no evidence that Gore has signed up to use green energy in either of his large residences. When contacted Wednesday, Gore's office confirmed as much but said the Gores were looking into making the switch at both homes. Talk about inconvenient truths.

Gore is not alone. Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean has said, "Global warming is happening, and it threatens our very existence." The DNC website applauds the fact that Gore has "tried to move people to act." Yet, astoundingly, Gore's persuasive powers have failed to convince his own party: The DNC has not signed up to pay an additional two pennies a kilowatt hour to go green. For that matter, neither has the Republican National Committee.

Maybe our very existence isn't threatened.

Gore has held these apocalyptic views about the environment for some time. So why, then, didn't Gore dump his family's large stock holdings in Occidental (Oxy) Petroleum? As executor of his family's trust, over the years Gore has controlled hundreds of thousands of dollars in Oxy stock. Oxy has been mired in controversy over oil drilling in ecologically sensitive areas.

Living carbon-neutral apparently doesn't mean living oil-stock free. Nor does it necessarily mean giving up a mining royalty either.

Humanity might be "sitting on a ticking time bomb," but Gore's home in Carthage is sitting on a zinc mine. Gore receives $20,000 a year in royalties from Pasminco Zinc, which operates a zinc concession on his property. Tennessee has cited the company for adding large quantities of barium, iron and zinc to the nearby Caney Fork River.

The issue here is not simply Gore's hypocrisy; it's a question of credibility. If he genuinely believes the apocalyptic vision he has put forth and calls for radical changes in the way other people live, why hasn't he made any radical change in his life? Giving up the zinc mine or one of his homes is not asking much, given that he wants the rest of us to radically change our lives.

Peter Schweizer is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and author of Do As I Say (Not As I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy.

awip2062 · Post by **awip2062** » Fri Aug 11, 2006 12:02 am

"The issue here is not simply Gore's hypocrisy; it's a question of credibility. If he genuinely believes the apocalyptic vision he has put forth and calls for radical changes in the way other people live, why hasn't he made any radical change in his life?"

Does his behaviour show that his belief in global warming is only a politcal ploy?

Walkinghairball · Post by **Walkinghairball** » Fri Aug 11, 2006 6:48 am

I think his behavior is all due to Tipper forcing him to sit while he pee's.

But that is just a conspiracy theory.

awip2062 · Post by **awip2062** » Fri Aug 11, 2006 10:37 am

Devil's Advocate · Post by **Devil's Advocate** » Fri Aug 11, 2006 11:09 am

Walkinghairball wrote:Here's something.

Gore isn't quite as green as he's led the world to believe.
Updated 8/10/2006 10:44 AM

Some right-wing pundit claims Gore isn't "as green as he's led the world to believe," therefore..... What?

Assuming your pundit is right (and if he really thinks that "Do As I Say (Not As I Do)" is a hallmark of liberal hypocrisy rather than a definition of hypocrisy in general, he's clearly got a track record of saying whatever he dreams up to make "liberals" look bad), so what?

Global warming is real. It is also a fact that human activity is largely responsible for it. And it's a fact that if we don't change our behaviour - and that's all of us, not just Al Gore - global warming will get a lot worse.

Those are facts. It doesn't matter who says them, or what sins they may or may not be guilty of.

awip2062 · Post by **awip2062** » Fri Aug 11, 2006 11:22 am

"Some right-wing pundit claims Gore isn't "as green as he's led the world to believe," therefore..... What? "

Therefore maybe he isn't really who he claims to be. Therefore maybe he doesn't really believe in this, but is just using it and people like you to advance himself.

ElfDude · Post by **ElfDude** » Fri Aug 11, 2006 11:23 am

Our planet's temperature over history looks like a sine wave. If there is a warming trend right now, why is it fact that it's man-made, if it never was any of the other times?

awip2062 · Post by **awip2062** » Fri Aug 11, 2006 11:25 am

Professor Elfdude, I know! I know! *raises hands and jumps up and down*

Because we're here!

