Today’s Tosser
John Ruskin offering up another chestnut from the right wing noise machine:
The Tennessee Center for Policy Research reported today (see here) that Al Gore, who won an Academy Award Sunday night for his film about global warming and the importance of energy conservation, uses 20 times the national average to power his Nashville mansion. What’s more, his use has increased since the release of “An Inconvenient Truth”.
TCPR, of course, didn’t really understand what it was talking about.
What seems to escape people criticizing Gore is that the Gore has challenged the assumption that Green power has to be more expensive in the long term and that generically power consumption isn’t the problem. The problem is power consumption from carbon based fuels.
The scare tactic used by the denial industry is that it will cost tremendous amounts to change the way we produce power or to reduce power consumption. This isn’t true largely because green power is likely to become far cheaper as it is more widely used.
But as with many things in wingnut land, facts aren’t real important.
March 1st, 2007 at
Spot on that the issue isn’t the electricity, it’s the sustainability of the fuel used to generate the electricity.
And just who at the power company provided the seed to plant this story?
If you go to Ruskin’s blogpost, he links to the Tennessee Center for Policy Research’s homepage (rather than the specific article). TCPR is a 501(c)3 funded by conservatives to promote conservative dogma, just like so many other regional and state-based “think tanks” including the local Heartland Institute and Illinois Policy Institute.
The direct link to the basis for this non-story is here.
The key quote from this short press release is: “Gore’s mansion … consumes more electricity every month than the average American household uses in an entire year, according to the Nashville Electric Service (NES).” (emph added)
Just who at NES gave out this information? Shouldn’t that sort of thing be private? Is there a leaker? Someone committing fraud?
Interesting.
–
Bruno “I’m no Libertarian” Behrend echoes this non-story and takes it a step further by cynically asking, “And how is this any different from Halliburton?”
Simple o Bruno “Likes to Kill (politically of course)” Behrend.
No one ever profited from death through a wind farm, unlike those invested in Halliburton and the rest of the collateral damage-industrial complex.
When solar energy cos start generating income as mercenaries and war profiteers, then you’ll have a gripe about someone making money through investments in said solar power.
Til then Bruno “Conservatives will give anyone a radio show” Behrend, you only feed the notion that conservatives have gone off the deep-end and that the more they talk, the deeper the hole they dig for themselves and those unfortunate enough to be associated with them.
March 2nd, 2007 at
The funniest thing I’ve seen related to this story is the comparison of carbon offsets to purchasing indulgences in the Middle Ages. That way, we polluting sinners can purchase our way out of environmentalist Hell.