A Convenient Lie
The Tennessee Center for Policy Research has issued another press release about Al Gore's personal energy spending in his Tennessee manse, claiming that even after "greening" his home the former Vice-President uses even more energy.Since taking steps to make his home more environmentally-friendly last June, Gore devours an average of 17,768 kWh per month –1,638 kWh more energy per month than before the renovations – at a cost of $16,533. By comparison, the average American household consumes 11,040 kWh in an entire year, according to the Energy Information Administration.When the story hit Digg, the social networking site's commenters were quick to offer up typically nuanced bile.
Said user 'ender7074': "Just goes to show that hes in it for the money and not for any noble reason. Pure scum." 'Mattalice' chimed: "This will NEVER be publicized in the general news media. They want the global warming fraud and they need their green jesus to preach it." 'ChLb' followed the money: "Gore does have investments in 'carbon offset' businesses which will get plenty more business thanks to him advertising their services and trying to force taxpayers and businesses to buy into these schemes by law."
Pointing a trembling finger at hypocrisy is a useful tradition and Mr. Gore — of all people — should make more of an effort to practice what he preached. Yes, heating a large home takes a lot of power; no, it's not unreasonable to think that a man who asks the world to make do with less should consider making better use of such a large estate.
(Bear in mind that abandoning the house has an energy burden as well, so moving to a smaller home is not necessarily a better option. Perhaps he could take on boarders.)
Worse, Mr. Gore's enormous energy bill gives easy release to the fragile conscience of the inconsiderate. Why should I, a citizen of the first world, sacrifice?
It's a shame. One large electricity bill, mostly inconsequential, will end up as the excuse needed by thousands of lazy, suspicious consumers to crank their air conditioners to 65° and toss on their favorite sweater.
Joke's on them, of course. No matter how much energy Gore may waste, their energy bills aren't getting any cheaper.
Still, what a disgusting response to an unfortunate indiscretion! We know the world is warming due to our actions. Even if it were not, with non-renewable energy costs peaking — and then peaking again — a national and global effort to use less, conserve more, and generally make ourselves less reliant on costly energy to power our lives is an undeniably good thing to anyone not desperately grasping at justifications to continue buying, burning, and junking our resources.
Enjoy the gotcha. I hope the memory of Al Gore's mistake keeps you warm when oil is at $200-a-barrel.
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It'll be fine.
And by fine, I mean kinda humid.
Is he running a data center in his home? Maybe he's got some bad ground faults?
That's a really confusing bit "-1,638 more"
Is that a dash or a negative?
If it's a negative that means he's using 1,638 less.
I would think that weening our dependency on foreign oil (which ultimately supports crazy-ass dogmatic and oppressive regimes) would be reason enough to cut back on energy consumption. Add global warming and the associated ecological disasters and it's a no-brainer.
I am not going to use this as an excuse to be profligate in my own energy consumption.
But I will use it as further confirmation that Al Gore is a hypocrite and nothing he says is worth my time.
If you need fear to make you live a life more thoughtful of the world around you...then what does that say bout the true you? The marketing of moral and ethical choices through fear is despicable.
Despite this:
I will continue to reduce, reuse and recycle at every opportunity.
I will also continue to denounce the Global Warming hysterics who seek instead to divert our dwindling resources into fruitless attempts to scrub the atmosphere of CO2.
And I will also continue to point out that Al Gore is a failed politician, not a visionary, and certainly not a climate scientist.
Beamish has got it. Gore is an asshole if for no reason other than this. I do limit my consumption, to an extent, and hate that conservation has such a hypocritical high-profile spokesperson.
Also, carbon offsets are the refuge of the weak and rich. All they say is that it's okay to pollute if you're wealthy enough. Well, that's not true: the wealthy can afford things like home solar, insulation, and high efficiency appliances.
Grow op, I bet.
Seriously though, how many people live or work in his house? How much heating fuel is he using? Obviously a big house is going to be worse than a small one but the numbers are out of context.
(He's still apparently using around 30 times as much electricity as me...)
