Earlier, I pounded on Nick Coleman for repeating the talking-point trope about Algore’s store-bought “carbon-neutrality”.
Via Jay Reding, we see the Economist does, too.
This is, of course, ridiculous. When you donate money to build a new windfarm, you don’t take any of the old, polluting power offline; you increase the supply of power, reducing the price until others are encouraged to buy more carbon-emitting power. On the margin, it may make some difference, since demand for electricity is not perfectly elastic, but nowhere near the one-for-one equivalence that carbon offsets would seem to suggest. Especially since the worst offenders, big coal-fired plants, are not the ones that renewables will substitute for; solar and wind power are not good replacements for baseload power. Instead, renewables are likely to take relatively clean (and expensive) natural gas plants offline, since those are the ones that provide “extra” power to the system. Similarly, by giving villagers in Goa energy-saving CFL bulbs, you do not lessen the amount of electricity consumed; rather, you make it possible for other people to purchase the extra energy freed up by more efficient lightbulbs. This may be excellent poverty policy, but it does not lessen the carbon footprint of your international flight.
Reding (emphasis mine):
Gore’s not even close to “carbon-neutral.” It’s not physically possible to consume as much as he does and plant enough trees to make a difference. It’s all a way of deflecting the very well warranted charges of hypocrisy being leveled against him.
It’s worse than that, of course; the Economist piece notes that Algore’s immense power usage is after the amount saved by the “greeniness” of the Gore mansion, the solar panels, etc, etc.
Read the whole thing. Keep it handy the next time someone tries to use “carbon-neutrality” as a sop for Algore’s extravagance.
We can do better than keeping this Economist piece handy. Check out this suggestion by a regular commenter over at Protein Wisdom (I’m only mad I didn’t think of this first):
If Gore and his energy glutton apologists are serious the “carbon offset” are as good as reducing consumption, then I say we start pushing carbon offsets as national energy policy.
After running the numbers involved, the commenter makes this conclusion:
So if that math holds, we add 15 cents to the federal gas tax, and use that $15B to buy “Carbon Offsets” each year, and bam, we’re the only Kyoto Protocol compliant nation, and with minimal tax burden.
How much do you think Gore, Pandagon, Kos or the Sierra Club will support that policy?
HA HA HA HA HA!
Iowahawk has a take on this too: Repent, Sinners!
I love the bumper stickers he posted.
And it just keeps getting better: Apparently The GoracleTM owns the company he buys the offsets from! Details and link to come.
That whole “carbon credits” is a scam, too. They don’t make him any less of a consumer.
It’s like someone who is pulled over for DUI and blows a .20 BAC. “But officer, there were two people leaving the bar who didn’t have anything to drink when they legally could have been on the road with a .07. I bought their alcohol credits, so now I’m really only at a .06.”
It’s not just a scam. Al Gore is buying them from a comapny he owns. What a fraud.
Despicable and so damn galling. That sums up leftists. High and mighty and bettter-than everybody else….what a joke. A sick joke.
We can do better than keeping this Economist piece handy. Check out this suggestion by a regular commenter over at Protein Wisdom (I’m only mad I didn’t think of this first):
If Gore and his energy glutton apologists are serious the “carbon offset” are as good as reducing consumption, then I say we start pushing carbon offsets as national energy policy.
After running the numbers involved, the commenter makes this conclusion:
So if that math holds, we add 15 cents to the federal gas tax, and use that $15B to buy “Carbon Offsets” each year, and bam, we’re the only Kyoto Protocol compliant nation, and with minimal tax burden.
How much do you think Gore, Pandagon, Kos or the Sierra Club will support that policy?
HA HA HA HA HA!
Iowahawk has a take on this too: Repent, Sinners!
I love the bumper stickers he posted.
We can do better than keeping this Economist piece handy. Check out this suggestion by a regular commenter over at Protein Wisdom (I’m only mad I didn’t think of this first):
If Gore and his energy glutton apologists are serious the “carbon offset” are as good as reducing consumption, then I say we start pushing carbon offsets as national energy policy.
After running the numbers involved, the commenter makes this conclusion:
So if that math holds, we add 15 cents to the federal gas tax, and use that $15B to buy “Carbon Offsets” each year, and bam, we’re the only Kyoto Protocol compliant nation, and with minimal tax burden.
How much do you think Gore, Pandagon, Kos or the Sierra Club will support that policy?
HA HA HA HA HA!
Iowahawk has a take on this too: Repent, Sinners!
I love the bumper stickers he posted.
I would post links to all this, but WordPress wouldn’t accept them.
I don’t disagree with an element of hypocricy. However logically speaking, hypocrisy in action should not be taken as refutation of Mr. Gores points on global warming.
Nor should Haggard’s personal embrace of sodomy reflect poorly on his public condemnations of homosexuality.
Hypocrisy is most risible when it is unnecessary. In this case, Mr. Gore’s contribution to carbon neutrality is a non-solution to a non-problem. In fact, he could make a bigger contribution by simply not spouting so much hot air on the subject.
On another note, did you see that the global warming conference at they U has been cancelled for tonight? Because of ….
Shabadoo said:
However logically speaking, hypocrisy in action should not be taken as refutation of Mr. