What are you missing here, Jason?

There is a finite amount of renewable energy that can be produced.

By using such an excessive amount, he is forcing lower income houses to go to the cheapest suppliers: meaning, those who use fossil fuels to create energy.

So they were lying to us when they said "reduce, reuuse and recycle"? As long as I buy "carbon credits" I can rape the environment all I want? And this is from a representative for the "party of the poor" who (DUH!) can't afford "carbon credits" even if they cared to buy them.

Good to meet an honest environmentalist at least. And good to know I can pump black, soot laden ash into the air as long as I buy the offsets (rolls eyes)

Gore honoring his word is to be assumed in my hypothetical example.

Jason, I believe you are correct about what Gore is saying. Then again, I am not well read on the subject.

"He is not. He is buying Indulgences." Hmmm, unless I am off the mark on this one, he isn't necessarily saying we shouldn't indulge and to change our lifestyles, he is saying we should change where our energy is coming from.

No. He is saying that we, every single one of us, needs to take a good hard look at the way we live and try to have less impact on the environment.

And he says this while being a massive consumer of non-renewable energy.

Someone earlier said that just because he does this doesn't make his message wrong.  However, I disagree. It's not akin to a smoker who tells people not to smoke because Al Gore DEFENDS his consumption by arguing that he invests in renewable energy and leads a "carbon neutral" life which is utter bullshit.

What Gore really is saying, literally, is that rich people (like him) can live it up because they are willing to pay carbon credits but those without money should simply go without.

Either global warming is a serious threat or it's not. I say it's not. Al Gore's ACTIONS say that it's not.  If global warming could (as his movie portrays) result in the death of BILLIONS of people, then how can he in good conscious consume so much energy so frivelously?

If Gore were even remotely serious, he could convert his house largely to wind and solar power. He could afford it. But he doesn't even go through the effort to do that.

In the Civil War, people who were drafted could pay the government to have someone else take their place.  The left today is fond of calling war supporters "chicken hawks" even though it's an all volunteer army.  Yet the same people are totally mum when Al Gore pays to have someone else take his place when it comes to conserving energy -- even though the environmentalist movements argues that billions will die unless we do something. 

The environmentalist movement is not a serious movement. It's simply the natural result of weak minded secularists trying to replace religion and god with something else and this is just how that something else manifests itself.

Ah, I see what you are getting at here, so it does make him look hypocritical.



Someone earlier? I wonder who that could be, lol, is joeuser full of republicans or do I just respond to the wrong posts, cause I always seem to be one of the token few attempting to defend views such as this



Point taken, I am not sure if the switch to using more renewable energy or consuming less should be done first, but in the end, we need to do both. If he is going to take as strong a stance as he has, then he should do both, not just one of them.



Are you kidding? What does this have to do with religion? How is environmentalism trying to replace it with "something else"? God or no god, if global warming exists, and is our fault, how does that bring religion into this debate at all? You were making sense, what happened?

Because the "theory" of global warming is a matter of faith. People don't get into fist fights when debating say quantum mechanics. Even evolution vs. creationism can't touch the foaming that the global warming zealots get into.  It's a religion to them.

Btw, my "making sense" doesn't objectively change just because what I say goes over your head. 

Global warming is just not that big of a deal IMO. But people like Al Gore feed into the quasi-religious fanaticism that the environmentalists have but clearly, he doesn't take it very seriously either. If he did, he would at least make a token effort to not squander resources.

I'm personally a Libertarian, but I count myself as a "crunchy con". I'm conservative on many issues, but the environment is very important to us. I am really peeved at the fact that my family and I work hard to reduce our impact on the environment, when environmentalist "leaders" like Gore really don't care.

