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An Inconvenient Irony
Why the hell isn't he out on a segway or a vegetable oil powered car pushing his agenda? Oh, right--it's because he's above that. If you're gonna talk the talk, you'd better be prepared to walk the walk.
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| As former Vice President Al Gore�s documentary on global warming fears debuts today, a new video from the Competitive Enterprise Institute tracks Gore�s own �carbon footprint.� CEI�s 70-second video points out that Gore himself is a big user of the hydrocarbon fuels that produce carbon dioxide when combusted. Gore�s �An Inconvenient Truth� asks, "Are you willing to change the way you live?" The Gore documentary and new book of the same name go on to suggest ways that people can reduce their carbon footprint, yet Mr. Gore has clearly not taken his own message to heart. He even says in the documentary that he has given his global warming Power Point slide show more than 1,000 times all around the world. The CEI video, which may be viewed at: http://streams.cei.org/, includes footage of Gore and his constant air travel with two CO2 meters running at the bottom of the page that compare Gore�s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions with those of an average person. "All the evidence suggests that Mr. Gore is an elitist who passionately believes that the people of the world must drastically reduce their energy use but that it doesn't apply to him,� said Myron Ebell, CEI's director of energy and global warming policy and the creator of the video. Developing... |
Well let's be frank ... does this mean that any westerner can't be an environmentalist because their carbon footprint, no matter how environemntally conscious they may be, is going to be so much greater than a third world individual simply by virtue of the society they live in? I'm going to wager than an environmental scientist's carbon footpring is going to be larger than the "average" person as well considering they're probably jet setting all over to research sites, conferences, etc., the fact that they have a higher carbon footprint does not diminish their claims. Similarly, Al Gore is not an "average" person. He can probably do a greater good for the environment by travelling, speaking, and pursuading than he can by riding a bicycle everywhere.
Other than that, I heard the film was actually quite good with him being uncharacteristically charismatic.
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| Originally posted by occrider Well let's be frank ... does this mean that any westerner can't be an environmentalist because their carbon footprint, no matter how environemntally conscious they may be, is going to be so much greater than a third world individual simply by virtue of the society they live in? I'm going to wager than an environmental scientist's carbon footpring is going to be larger than the "average" person as well considering they're probably jet setting all over to research sites, conferences, etc., the fact that they have a higher carbon footprint does not diminish their claims. Similarly, Al Gore is not an "average" person. He can probably do a greater good for the environment by travelling, speaking, and pursuading than he can by riding a bicycle everywhere. Other than that, I heard the film was actually quite good with him being uncharacteristically charismatic. |
Keep on fishing, Drudge:
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| The Gores and all the employees of Generation lead a "carbon-neutral" lifestyle, reducing their energy consumption when possible and purchasing so-called offsets available on newly emerging carbon markets. Gore says he and Tipper regularly calculate their home and business energy use - including the carbon cost of his prodigious global travel. Then he purchases offsets equal to the amount of carbon emissions they generate. Last year, for example, Gore and Tipper atoned for their estimated 1 million miles in global air travel by giving money to an Indian solar electric company and a Bulgarian hydroelectric project. |
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| Originally posted by Renegade Keep on fishing, Drudge: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/...gore&topic_set= |
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| Last year, for example, Gore and Tipper atoned for their estimated 1 million miles in global air travel by giving money to an Indian solar electric company and a Bulgarian hydroelectric project. |
I don't care what Al Gore does, I really want to see this movie. I hope he doesn't play the blame game.
I read in wired that Al Gore contibutes a "carbon excise tax" to some environmental chairable organization to offset the damages/etc by usings planes, suvs, etc, to do what he does and live his lifestyle.
He encourages other millionares to do similar and pay a certain $x amount per carbon emmission or what not....
Forgot the specific term for it, but there it is..
And for the record, I still think Al Gore is a loney, I'm ceral!
