Walter Russell Meade takes Al Gore on as the wrong man to trumpet the hazards of climate change:
A television preacher can eat too many french fries, watch too much cheesy TV and neglect his kids in the quest for global fame. But he cannot indulge in drug fueled trysts with male prostitutes while preaching conservative Christian doctrine. The head of Mothers Against Drunk Driving cannot be convicted of driving while under the influence. The head of the IRS cannot be a tax cheat. The most visible leader of the world’s green movement cannot live a life of conspicuous consumption, spewing far more carbon into the atmosphere than almost all of those he castigates for their wasteful ways. Mr. Top Green can’t also be a carbon pig.
You can be a leading environmentalist and fail to pay all of your taxes. You can be a leading environmentalist and be unkind to your aged mother. You can be a leading environmentalist and squeeze the toothpaste tube from the middle, park in the handicapped spots at the mall or scribble angry marginal notes in library books.
But you cannot be a leading environmentalist who hopes to lead the general public into a long and difficult struggle for sacrifice and fundamental change if your own conduct is so flagrantly inconsistent with the green gospel you profess. If the heart of your message is that the peril of climate change is so imminent and so overwhelming that the entire political and social system of the world must change, now, you cannot fly on private jets. You cannot own multiple mansions. You cannot even become enormously rich investing in companies that will profit if the policies you advocate are put into place.
Read the comments too, if you have a moment. Few minds are changed, but it’s easy to spot the eedjits.
Don’t be so hard on Al Gore. He’s responsible for giving us the internet afterall….and all of those green-powered limousines and green-powered private jets he takes to get to his numerous speaking engagements.
Because he cares more than we do. Just like all those other celebrities.
The word we are seeking to describe Mr. Gore is as follows:
hyp·o·crite noun \ˈhi-pə-ˌkrit\
1: a person who puts on a false appearance of virtue or religion
2: a person who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings
His liberal rant and ” I’ll save the world if you all just give me lots of money” shuck & jive is about as shallow as piss on a flat rock.
This guy could make a maggot vomit…..screw him and the lear jet he flew in on…..other than that, I have no strong feelings on the subject.
Wow, reading through my posts this morning….I am in a snarky mood after two days of 14 hour hospital shifts, aren’t I?
Is it too early for a beer?
The sun is always over the yard-arm somewhere in the world, Liz….. “I’ll drink to that!”
Two fingers of jack Daniels will improve your disposition. Four fingers will, well, it’ll help even more.
What they said. It’s never too early, and 2 or more fingers of anything will do for a start.
Liz, it is NEVER too early for beer. Beer is a food as well as a beverage. What was at the center of the first labor strike? Beer and onions. That’s right, when the pyramids were being built the powers that were cut back on the workers rations of beer and onions. So they went on strike.
If you look to English household accounts from the 1400s and 1500s you see that servants were allotted 2 qts of beer with breakfast, two more at mid-day and two more at evening.
Beer, it’s a food.
Cheers to liquid bread!
Egg-sackly!
Back then it was. The mass produced yellow water that’s produced these days is somewhat less than what they had in the late middle ages.
When I was still on active duty a German Destroyer pulled into the D&S Piers at NORVA. I ran into a contigent at the bowling alley when I went in for an unremembered reason and was told by the guy behind the counter that he could hardly understand a group he pointed out to me. I went over and immediately recognized the language, and being still a bit conversant in German was prevailed upon to sit in and keep them company.
They decided to try American Beer soon after I joined them and asked for a recommendation. I told them I never acquired the taste, but would be glad to aid in their cultural exploration.
I asked the guy behind the counter what he thought was the best American beer he stocked (I can’t recall the brand after 38 years), and got 4 cans for my new found Kraut sailor friends. They popped the tabs took a mouthful and immediately looked like the wanted to spit. Too much like water, they said.
Most beer in Germany at the time were regionally brewed. Brands like Heineken (Dutch) and Lowenbrau were looked down on. The regional brands were the old “liquid bread” type of beer.
One thing that was novel to me was being kept by one of the Germans in his pocket everywhere he went. He had a while to go on his enlistment and kept a 1 meter sewing tape from which he cut 1cm a day. he kept it rolled up in his pocket and made a point of showing me how many days he had left before he could return to the German version of “the block.”
Liz,
Think of them more like hydrolic sandwiches. Bon appetite.