I've just rewired my basement, which is good for two reasons: it's all fluorescent lighting, which saves energy, and it's less likely to burn down the house, so possibly less carbon dioxide emissions.
Can't you have it both ways? I agree with the reduce/reuse/recycle philosophy for myraid reasons.
But Al Gore has made a very successful career out of playing the holier-than-thou global warming prophet. Keep in mind that this is just ONE of his homes, and it's not just for heating. Who doesn't remember the shot of him in his office with 2 30" cinema displays? I'll give him props on a killer setup, but does he really need all that power hungry equipment? Not to mention the fact that he is constantly flying around the world to his lucrative ($200k) speaking engagements.
You can believe both that energy use in this country needs to change, and that Al Gore is a hypocrite that used a fact-challenged documentary to line his own pockets and stroke his ego.
There's some actual research on the matter over at Deltoid - http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/06/gore_decrease_his_energy_usage.php
Which includes these points:
"...In fact, over the past year the Gores' utility bills have dropped 40 percent, thanks largely to the house's spanking new geothermal heating and cooling system, which has reduced the Gores' natural gas bill by 90 percent in the past year. ...
Kreider pointed out that the renovations weren't complete until November, so it's a bit early to be attempting before-and-after comparisons...."
Amen, amen, amen.
Mr. Gore really needs to focus on home a little more before he starts pointing fingers.
If he's not a hypocrite, why isn't he using some of his wealth to try out some experimental, enviromentally friendly power generation technology? He should give the guys at Plug Power a call to see if they want to test a new home use fuel cell....
Finally, does anyone else think it's ironic that some profit from some carbon-offset business is going to power that house? I do.
The deniers are echoing ghosts of "ZOMG, Al Gore says he invented the Internet! How arrogant!"
Because the facts are irrelevant, and rhetoric sells.
How many staffers work there? How many computers are there? How about phone lines? It's not a home. It's a residential business. But hey...
The Tennessee Center for Policy Research, a Nashville-based free market think tank and watchdog organization
...couldn't be wrong. I mean, right-wing, political hit groups never manipulate facts, do they?
My guess is that one of the above posters is correct, that the energy usage in his estate has gone down this year and that he's just starting to reap the benefits. But that still doesn't explain the multiples of the average person's energy that Al is using. But there is an explanation:
An international figure, like Gore, or the Queen, or Bill Gates, typically uses their house for a far different purpose than I use my one bedroom apartment for. There is typically a residential wing, for family time, but the rest is more like a conference center for foreign dignitaries and the like. What this article is doing is very likely comparing Al Gore, the non-profit corporation, to a normal family. And then laughing at the false hypocrisy.
Someday I hope to be rich and famous enough to have to pay for the energy to heat the guard tower outside as well as the guest quarters for leading environmentalists.
Meh.
Since buying my house, I've installed double-pane, lowE windows, ultra efficient gas water heater, gas dryer, high eff gas furnace and AC, insulated the hot water pipes and basement.
All that stuff pays for itself. If you're keeping your house or selling to someone who knows what operating costs mean, it's free money.
As another thing to throw into the mix, given the timeline, some of the energy usage was probably directly linked to the renovation work itself. For one thing, contractors tend to draw a certain amount of electricity running power tools. For another, renovation often means leaving doors and windows open for extended periods. Hard to see how you can avoid that sort of thing and still get the long-term energy gains.
TUS @ 6:
And I will also continue to point out that Al Gore is a failed politician...
Failed? Ran for VP twice, got elected twice, discharged his duties faithfully, defended the constitution etc. If that's failure as a politician, what would success look like? George W. Bush?
as opposed to the 3000kWh the average european household uses... pfft... americans ;-)
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"Ran for VP twice, got elected twice"
Um... no. In the US you dont vote for the VP, the VP is like that extra donut you get if you buy a dozen.
Perhaps some amount of this energy is being used by Tipper to concoct her next nefarious scheme to "protect" the precious little snowflakes of the US of A from the evil influence of media? There's one meddling Washington Wife I wont miss.