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| Originally posted by Shakka So then, it's OK to destroy the environment while you preach about protecting it, as long as you cough up enough money to appease the masses and atone for your sins? |
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| For all of the noise and hand waving Gore makes about the environment, he should be flying in an air-glider, riding a Segway or at least drive a hybrid in the very least. Or here's an idea--instead of flying back and forth 1000 times, why not just do a big video conference without having to travel and waste fuel? |
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| Originally posted by Yoepus I read in wired |
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| Originally posted by Renegade Whether or not that means he is responsible for no net pollution whatsoever is another matter, but you can hardly accuse him of not practicing what he preaches. |
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| Originally posted by Renegade Yeah you did - maybe about 2 posts up from yours? |
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| Originally posted by Shakka So then conservation only applies to us lesser creatures? God forbid the guy actually practice what he preaches. I understand touring around to make speeches, but there is also some clear-cut hypocrisy going on. Politicians do it every day when they think that rules and laws apply to everyone but themselves (you silly commoners). Gore thrives on fear mongering the same way he accuses the current administartion of doing. The only difference is that in Gore's eyes, the enemy is you. The portrait of a self-hating liberal. I'm sure the film is 100% better than "The Day After Tomorrow". |
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| Originally posted by occrider Yes from an absolute perspective the guy is producing far more greenhouse gasses than you or I. |
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| Inconvenient Truths for Al Gore Remember Kyoto? By Samuel Thernstrom With Al Gore�s new movie opening this week, there are some inconvenient truths its maker should consider: Gore himself has done incalculable harm to the cause of combating global warming. His efforts to call attention to the dangers of climate change may prove prescient but his policy prescriptions have been nothing short of disastrous. Consider the facts: The Kyoto Protocol, which Gore personally negotiated for the United States, was a colossal mistake�a fundamentally flawed approach that has taken nearly a decade (and counting) to recover from. If ever a treaty was dead on arrival, it was Kyoto, given that the Senate had voted 95-0 against two of its essential elements before it was negotiated. (That vote rejected any treaty that would seriously harm our economy while exempting the developing world from any obligation to reduce its emissions�a sensible litmus test.) That didn�t stop Gore from agreeing to its terms, knowing full well that it would never be ratified�a remarkably cynical political move. What�s wrong with signing an impractical treaty? A lot, actually. Kyoto stopped us from pursuing more realistic alternatives. Even now, Kyoto�s misconceptions haunt us: Having already agreed that the developing world need not reduce its (rapidly increasing) emissions of greenhouse gases, it will be hard to persuade those countries to reconsider. Yet without their participation, no limits on global emissions can be effective. Before Kyoto, the world was seriously engaged in thinking through the challenge of climate change. That started in earnest after the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, which committed the world to working together to avoid dangerous interference with the global climate. It left open the more difficult question of precisely what to do but it set the right goal, and for five years scientists, economists, engineers, and government officials struggled with that question. After Kyoto, that process largely ground to a halt. Of course President Clinton never even tried to get the Senate to approve the treaty, and for seven years the rest of the industrialized world wrestled with ratification. A year ago, the Protocol finally came into effect�at least on paper. We have next to nothing to show for it. Canada is the latest country to admit (just this week) that it cannot meet its Kyoto targets; it wants to pursue voluntary measures when the Protocol expires in 2012. The rest of the participants aren�t doing much better: No country has actually made substantial reductions in its greenhouse gas emissions because of Kyoto, and many European countries will miss their targets by double digits. Moreover, those limits are only a small fraction of what many scientists think is needed to stabilize the climate. The problem with meeting these targets is simple: the necessary technologies don�t exist. At best, Kyoto would mean spending a lot of money to accomplish very little. Kyoto-style targets may promote modest reductions in emissions today but they aren�t going to produce the research needed for fundamental technological breakthroughs that could slash overall global emissions. Short-term, modest targets aren�t incentives for ambitious long-term research. After wasting almost a decade pursuing Al Gore�s answer to climate change, Kyoto�s failure is clear. The much-celebrated �trading� mechanism that was expected to cut the cost of compliance is barely functioning. Trading emissions credits works well when the technologies exist, such as smokestack �scrubbers� to remove sulfur dioxide. But greenhouse gases are another matter: There are so many sources of carbon dioxide, and so few affordable ways to get rid of it. Establishing an effective market for trading these credits is much more complicated than advocates ever imagined. So, if not Kyoto, what? Environmentalists should thank President Bush for breathing new�albeit indignant�life into the stagnant climate-change debate when he announced in 2001 that he wouldn�t pursue ratification of Kyoto. New policy opportunities opened up and people went back to the creative drawing boards. We�re taking small steps in the right direction, but activists are more enamored with their politics�which dictate that anything