Best,
The Head of the IRS may not be a tax cheat, but his boss is! See@
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/18/AR2009011802070.html
There’s a guy selling “Tax Cheat” stamps over the net. I found his web page through Instapundit. I bought 3. 10 bucks a stamp! I figure there’s gonna a lot of bills with Tiny Tims’ signature. I wonder if it’s illegal to deface a bill that’s being debased?
Killer,
You can start with the $1 Bills in the 2009 Series that are out now. They have Tax Cheat Tim’s signature on them.
My limited research at the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Bureau of Engraving and Printing tells me:
“Defacement of Currency
Defacement of currency is a violation of Title 18, Section 333 of the United States Code. Under this provision, currency defacement is generally defined as follows: Whoever mutilates, cuts, disfigures, perforates, unites or cements together, or does any other thing to any bank bill, draft, note, or other evidence of debt issued by any national banking association, Federal Reserve Bank, or Federal Reserve System, with intent to render such item(s) unfit to be reissued, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.
Defacement of currency in such a way that it is made unfit for circulation comes under the jurisdiction of the United States Secret Service. The United States Secret Service web address is http://www.secretservice.gov.”
My guess is that the Secret Service has more important things on its plate than trying to find out who’s stamping stuff on paper money. If I’m wrong and they find you, it’s only a fine and/or six months. With a little luck, you’ll share a cell with Bernie Madoff and have an opportunity to learn a new trade.
I think they’d have a tough time proving intent, but perhaps there’s a lawyer lurking about these parts who can clear that up.
Regards,
Mick
I honestly believe Al Gore went clinically insane when he lost the presidential election. He appears to be seriously into a messianic complex.
Naw, he’s just your standard far leftist with a little bit more money than the avg., that’s all.. they’re ALL clinically insane if one digs deeply enough..
Witness our man Treasury Secretary Geithner’s Congressional testimony the other day on the economy@
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/geithner-taxes-small-business-must-rise
I may have been wrong, Pogue, NOW Gore is advocating STERILIZING ALL WOMEN under 25 to lessen the carbon foot-print and save the world! (NOT The Onion!) See@
http://weeklyworldnews.com/headlines/34910/al-gore-sterilize-women-under-25/
Jesus.
What a freak. I think he really has slipped into the land of lala. And he’s starting to resemble a Muppet too.
Maybe he really is a muppet!
I always knew PBS was up to no good…Mr Gore! You’ve had four children all of which have left a carbon imprint on Gaia. Maybe your outrage count and smack your own face against the wall now. Head the line to the castration chamber, it awaits.
I say the Gorecle resembles the Grouch more than the others.
Yeah, he did seem to depart controlled flight pretty violently about December, 2000.
I’ve always said that Al Gore was an idiot……but, WOW….I’m speechless!!!
I’m sending my husband to the art supply store to bring home some modeling clay and I’m going to make a voodoo doll of Al Bore, so I can stick lethal pins in it in all the most embarrassing places. You all can thank me later, after he implodes.
Marianne
As this hypocritical ass…and hops-skips about in that 20,000 lb burn an hour VC-25 (and lets not forget the C-17/C-5, the VH-60′s, the vehicle convoy, and causing massive delays to other NAS users) to vacations, fund raisers, and 30 second photo ops…then tells us we have to stop driving our SUV’s…
Well, as far as I am concerned, he can go *ck himself.
Oh…and how much is that African junket that Queen Sleeveless and the kinds costing us.
Do you think the AMC assets supporting it may just have better things to do?
And this is a surprise how? Look up Gore and Oxy Oil and note his involvement with the Elk Hills Oil deal while he was VPOTUS. Kind of odd how he is never connected with the big oil that he railed and ranted against. Can you imagine if Cheney had worked to sell oil reserves at a discount to a major oil company that he had a goodly financial interest in?
I have to agree with lex. Gore seems to be the wrong prophet. Hypocrites, and those giving the appearance of being hypocritical seem to abound these days. Even I, while advocating Green, do not live up to my talk in reality.
But going green is an ever-growing necessity. Like Gore, I also invest in green, shamefully not so much as being a green advocate, but hoping to profit.
Nonetheless Gore regrettably distracts from the real issues. Climate change, regardless of its causes is a fact. Fossil fuels, regardless of reserves are still finite. The report this week about our dying oceans and mass extinctions of ocean life are especially troubling!
Gore is not important. Furthermore, both he and I will be dead when the mistakes – be it of omission or commission – of the present day come home to roost in 50 years. But it is always more ‘fun’ to wrap our hands around a fool while ignoring the massive environmental changes that await us, and will profoundly impact our future.