Sorry but the message is too silly to attack. The premise of Mr. Gore is that we have to do something NOW to avoid what may happen later. The problem is that the last time we had to do something NOW was 30 years ago when we needed to raise global temperatures in order to save the planet from an ice age that would kill us all. Had we listened to that consensus of scientist where would we be today? Now we need to stop global warming. Something that has been known about since the mid 1960’s and has been proven since the mid 1980’s The Sun is getting hotter all the time and that heat is translated to the Earth as it always has. Ask any scientist what will happen in a billion years, that scientist will tell you that our oceans will boil away and all live on the planet will end. We can not save the Earth unless we can do one of two things. Add more hydrogen and helium mass to the sun or move the Earth farther away from the Sun. there is not enough of either element in our solar system to slow the progress of the Sun. and we currently don’t have the power to move the planet. If we as a species can not do those things we can not save the Earth. No amount of conservation or carbon credits will stop the Sun from frying the Earth to a cinder. The six one hundredths of one degree per century that man is responsible for will not matter. Now that the argument has been argued and settled, we can go back to making fun of Algore and his stupid ideas of how to save a planet that was doomed 4 billion years ago. If Mr. Gore wanted to help he would work on figuring a way to get us off this rock and on to another that will keep mankind alive around longer. That is a worthy goal.

Heh, sounds like more faith vs faith, each side has "facts" and wont back down, though I think global warming has more potential to be found true/false then most religious debates. However, I still don't see how you can think that global warming manifested from those people because they don't believe in god.



I would say, "didn't know what you were getting at" saying it "goes over my head" makes me look stupid, and we cant have that



Yes, I have heard that as well, but saying "we shouldn't do anything because the sun will eventually kill us anyways" doesn't sound like a good excuse. Yea if greenhouse gases do almost nothing, then who cares.... but how much hotter is the sun truly making the earth and how much do greenhouse gases increase that temperature? I think when those 2 points are answered..... and agreed upon, then we will know what should be done.

Also, wasn't there something about CO2 destroying our ozone layer? How about air pollution in general? Perhaps Gore's message is flawed, but aren't there more reasons then global warming to use cleaner energy? Actually this topic is starting to get boring, maybe I should just let you guys hate on Gore

Yes, we should all be concerned about our impact on the environment in general, but I am more personally concerned about how we are affecting the ground water that provides our drinking supply than the CO2 we emit (which only amounts to approximately 2% of the total CO2 in the atmosphere).

I have a lot of respect for true enviromentally concerned people who actually live what they preach, but schmucks like Gore are all about politics and do not practice what they preach at all. They're the typical liberal who expects everyone else to sacrifice for the common good while they themselves do not.

Simply saying that they purchase carbon credits is as stupid as it is hypocritical.

how much do greenhouse gases increase that temperature?

It's the other way around. The hotter it gets the more CO2 ends up in the atmosphere,

Also, wasn't there something about CO2 destroying our ozone layer? How about air pollution in general? Perhaps Gore's message is flawed, but aren't there more reasons then global warming to use cleaner energy? Actually this topic is starting to get boring, maybe I should just let you guys hate on Gore

Problem is that the man is talking out his butt. He owns 3 houses. Just one of which uses in 1 month what the average home uses in a YEAR! Last tally was about 10,000 KWh per year. I don't care who you are that is waaaay excessive. So the message here is don't do as I do....do as I say! Baloney!

You make a good point from the point of view of the uninformed. Allow me to inform you. If we enacted the Kyoto accords, if we went and did away with the human race completely the temperature difference over the first hundred years will be a one degree drop in temperature and over the first million years will not even be noticed.
The average temperature rise per century is one degree, but that is a bit misleading. In this last century we had some major volcanic eruptions that cooled the earth one of them dropped the average temp 5 degrees yet we still maintained our average for the century. This means that without volcanoes the earth would be a lot hotter today. The funny part is that Volcanoes put out 14 billion tons of pollutants into the air each day they erupt while man puts out 1.4 or one point four billion tons in a year. There are on average 56 volcanoes erupting around the world each day. Just exactly what can we do to stop the greenhouse gases that we don’t produce. If we stop all volcanic activity then the magnetic field will die and all life on the planet will end in 90 days. Kill all animals that produce greenhouse gases and we die for lack of food. No matter what we do the world will get hotter. Then it will get colder, then it will get hotter again just as it has done for the billions of years before man showed up on the scene what makes you think that we can change it?