that Bush supports must be wrong�than with spurring these nascent efforts on. Clinton and Gore continue to mislead Americans by telling us that the solutions are simple and cheap�all we need is political will to implement them. Nothing could be further from the truth: the answers to climate change are expensive and elusive; they will be found in the Los Alamos labs, not the halls of Congress. The only way to make meaningful reductions in global greenhouse-gas emissions is to develop new clean energy and transportation technologies�and not just hybrid cars and windmills. Doing politically correct things like building solar panels would shave a few points off our total emissions, but only breakthrough technologies like hydrogen fuel cells will make real cuts possible. And their cost is the key: We can build fuel-cell cars now�for $1 million. When we figure out how to sell them for $30,000, we won�t need an international treaty to get people to buy them. Almost every major car company in the world is frantically trying to unlock that puzzle and�are you sitting down?�George W. Bush, the ex-oil man who once mocked Al Gore�s fascination with green cars, is pouring billions of federal dollars into the effort. Bush has also spearheaded other efforts to develop clean energy technologies, such as the Asia-Pacific Partnership, which includes key developing countries such as China and India. Activists scorn these initiatives because they don�t require emissions reductions today, but in the long run they are our only hope. The real question is how to best advance this research�government labs, private sector R&D, or some combination? What�s the right level of funding, and the best way of organizing the research? In the meantime there is one technology that could dramatically reduce America�s greenhouse-gas emissions�and yet environmentalists are fervently opposed to it. Al Gore doubts it has much potential. But the only cost-effective way we know right now to produce thousands of megawatts of zero-emissions electricity is nuclear power. America, of course, hasn�t built a new nuclear plant since Three Mile Island, but that�s going to change. Just how many plants are built, and how quickly, will depend in part on how fierce the environmental opposition is. Will Al Gore lead the way? �Samuel Thernstrom is director of the W.H. Brady Program on Freedom and Culture at the American Enterprise Institute and managing editor of the AEI Press. He served as communications director for the White House Council on Environmental Quality in 2001�02. |
Re: An Inconvenient Irony
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| Originally posted by Shakka Why the hell isn't he out on a segway or a vegetable oil powered car pushing his agenda? Oh, right--it's because he's above that. If you're gonna talk the talk, you'd better be prepared to walk the walk. |
Re: Re: An Inconvenient Irony
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| Originally posted by Spacey Orange off topic but i was behind one of those vegatable-powered thing-a-ma-jigs and it smelled like french fries. |
Re: Re: An Inconvenient Irony
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| Originally posted by Spacey Orange off topic but i was behind one of those vegatable-powered thing-a-ma-jigs and it smelled like french fries. |
The dumpster-diver movement lives on!
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| Originally posted by Q5echo right, i get it, but what is his point then if the movie's premise is for all of us to reduce our lifestyle for the sake of a CO2 footprint and neglect the fact that he himself can prove that it is possible as filthy a polluter he has been to be CO2 nuetral? which is it?...or is it a ploy? i honestly don't know, and my personal opinion of Gore aside, it sounds duplicitous. |
Fallacies aimed to distract attention away from the issue at hand are not a good way to build credibility. I guess some of you missed the memo.
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| Originally posted by occrider Oh ... ok so you're saying that despite that America acknowledges the fact that Saddam Huessein's Iraq is bad, and pretty much was ALWAYS bad that the fact that we provided them weapons in the 80's destroys all our credibility? That it was a ploy? Duplicitous even??? Please, much like geopolitics, the realities of life require the injection of a few brain cells to generate that thing we call common sense. Should we get rid of all environmental scientists because they produce more carbon than the "average" american? Hey get this, I'm willing to bet that EVERY fiscal conservative republican (if they even exist nowadays) spends more tax paying dollars than the "average" american!! Duplicitous? Now unless you can substantiate hypocrisy with reckless endangerment of the environment of which there is a greater negative impact than positive, I don't really see where this argument is headed. As a matter of fact, I can only see an endless supply of "hypocrises" in any number of issues if this argument can be substantiated in any meaningful way. |
Occ,
You mentioned in your rebuttal that context counts, and I absolutely agree. However, the flip side of that argument is that since the context of Gore's "carbon footprint" is that it's necessary to his agenda, therefore, in the same breath nobody anywhere is in a position to criticize eachother's use of fossil fuels and what not, as everyone has their own unique situation/point-of-view/context that determines how they live. If we can criticize Suzie-Soccer-Mom for driving an SUV around town all day (due to the fact that she needs to run here little shit machines around town all day, to and from soccer practice, school, karate lessons, etc. carting groceries from point A to point B), then why can't we criticize a guy like Gore who is as adamant about the environment (at least on the surface. I think he's got a larger agenda in mind, but that's just me), yet who is just as bad of an environmental abuser as anyone but who gets a free pass because he's pushing a film or buying pollution credits. Furthermore, there's still no reason why he can't use more environmentally friendly modes of transportation and whatnot to further enhance his position. I'm afraid the sword cuts both ways on this one.