“But going green is an ever-growing necessity.”
Don’t drown in that kool-aid, there, Flit. Climate change is a fact? Do you mean man-caused global warming? Because that is what we were being sold. Yes, the climate changes. We are at the mercy of it, not the cause of it. Never have been, and charlatans like Al Gore know it. Green is the new Red.
When I was in school, we were told about the impending ice age, because of the drop in temperatures due to industrial pollution. It was an established fact, and anyone who disagreed with it was foolish. Sound familiar? Oh, and the solution to global cooling was just the same as global warming. Stifle and over-regulate industry, so it can wither away, and then we can give all of America’s wealth to third world countries.
Mass extinction in the oceans? More crap. They are discovering species left and right that they had declared extinct tens of millions of years ago. You wanna give all your money to these carnival barkers? Be my guest. But don’t touch mine.
ing green is an ever-growing necessity.
If so, then how come Obama doesn’t downguage to a VC-37 for his fund raising and photo op hops?
And ditch the C-5 or C-17 in trail with the armored vehicles.
And the VH-60s and the VH-3s too.
You want to measure the carbon footprint of this pic alone flit?
Now there is some straight up hypocrisy personified.
Heck…Have his supporters ride Amtrak to DC and then take the metro to the White House?
And have his wife take the kids on a summer trip to some place in the States instead of to the South of Spain or exotic Africa…
Maybe, if they look, they might even find something to be proud of in the bargain.
But anyway…
Don’t see much leadership from the top on this issue. So until I do, then I am going on the premise that the sun will continue to rise and set about this old earth, and things will grind along pretty much as they are whether I give my Excursion up or not.
“Climate change, regardless of its causes is a fact. Fossil fuels, regardless of reserves are still finite.”
Far from any “fact” flit.
Is CO2 rising?
Yes.
Are any of the initial dire claims of IPCC coming to pass because of it?
No.
The “report” you link to is as agenda filled as it can get.
Remember when we read how the glaciers were going to be gone?
Ain’t happening like the dire “reports” claimed it turns out.
Not saying we shouldn’t take of the planet…but the assertion in that “report” which claims its all over if we don’t go to zero CO in 20 years is outright tripe.
Garbage like that is worse than having the chubby sex poodle up there preaching to the unwashed masses….
Sid, I have to disagree with you in part. The Earth has for the past 10,000 or 12,000 years been warming and if our geologic history is any indication, it should keep warming for another 10,000 to 15,000 years or so. That is an overall trend, but within that trend there will be some short periods (say a few hundred years) of cooling.
Fossil fuels are indeed “finite.” As is everything excepting God.
Some of the problems with most of the common people who follow the religion of Anthropogenic Global (cooling, warming, stasis, climate change, climate disruption) is that they conflate that religion with good stewardship of resources. And they then make claims that the ‘deniers’ want to store toxic waste at day care centers, strip mine every mountain top, and turn Yosemite into a sanitary land fill.
Not to mention cooking the numbers to fit their religion (and to keep the “research” funding rolling in).
I think this was posted here a few weeks ago:
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/06/17/research-center-under-fire-for-adjusted-sea-level-data/
Cooking the data to show a 17% greater rise in sea level than is actually happening. Everything that the Profit AlGore preaches is based on cooked numbers, all carefully adjusted and sanitized to show the Earths climate changing in ways that it is not. Google “Climategate: You are not allowed to do this in science” for a nice little tease about the bad science, bad? heck, deliberately misleading science, that has gone into this Traveling Snake Oil And Chautauqua Show.
Yes (as one who used to work in the seismic exploration biz) I certainly know that fossil fuels are effectively a finite resource….
But, we also keep expanding what we know about those resources, and finding out that we have more than we thought too.
Of course, at some point, that road will end. No arguments there.
As for geologic cycles and climate…An interesting article here
Yep…even solar power is a finite resource. Hmmmm….maybe we can start a new scare that people are using up the Sun by an increased reliance on solar energy.
Thanks for that link, some interesting stuff there.]
What is most amazing to me is how the levelers and other social engineers have been using the same data set to support both the onset of a new ice age and the melting of every bit of surface ice on the Earth.
Also, if what the alarmists claim were true, then John Muir would have found Yosemite Trough pretty much still filled with ice. And Hudson would not have been able to sail into that bay, it too would have been under hundreds of feet of ice.
