Thursday, March 08, 2007

Al Gore and Hyprocrisy 2

Tom P in a comment on my post Al Gore and Hypocrisy draws my attention to this story. The original story was that, in spite of his public greenery, in private he was happy to plant his own gigantic carbon footprint on his not so little part of the Deep South. But now, it seems, Gore's high energy bills are, in part, explained by a premium he pays to support renewable power. This does not fully answer the criticism. All such offset schemes raises the question: why emit the carbon in the first place? But it does, if true, go a long way to letting Gore off the hook.

14 comments:

  1. I remembered posting something on hypocrisy and went back through the archives.

    http://sandstormauthor.blogspot.com/2005/12/
    profiles-in-liberal-hypocrisy-by-peter.html

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  2. Bryan,

    How are such ignorant lightweights taken seriously?

    I well remember Gores public claim that he invented the internet.

    Still he learned his trade at the feet of the wonderful Mr Clinton

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  3. Surely you can see this is almost completely irrelevant when compared to his key role in the institution of pollution trading credits. Focusing on the molehill rather than the mountain.

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  4. And since he is an owner of two major carbon credit companies.......

    Still, if you want hypocrisy look no further than me. I make a substantial part of my living supplying services to the emissions trading and renewable energy sector but on the whole think most of it is complete phooey.

    But then so do most of the companies in the sector. Trust the private sector to make money out of the latest fashionable doom-mongery of the day, eh?

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  5. Could someone explain to me why pollution trading credits are a bad idea? They are part of the Kyoto protocol and are supposed to help reduce overall pollution while giving companies a chance to upgrade their equipment. Imagine company A makes 100 tons of pollutants and company B makes 100 tons of pollutants. Both companies have their allowed pollution amount reduced by 10%. Company A makes changes to their factory and reduce emissions by 50%. Company B is not profitable enough to afford the changes so they buy 10 tons of credits from Company A. The overall effect is that pollution has been reduced by 20% and no one has been fired because their company had to go out of business. How is that a bad thing?

    Gore never claimed to have "invented" the internet. If Simian Sam "remembers" that then he needs to check his memory. Mr. Gore claimed that his sponsorship of bills such as the 1988 National High-Performance Computer Act helped create the internet that we know today. How true is this? In May 2005, Gore was given a lifetime achievement award by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences for his contributions to the internet.

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  6. Hello Tom,

    First pollution trading credits are a tax raising raising scam. the good polis have frightend the poor sheep into wanting to pay more and new taxes on a false premis. So the go along with this nonsense joyously.

    If that is legislated for first compay B goes under then company A then The UK based industry of both A & B. Remember the planet is a closed system No Carbon in no Carbon out.

    Global warming has been going on since the last ice age.

    The answer, in afraid, is very Hitlerian - Too Many people by around 80%.

    Second Mr Gore I was there he said it. How it was spun after the event goodness knows.

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  7. You may have been there when you "think" he said it but I would suggest you refresh your memory by checking Snopes.

    As to the rest of you comment... I am obviously not clever enough to figure out what you are saying but I would suggest that if you really think that there are too many people in the world then ending your life would obviously be the right thing for you to do.

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  8. Hello Tom,

    Well suicide is an option but I did say an 80% reduction so the other 4,959,999,999 need to follow on.

    After all why are the fish stocks declining at such a rate? Why are the Asian, South American, & African rain forsets burned & ruined? Why are Mineral ores vanishing?.. ditto oil?, ditto natural gas?, ditto water? Yes too many people.

    AD 1000 global population circa 500 Million, 1900 circa 2 Billion 2000 circa 6 Billion. Est 2050 Circa 10 Billion.

    You know might just have some bearing on wars, terrorism, & mass emigration.

    No one in the press even mentions it. I know, I know, far too difficult. But don't let the tax and spinners subvert you Tom.

    Re Gore. I won't Labour it. I was there and he did repeat it.. to me. Don't recall Snopes being at the table at the time.

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  9. Bryan:

    Did you watch The Great Global Warming Swindle on Channel 4 tonight?

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  10. I don't see how we can save the planet. If it's true that we're the cause of global warming and the doomsday stuff will happen then we're totally screwed.
    It's alright to talk about reducing emissions but everyone knows deep down we won't do it-that is until we run out of the stuff.
    Also, how do we stop countries such as China, India, Russia etc etc from cutting emissions?
    I just saw the global warming swindel and i don't know what to believe anymore.
    I hope their right though, people are getting monstrously evangelical over this. Africans are being forced and lectured by us into using shitty expensive alternatives that can barely power a fridge- while we carry on burning oil and tearing up rainforests.

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  11. River:

    Me too. That programme utterly discombobulated me.

    Not because I believed all of it, (though I believed quite a lot of it), but because there is no way of judging what we should believe.

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  12. Why are the Asian, South American, & African rain forsets burned & ruined? Why are Mineral ores vanishing?.. ditto oil?, ditto natural gas?, ditto water? Yes too many people.

    Ah...

    The Asian, African, and especially So. American rain forests are STILL THERE, hardly "burned and ruined", although they are shrinking.

    There are more mineral ores being mined in 2007 than at any time previous in history, so obviously they must still exist.

    The same amount of water exists now that existed one billion years ago.

    We're roughly 200 years away from running out of oil at the present rate of consumption.

    I don't doubt your sincerity, but you may wish to learn a little more about the ACTUAL present state of affairs before you decide that we're doomed.

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  13. I should probably explain that in my previous comment, when I wrote that we had over 200 years' worth of oil remaining, I was counting the over 2 trillion barrels of oil contained in the tar sands and oil shales of No. America and other places.

    We are certainly mere decades from running out of cheap oil, but that's merely irritating, not catastrophic.

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  14. If everyone each stands in their own square yard, they can all be fit into a bigger square of about 45 miles by 45 miles. That is about 0.0034% of the land surface of planet Earth.

    I'm not sure quite how much it helps, what with having to grow food etc. However, I don't think it should be taken as a foregone conclusion that the Earth is currently populated beyond its ability to support our species.

    If there is a problem, it's more to do with how much we want to work for what quality of life, and perhaps in agreeing how to share out the available resources and the work necessary to benefit from them. That and the very concept of having to agree.

    Best regards

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