It is not how much hotter the sun makes the earth it is how much heat can the earth absorb? If you were floating it space in orbit around the earth the temp is about 250 degrees if you are in the shade the temp drops to minus 140 to 180. Because the earth rotates at a thousand miles per hour the sun only gets to bake an area for a few hours and then it starts to cool again. The air absorbs a lot of heat the ground absorbs a lot of heat and so do our oceans. When it gets too hot the like at the beginning of the last ice age when the average temperature was around 100 degrees that was after we had volcanic eruptions all over the planet for about 3000 years. The earth has since cooled and the crust is a lot thicker now so unless the volcano in Yellowstone Park erupts we should be ok for a few dozen years at least. Think of this the last big ice age had ice three miles thick that covered the entire planet yet the earth warmed up to the point that the Sahara valley is now called the Sahara desert. It used to be a lush garden spot with lakes and rivers it has not been that way in 10k years. Can anyone stop it? NOPE! This is scientific fact that is not in dispute just ignored by the people that want to say you are the fault the world is getting hotter and if you give us money we will make you feel better not cure the problem just make you feel better. Like carbon credits make rich liberals feel better for being rich while demanding you sacrifice your life for global warming.



Not CO2 but CFC's the stuff that makes air conditioners work so well. now they use a more expensive substitute that works almost as well and the hole in the ozone layer was discovered to open and close on a regular basis and yes man had some responsibility but now that we don't use the gas that kills the ozone layer and power our referigerators and spray deoderants the experts say oops sorry we were mistaken. but you did really well, thanks for trying. Keep in mind we only had ten or twenty years to fix the problem or we would all die from skin cancer.



Sure, back in the 70’s we were poisoning our water supplies and our rivers and lakes with industrial runoff. President Nixon created the EPA and we began to clean them up and make life nicer for people that live near lakes and rivers and who get their water from lakes and rivers. Property values went up and people lived happily ever after. Well except for the hole in the ozone layer, the next Ice Age and Global Warming. Each time we have between ten and twenty years to fix the problems before it will become unfixable. Each time we have to do without jobs or higher pay while paying more for stuff we need in order to save the world. Just eliminating the mid range fuel would save billions in the economy and reduce pollution a lot. But the people that want to save the earth say we must have this mid range just in case people want a little more horse power without paying for premium. No auto manufacturer recommends midrange gas only the cheep stuff for most cars and the expensive stuff for high performance cars. Yet the tree huggers got it put into law that the oil companies must produce this wasteful product that causes the refineries to reduce production of fuel actually used by drivers which shortens supply and drives up prices.

why is it always a choice between the "kyoto accords" and doing nothing? there's a lot of room in between those 2 points of view imho.

Sean, you miss the point completely. It is not a choice of Kyoto or nothing the Kyoto Accords if completely followed world wide will cost a trillion dollars a year and will only result in a one degree drop over 100 years while the sun is raising temperatures by three to eight degrees every century. Our yearly budget is currently I think two or three trillion dollars so we add another trillion dollars in taxes to pay for this? It would be cheaper if we built massive air conditioners and ran them for ten year to accomplish the same thing. Even if we wiped out the entire human race in an hour the rise in temp will continue even without humans being around. Kyoto equals doing nothing other than screwing up the economy for no gain.

Whether you believe there are dark motives here or not, you have to ask the question, "Who exactly gets the 'credit' from 'carbon credits?'" Gore simply moves money from his left pocket to his right pocket & calls himself "carbon neutral" - what a joke. But on the international scale, it's no joke at all. The net result will be the redistribution of wealth from healthy (read "guilty") economies to stagnant ones, where it will be squandered away. And does anyone really expect China to pony up money in compensation for it's "carbon footprint?" To whom?

Al Gore's tombstone:

I invented the internet.
I led a carbon-neutral life.

Well, I used to buy strongly into the belief that man was the primary cause of global warming. For the most part this is because that is all I heard, and didn't hear much from the other side of the story. My fault for the most part, but I do consider myself in general to have an open mind, and when I saw the 'Great Global Warming Swindle' on google video, my beliefs flipped 180 for the most part.

Turns out temperature of the earth effects CO2 levels rather than the other way around (CO2 comes from oceans when they warm up), and water is much more prevalent a green house gas than CO2 in any case since CO2 makes up only a tiny percentage of our atmosphere.