I have read that at the time of Columbus, there WAS a North West Passage, as the World was at a warm spot in it’s history.
Hey! That’s it! Solar Power is a non-renewable, finite resource! You can also make the case that since solar panels always heat the air around them, either from reflecting sunlight up into the atmosphere or by being heated and radiating heat back into the atmosphere, they contribute to AGW!
We need to protest the sun! Or at least write a very very angry letter.
If we didn’t have the sun, how could we have the tomatoes for juice to add to that early AM beer?
I’m used to the tomato & beer bit, Dave, but even I couldn’t bring myself to go the “clamato” route, lol.
Apparently the clamato stuff is greatly appreciated by the Quebec quaffers. (?) Go figure.
We must have missed out on something. Others are also drawn to this mix…
Budweiser markets something out here that is called Chelada, said to be: “Disfruta lo mejor de dos mundos: una refrescante Budweiser y el inigualable sabor de clamato.”
I actually have a can of it in the fridge – it adds a certain flair to the décor.
SCDave,
At our salmon camp in New Brunswick the breakfast bracer is a little Clamato, ice, lemon, and as much vodka from the local Provincial Alcool dealer as you can add. You’ve added enough when you state, “Not Bad” with a shudder, and “Not Bad” is that breakfast drink’s name.
I think the only safe thing we can say about climate, we still don’t know what we’re talking about. We can only hope to keep learning. Ran accross an interesting theory concerning sunspots, cosmic rays, and cloud formation. Danish physicist Henrik Svensmark results basically show an indirect relationship to sunspots and global temperatures.
http://www.sciencebits.com/SkyResults There has been long standing observational support that sunspot activity and climate are related (Maunder Minimum and mini ice age ring any bells?).
The short version: More sunspots = less clouds = higher temperatures. Less sunspots = more clouds = lower temperatures.
Rube Goldberg device writ large: Sunspots affect the Earth’s magnetic field (something to do with solar wind). The magnetic field affects penetration of cosmic rays. Cosmic rays cause the nuclei around which water vapor condenses (clouds form). Clouds affect global temperature by reflecting sunlight.
I blame John Ringo for me knowing about this little experiment.
Don’t complain very much about Al Gore because he gits paid by the pound (of carbon) he puts in the air. I think all of the climate centers which is pushing climate change (warming) caused by man has him on retainer to spew CO2 and NOX in the high atmosphere to help their direr predictions come true.
It’s funny how the moonbats worry about CO2 being at dangerous levels when we were approaching 400ppm. We are actually on the low end needed for plant life (200 ppm and below there isn’t enough for plant growth), and the planet has seen concentrations of 5,000 ppm during long warm periods during prehistory. Carbon Dioxide concentrations follows temperature rise as a lagging indicator. It does not cause warming in itself as water vapor is by far the strongest of the greenhouse gases.
But, then, anyone living in the moist south already knows this. CO2 has a warming effect only in cold dry areas and its influence is very weak.
Oh…
And now that “warming” is no longer in vogue…
And the “change” hype being misrepresented in the supposed wild weather is getting debunked by some surprisingly unexpected folks
I see you are echoing the latest permutation with the conflation between “change” and the finite fossil fuels,’70s era population bomb means we need “conservation” theme….
At any rate…
If someone wants to pay me money…I promise I won’t fly a G-5 just to go eat truffles in Paris…
Our grandkids are going to have some serious guffaws over the whole carbon offset thing.
Look at their clothes!
And their hair!
And the did the stupidest things… like carbon offsets!!!!!
bwahaha!!!
Sounds like Al Gore needs a really good massage to relax him a bit.
THen he can lecture us some more on our morals as well as our carbon sins.
Been meaning to mention to you, Lex, you misspelled “Profit” in the title.
Joe:
Easy there, that’s my obsession, not his.
Paul
Sorry Joe, I missed that one completely. I’ll just shut up now.
Paul
LOL!
I take this whole global warming thing with a bit of salt. We live, in galactic terms, next door to a variable star. If you do the math, diameter of the earth against a full 4(pi)(r**2)r of the sun, you find that less than 1% of its energy is powering all the life on this planet. I’m thinking it has an awful lot to do with global temps.
But it’s the arguments that fail to convince. Methane from cattle is harmful, but the flatulence from the millions of buffalo that used to fart and belch their way across the plains a mere 150 years ago didn’t contribute? I mean, we killed them off, shouldn’t there have been a big cooling period after the Indian Wars? And shouldn’t we get credit for that in whatever comes after Kyoto?