Devil's Advocate · Post by **Devil's Advocate** » Sat Aug 12, 2006 4:52 am

awip2062 wrote:"Some right-wing pundit claims Gore isn't "as green as he's led the world to believe," therefore..... What? "

Therefore maybe he isn't really who he claims to be. Therefore maybe he doesn't really believe in this, but is just using it and people like you to advance himself.

If what he's saying is right, then none of that (even if true) matters.

Maligning Gore does not change the facts. It's a form of ad hominem argument known as "poisoning the well."

ElfDude wrote:Our planet's temperature over history looks like a sine wave.

Bullshit.

ElfDude · Post by **ElfDude** » Sat Aug 12, 2006 9:00 am

Okay, so it isn't a prefect sine wave.

But the ups and downs remain obvious and undeniable.

And I would question that black line in your graphic (actually I'd question the whole thing because we've only been recording measured temperature for 100 years, before that we can't see anything more than trends... proclaiming a particular temperature in the year 1220 is nothing more than guesswork). All reports of recent history that I've read show a cooling trend from 1940 through 1975, followed by a 0.6?C increase from 1975 through 1998 and then no statistical change from 1998 through the present.

Of course, global warming is a fact. I'll never try to deny it. Just like global cooling is a fact. Both facts appear to by cyclical and inescapable.

And my question went unanswered. Were any of those peaks in the past caused by human activity?

Devil's Advocate · Post by **Devil's Advocate** » Sat Aug 12, 2006 11:36 am

ElfDude wrote:And I would question that black line in your graphic (actually I'd question the whole thing because we've only been recording measured temperature for 100 years, before that we can't see anything more than trends... proclaiming a particular temperature in the year 1220 is nothing more than guesswork).

The black line is the one that's based on direct temperature measurement. Strange that you'd find that one specifically questionable.

And my question went unanswered. Were any of those peaks in the past caused by human activity?

Awip had that one nailed, despite attempting to be facetious. Before the industrial revolution, we did not have the means to affect the global climate (except by deforestation for which there may be evidence). Do you really think that pumping carbon dioxide and other things into the atmosphere at the rate we do can fail to have an effect?

ElfDude · Post by **ElfDude** » Sat Aug 12, 2006 12:04 pm

What year was the chart created? That black line just isn't representative of the last ten years. It should be level between 1998 and now, instead of projecting an asterisk way up high in 2004, since no big spike took place in 2004.

When you ask, "Do you really think that pumping carbon dioxide and other things into the atmosphere at the rate we do can fail to have an effect?", I've already posted an expert opinion with which I agree.

Appearing before the Commons Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development last year, Carleton University paleoclimatologist Professor Tim Patterson testified, "There is no meaningful correlation between CO2 levels and Earth's temperature over this [geologic] time frame. In fact, when CO2 levels were over ten times higher than they are now, about 450 million years ago, the planet was in the depths of the absolute coldest period in the last half billion years." Patterson asked the committee, "On the basis of this evidence, how could anyone still believe that the recent relatively small increase in CO2 levels would be the major cause of the past century's modest warming?"

I'm not trying to have a duel of wits with you, brother. I just haven't seen the evidence to back the hype.

awip2062 · Post by **awip2062** » Sat Aug 12, 2006 12:14 pm

Devil's Advocate wrote: If what he's saying is right, then none of that (even if true) matters.

Maligning Gore does not change the facts. It's a form of ad hominem argument known as "poisoning the well."

I am not bringing this out to malign Gore. He maligns himself if he is not true to what he claims to be. Just looking at facts (what he says, what he does) and asking questions.

I say this because I do believe that it does matter. Integrity does matter. Especially if the person whose integrity is in question is in a position of leadership.

Walkinghairball · Post by **Walkinghairball** » Sat Aug 12, 2006 2:01 pm

Wow....................lookie what I started here again.

Oopsie.

ElfDude · Post by **ElfDude** » Sat Aug 12, 2006 2:17 pm

Walkinghairball wrote:Wow....................lookie what I started here again.

You a good-for-nothing troublemaker! Why canna you be more like-a you brother?