Read the actual info from post ten. Then all the screaming right-wingers can kindly sit the hell down.
Ceronomus,
Some commenters only have an out port.
Milarepa, my American household (two people, wife and I) averaged 450khw over the last 12 months. Pfft, Europeans. ;-)
(We are well below average, of course...)
((But ask me about my gas usage.. ugh, my 80-year-old house is cold, even after new insulated windows and a thorough seal-up))
Joel, love the site, but a bit more vetting of the source was in order here. The "Tennessee Center for Policy Research" is a super-conservative political organization that has a history of putting out factually incorrect press releases (read: lies) about Al Gore's energy use.
It doesn't matter how much power he uses, it's all renewable (read any news article on his energy use)
It's contributing zero to global warming
Rich people have a claim to more resources (inlcuding energy) than the rest of us. I believe that is how the free market system works.
Al Gore is rich.
Therefore you need to compare his energy usage with those in his tax bracket, not the average household.
Thr s nm fr ths f y cllng hm hypcrt: Sclsts.
@MLA Fair enough. Even though I spent most of my words wagging a finger, my real point was simply that even if Gore is a hypocrite, it doesn't really matter. Global warming and our energy crisis are still quite real.
@ #16:
"'And I will also continue to point out that Al Gore is a failed politician...'"
"Failed? Ran for VP twice, got elected twice, discharged his duties faithfully, defended the constitution etc. If that's failure as a politician, what would success look like? George W. Bush?"
He ran for President and lost to George Bush (well, so said the Supremes) so, yes, Gore failed where Bush succeeded.
Also, I'm a Canadian, but I'm pretty sure one does not run for nor get elected to the office of Vice President of the United States.
Or perhaps, Gore succeeded where Bush failed - in the Oval Office, to uphold his oath of office, in promoting the American economy, in not rubber-stamping violations of the Bill of Rights and approving the torture of prisoners of war - in short, Al Gore is an upstanding citizen and executive. Bush is a war criminal who has bankrupted us while playing golf.
Failure depends on perspective, I suppose.
Joel wrote:
"@MLA Fair enough. Even though I spent most of my words wagging a finger, my real point was simply that even if Gore is a hypocrite, it doesn't really matter. Global warming and our energy crisis are still quite real."
Yes, and now. You are absolutely correct...the fact that Gore is a hypocrite does not mean anything as far as the global warming debate is concerned.
However, it is relevant to the "the rest of you need to change your lifestyles" argument. In his book Gore writes,
"The truth about the climate crisis is an inconvenient one that means we are going to have to change the way we live our lives."
How the heck does he honestly expect that to happen when as he himself demonstrates, we in the West have simply become accustomed to using large amounts of cheap energy and giving that lifestyle up is going to be next to impossible (i.e., it just ain't going to happen). I applaud Al Gore for his energy use -- I just hope he's going to applaud those of us who are only using 1/10th the electricity he is (assuming those figures are correct).
It's no different than the evangelicals who preach abstinence and family values and then get caught with hookers in their hotel rooms. It's rank hypocrisy that ends up killing efforts to persuade people of the ability to actually follow the program you're recommending.
I mean, right-wing, political hit groups never manipulate facts, do they?
Antinous is on to something here. We seem to be taking this so-called think tank at face value.
This group is part of the noise machine.
I need independent verification before I accept the time of day from these people.
Having said that, there do seem to be good reasons why Gore uses the energy he does, as some of the posters are pointing out.
Even so, one's personal imperfections do not necessary invalidate his ideas.
If I smoke a pack a day but tell you not to smoke, you'd be better off doing as I say, not as I do.
I confess to political bias. I voted for Gore. And when I watched his Nobel speech, it hit me hard, what a different world we would be living in today had he assumed the presidency.
@31 ... how do we know the electrical use figures are accurate? Because rather than denying it, Gore's people are spinning it,
"In fact, over the past year the Gores’ utility bills have dropped 40 percent, thanks largely to the house’s spanking new geothermal heating and cooling system, which has reduced the Gores’ natural gas bill by 90 percent in the past year.