It's like John Kerry preaching about the same thing, yet the guy owns multiple gas guzzling SUVs and a gulfstream jet. When it comes down to it, these guys simply think they are above the rest of us and are beyond reproach, but the reality is that they are simply elitist assholes who's greater mission is to garner votes so they can get power.
It kind of reminds me of that episode of South Park with Starvin' Marvin when the kids go to Africa to see Sally Struthers only to find her hiding out in the food tent scarfing down a mountain of twinkies and cheesy poofs.
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| Originally posted by Q5echo damn dude, your way out in left field double fisting red herrings disguised as tax dollars and weapons you can't prove existed. |
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first off he's not an "environmental scientist". he's a promoter. a walking billboard. a face man if you will. like shakka said, he could set a much better example despite his vanity but that's beside my point. i honestly don't care if real environmental scientist log millions of miles in pursuit of research. i understand what may be at stake (read; common sense). |
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second, my point being that the movie says one thing (though i haven't seen it. i read a couple of things about it) that i understand to be absolute in it's rationale that as humans we need to reduce our lifestyles or we die basically. again, i haven't seen the flick but i haven't read anything about the movie supporting Al Gore's current globetrotting rationale that we can somehow "nuetralize" our own individual CO2 footprint by giving back something or whatever thus justifying a twisted and polluted zero-sum lifestyle. and maybe duplicitous was a harsh term. it's definition though fits to me. |
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i'm not a publicist and i do understand that you gotta promote movies. but this mutherf**ker better start planting an entire rainforest once he's done. |
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| Originally posted by Shakka Occ, You mentioned in your rebuttal that context counts, and I absolutely agree. However, the flip side of that argument is that since the context of Gore's "carbon footprint" is that it's necessary to his agenda, therefore, in the same breath nobody anywhere is in a position to criticize eachother's use of fossil fuels and what not, as everyone has their own unique situation/point-of-view/context that determines how they live. If we can criticize Suzie-Soccer-Mom for driving an SUV around town all day (due to the fact that she needs to run here little shit machines around town all day, to and from soccer practice, school, karate lessons, etc. carting groceries from point A to point B), then why can't we criticize a guy like Gore who is as adamant about the environment (at least on the surface. I think he's got a larger agenda in mind, but that's just me), yet who is just as bad of an environmental abuser as anyone but who gets a free pass because he's pushing a film or buying pollution credits. Furthermore, there's still no reason why he can't use more environmentally friendly modes of transportation and whatnot to further enhance his position. I'm afraid the sword cuts both ways on this one. |
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| Originally posted by occrider A red herring is a topic change that fails to address the original nature of the argument. I introduced several "examples" to repudiate what I percieved to be a flawed argument through analogy. Now if you sincerely believe that I fallaciously presented a false argument than what about it is a red herring? Be very specific so to avoid further confusion. |
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| Since you didn't outline the flaws of my analogy I'll ask you again, can a fiscal conservative advocate still be a fiscal conservative despite the fact that they spend more tax paying dollars than the "average" person? |
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| Allow me to ask you a frank question ... every other day or so I see marine 2 flying around dc on "decoy" missions. Obviously this is expending a significant quantity of fuel, pollutants and tax payer dollars. Now even if I thought Bush had a very environmentally friendly policy, am I justified for criticizing him for this "hyprocrisy" despite the fact that this is simply part of his lifestyle? |
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| Originally posted by occrider Oh ... ok so you're saying that despite that America acknowledges the fact that Saddam Huessein's Iraq is bad, and pretty much was ALWAYS bad that the fact that we provided them weapons in the 80's destroys all our credibility? |
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| Originally posted by Marc Summers Stop using that. You are only telling about 1/8 of the facts. You forgot to talk about all the other countries that supplied Iraq. France, Brazil, Russia, and the United States supplied both the Iraqis and the Iranians during the Iran-Iraq war. Sad, but true. It's like giving two children knives and egging them on to fight. Don't start typing things that aren't the full truth. |
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