Think of this the last big ice age had ice three miles thick that covered the entire planet

No, it didn't cover the entire planet. The glaciers of the last ice age covered a large portion of the planet but not the entire planet.

The planet goes through geologic seasons just as we see seasons every year.

and you were turned 180 degrees by 1 video put out by a guy with a reputation for twisting the facts?

here's just a few points on Martin durkin and his "documentary"...

***George Monbiot wrote in The Guardian that the forthcoming programme's thesis was "the same old conspiracy theory that we’ve been hearing from the denial industry for the past ten years". He discussed the arguments for and against the "hockey-stick graph" used in An Inconvenient Truth, claiming that the criticism of it has been "debunked". He also highlighted Durkin's previous documentary Against Nature, where the Independent Television Commission found that four complainants had been "misled" and their views were "distorted by selective editing

***ON March 9, 2007, Zoe Williams in The Guardian described the program as following an "age-old Fox News formula". She briefly summarised the programme's claims, and ridiculed the idea that environmental journalists would "bully editors into printing stories that aren't true", comparing it to a cancer journalist ripping up the cure for cancer.

***On March 14, 2007, The Independent reported that the programme makers had selectively used data which was sometimes decades old, and introduced other serious errors of their own:


The original, and corrected versions of Temperature data from TGGWS, along with NASA GISS data"Mr Durkin admitted that his graphics team had extended the time axis along the bottom of the graph to the year 2000. 'There was a fluff there,' he said. If Mr Durkin had gone directly to the NASA website he could have got the most up-to-date data. This would have demonstrated that the amount of global warming since 1975, as monitored by terrestrial weather stations around the world, has been greater than that between 1900 and 1940—although that would have undermined his argument. 'The original NASA data was very wiggly-lined and we wanted the simplest line we could find,' Mr Durkin said."


***On March 15, 2007, The Times reported that Durkin had seriously fallen out with a scientist who had been considering working with him. Armand Leroi was concerned that Durkin had used data about a correlation between solar activity and global temperatures which had subsequently been found to be flawed. Leroi sent Durkin an e-mail expressing concern about the programme and saying, "To put this bluntly: the data that you showed in your programme were . . . wrong in several different ways". He copied the e-mail to scientific author Simon Singh. Durkin responded to Leroi saying "You’re a big daft cock". Singh sent an email to Durkin urging him to engage in serious debate. Durkin responded stating, "Since 1940 we have had four decades of cooling, three of warming, and the last decade when temperature has been doing nothing", and concluded with, "Go and fuck yourself".

***The Times science editor Mark Henderson listed a number of points where, he said, "Channel 4 got it wrong over climate change".

***Professor Carl Wunsch (professor of physical oceanography at MIT), stated that he was "completely misrepresented" by Durkin in his documentary. Currently considering making a formal complaint, Wunsch claims he was "totally misled" as to the content of the program.

he said this..."In the part of The Great Climate Change Swindle where I am describing the fact that the ocean tends to expel carbon dioxide where it is warm, and to absorb it where it is cold, my intent was to explain that warming the ocean could be dangerous - because it is such a gigantic reservoir of carbon. By its placement in the film, it appears that I am saying that since carbon dioxide exists in the ocean in such large quantities, human influence must not be very important—diametrically opposite to the point I was making—which is that global warming is both real and threatening."

***Durkin's documentary on genetic modification which was broadcast on Channel 4 on March 20th 2000, also met with complaints.[5] A joint letter signed by a number of scientists from the Third World was issued in protest of Durkin's claims in this documentary. [6] Dr. Mae-Wan Ho, a scientist featured on the program, later said of her participation in the program: "I feel completely betrayed and misled. They did not tell me it was going to be an attack on my position."

***The Great Global Warming Swindle is a documentary film by British television producer Martin Durkin which argues against prominent scientific views on global warming. Its accuracy has been disputed on several points, and it has been criticised for being one-sided.