I’m told now that the reservoirs behind dams contribute, because vegetable matter that washes in rots and releases methane. As if lakes and streams don’t have this problem, and the flood plains below never knew this phenomenon of plants dying under water. Yet I’ve heard no proposals to drain Lake Superior.
Above all, the “carbon credit” scam makes this a non-issue for me. I live in the biggest source of carbon credits on the planet — the American Midwest.
Take corn, as an example. What sort of carbon does it take out of the air? Well, if corn is 70lbs/bu if it’s still on the ear, and an acre of corn produces around 200bu, that’s 7 tons of carbon/acre before we even talk about the corn stalk (which is at least 2/3rds of the weight of the plant). So let’s call that 20 tons per acre per year.
We just flooded out 2 million acres in the Dakotas, Iowa and Nebraska this spring, but I’m betting you’ll never read of global warming because of too little corn caused by too much rain and snow in the press next year.
After all, all plants are built from carbon taken out of the air as carbon dioxide, so you’d think if carbon was the big culprit we’d be buying carbon credits from farmers, golf courses, greenhouses, and suburbanites with their Scotts Turf Builder bills and in-ground irrigation systems.
Al Gore ought to be paying *you* to mow your lawn, not trying to outlaw your lawn mower engine.
It’s kind of like recycling — we’re told it will save the planet and if we don’t do it we’re heathens who want to store rad-waste in grade schools and poison guppies, yet if it were a worthwhile goal wouldn’t somebody pay me to do it? If throwing that tin can in the garbage and then the landfill were such a waste, surely somebody would pay me for the can?
I had iron mongers in here last week loading up a semi trailer of old fencing, cattle panels, appliances, and farm equipment. When was the last time you saw somebody offer you cash for landfill-killing items like disposable diapers and dry-cell batteries?
When a tornado blew down the barn I had dozens of people, all of them “green” types from the city, tell me that it was valuable, that there were people who’d pay good money for old barn wood. I had people stop by to ask if they could salvage that wood. After four years, I never found a one who would pay for the wood or who would show up with a crowbar and do the work himself. It was valuable, like green energy, until it actually had to be paid for with money or effort.
I burned the barn last winter. Somewhere there is a corn plant growing a bit faster because of the carbon I put in the air that day. And there’s a Prius driver with his little goatee wearing Birkenstocks who disapproves.
Ya know what? I’m OK with that.
– Max
Garrison Kiellor once propsed draining Lake Superior, to make Superior Canyon National Park.
Kiellor is a typical whale hating lefty, as his proposal shows no concern for the whales of the Great lakes, the lake Superior Sperm Whale, the Freshwater Sei, ( the only freshwater rorqual ), and, of course, the Great Walleyed Whale.
Max -
I had a similar discussion with the lefty oldest son one day…..I asked him, ” 500 years ago, when most of the North American continent was heavily wooded, what happened in a dry summer when lightning would start a forest fire ??” Simple answer – IT BURNED until it didn’t want to anymore or it ran out of fuel…. – NO ONE was there to put it out and the Indians weren’t able to.
So when we look at the carbon pollution caused by a fire of that magnitude happening here 500 years ago, in Europe (also heavily wooded), across Russia…..if that didn’t kick off a “greenhouse effect”, what makes you think what we do now will?? The earth regulates itself. I don’t endorse polluting but this ” Chicken Little The Sky is Falling Bullshite” is for the moonbats…..and they are only really are batty for nothing but other people’s money.
C S Lewis, in his Screwtape Propses a Toast, is an creepily accurate prophet of where we are now, 49 years later.
In related news…
This morning’s Washington Post questions Obama’s selection of “clean” tech firms to promote with presidential visits (and economic stimulus dollars):
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obamas-focus-on-visiting-clean-tech-companies-raises-questions/2011/06/24/AGSFu9kH_story.html?hpid=z1
The Post, not the Times?
Wonder if anybody makes green certified snow skis?
Climate CHAAANGE-uhh you can believe in…
Glad to see Liz got her much needed afternoon adjustment yesterday.
This morning has about skedaddled, and I think I’ll go get some green…out front and then out back. Sun. Puffy white things floating about in a blue sky. Strange phenomenon, that.
Corn, things green, flatulent cows, carbon footprints, and flooding rivers.
It’s all a bit much for the mind on this day of rest.
I understand you can see Al Gore’s house from space!