The Tennessee Center for Policy Research issued a gotcha press release today, revealing to the world that the global warming crusader’s house used 10 percent more electricity in the past year than it did the year before -- despite extensive renovations to make the home more energy efficient.
So what’s the deal with the electric bill? Did the Gores screw in all those energy-sipping LED light bulbs in vain?
Kreider pointed out that the renovations weren't complete until November, so it’s a bit early to be attempting before-and-after comparisons. In addition, the Gores participate in the Nashville Electric Service’s Green Power Switch Program, which allows them to buy their electricity from renewable sources like wind power, solar power or methane gas from landfills (the house’s 33 solar panels only supply 4 percent of its power needs, per Kreider.) So any energy they burn won't be burning them a bigger carbon footprint."
It's interesting that they say his bills/usage for some forms of energy went down by X% without giving absolute figures of just how much natural gas he's using.
Personally, if Gore and conservatives were smart they'd turn this into a put up or shut up campaign. Something like "No More Than Gore" where Gore would agree to release his energy use and campaigners could sign on to get their energy use down to "No More Than Gore".
@ #19 "Global Warming is a myth."
Bwhahaha! You ain't from around here, are ya? Who sent ya, Little Green Footballs?
Dmbss.
The real problem is the greenhouse effect, caused principally by anthropogenic CO2 production. That's the "climate change" story in a nutshell. (And it's deductively proven.) Humans are overloading the carbon cycle.
However, conservation is about as appealing as ISPs saying "use less bandwidth" because they don't want to invest in increased infrastructure.
The solution is to grow the pie and create more energy in ways that don't generate additional carbon dioxide.
This means: nuclear fission, solar thermal energy, and hot dry rock geothermal; instead of coal and oil. Photovoltaics will never be efficient enough to provide positive lifetime value, and wind generation has limited capacity for deployment. All until we figure out sustainable fusion power from natural deuterium in water (the plentiful stuff covering 2/3 of our planet's surface).
"Foreign" is just a fear tactic; it doesn't have to do with anything. Excessive CO2 production is the problem.
High prices for commodities (e.g. gasoline) has more to do with monetary policy (i.e. inflation) than it does with increased demand from developing nations such as India and China.
Scientists have concluded that anthropogenic (human caused) global warning is occurring. t's lng pst tm tht w mrk th dnlsts s th lntcs nd frngrs tht thy r.
Really, this is supposed to be a story? A thorough takedown of this story is here: http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/9704.html , but if you want the highlights:
"Anyway, to sum up, a questionable conservative activist group has asserted in an unsourced press release that Gore’s 20-room, 10,000-square-foot house uses 19.3 times the amount of power of an average housing unit of unknown but much smaller size."
"...it would be more accurate to say that Gore’s 20-room, 10,000-square-foot house in which he and his family run small businesses employing a staff of 20-odd people, and have a round-the-clock security detail — plus a guest-house and some outbuildings -– uses 19.3 times the amount of power as an average housing unit."
"...if you look at last year’s attention-seeking press release from the Tennessee Center For Policy Research, they claim that Gore’s electricity usage in 2006 was 18,400 kilowatt-hours per month. Now they’re claiming a 10% increase to 17,768 kilowatt-hours."
Perhaps a correction is due from Boing Boing.
Come on guys...
In the immortal words of the CBS Mantra, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck,, then it must be a...
Platypus??????
Gadget sight, I don't think so.
Sigh...
@JOEL: the globe is warming, yes. We are emitting CO2, yes. CO2 will cause warming. However, those three facts are not inter-related as cause and effect. For one, the globe has been warming even before we started emitting CO2. For another, water vapor is a much more significant warming agent ... or is it a cooling agent? We don't know. Perhaps the amount of warming which the CO2 contributes will not be noticable?
In any case, the global will warm and in a few half-milleniums will cool again. We'll need to be able to deal with both and shouldn't cripple our economy to stop warming because what do we do when we're poor AND the globe warms anyway?