***Except when making a counter-argument the film does not address the scientific reasons that these scientists say that modern global warming is caused mostly by human activity

***For more on troposphere temperature measurements, see the 2006 U.S. Climate Change Science Program report "Temperature Trends in the Lower Atmosphere:Steps for Understanding and Reconciling Differences". The Executive Summary says, "Specifically, surface data showed substantial global-average warming, while early versions of satellite and radiosonde data showed little or no warming above the surface. This significant discrepancy no longer exists because errors in the satellite and radiosonde data have been identified and corrected." [5] For more on volcanic carbon dioxide emissions, see: [6], where the U.S. Geological Service estimates "Human activities release more than 150 times the amount of CO2 emitted by volcanoes".

***For more on troposphere temperature measurements, see the 2006 U.S. Climate Change Science Program report "Temperature Trends in the Lower Atmosphere:Steps for Understanding and Reconciling Differences". The Executive Summary says, "Specifically, surface data showed substantial global-average warming, while early versions of satellite and radiosonde data showed little or no warming above the surface. This significant discrepancy no longer exists because errors in the satellite and radiosonde data have been identified and corrected." [5] For more on volcanic carbon dioxide emissions, see: [6], where the U.S. Geological Service estimates "Human activities release more than 150 times the amount of CO2 emitted by volcanoes".

The last line is pure crap! This is from the "U.S. Geological Survey" site.

Carbon dioxide (CO2) Volcanoes release more than 130 million tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere every year. This colorless, odorless gas usually does not pose a direct hazard to life because it typically becomes diluted to low concentrations very quickly whether it is released continuously from the ground or during episodic eruptions. But in certain circumstances, CO2 may become concentrated at levels lethal to people and animals. Carbon dioxide gas is heavier than air and the gas can flow into in low-lying areas; breathing air with more than 30% CO2 can quickly induce unconsciousness and cause death. In volcanic or other areas where CO2 emissions occur, it is important to avoid small depressions and low areas that might be CO2 traps. The boundary between air and lethal gas can be extremely sharp; even a single step upslope may be adequate to escape death. Comparison of CO2 emissions from volcanoes vs. human activities. Scientists have calculated that volcanoes emit between about 130-230 million tonnes (145-255 million tons) of CO2 into the atmosphere every year (Gerlach, 1999, 1992). This estimate includes both subaerial and submarine volcanoes, about in equal amounts. Emissions of CO2 by human activities, including fossil fuel burning, cement production, and gas flaring, amount to about 22 billion tonnes per year (24 billion tons)

Or this. The abstract comes from the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine.

Link

from the abstract, right off the bat...World leaders gathered in Kyoto, Japan, in December 1997

more of the kyoto hatin crowd, lol. which takes me right back to reply #37, lol.

I think the environmentalist movement manifests itself from people who are looking for some cause to latch on to that takes the place of organized religion. There have been countless articles written on this (Feel free to google it).

Strawman argument. No one is saying we should do nothing.  We are just pointing out that the Kyoto accords would do nothing while causing problems for millions of people.

What people like me are sick of are liberals who think that political belief is a substitute for tangible action.  We see this in studies on charity where liberals who believe in massive welfare programs turn out to be the least likely to actually give to charity (even secular charities). 

And we see the same thing with the environmentalist movement. You have guys like Al Gore who are actually at the extreme edge of energy use telling the rest of us that we need to change our lifestyles.

I do my part. I live 6 miles from where I work. My next house is only 3 miles from where I work. My wife and I put 12,000 miles per year on our vehicles combined. Our house and offices use florescent lights. We make sure our house is well insulated. And we do a myraid of other things to try to protect our local environment.

And make no mistake, I could have a house like Gore if I wanted. It's well within my income range. But I don't.  I don't like excessive consumption. But at the same time, I don't go around telling other people how they should live.

The earth is getting warmer. No doubt about that. Is it man made? Maybe. It is caused by CO2 emissions? Perhaps. But it's certainly not remotely certain and there are no solutions on the table that are remotely practical.

But liberals continue to think that simply adamently being in favor of reducing CO2 emissions is somehow the same as doing something. And it's not.

Seems that his whole response is as well - as this appears to be the only serious attempt to refute the facts of the documentary (the rest is just bloviated opinions), and it is shown to be an out right lie.

But then the faithful cannot allow you to challenge their god, now can they?

or you could just remember the prophetic words of Bob Dylan, who said..."you gotta serve somebody."

bull...george will advocates exactly that.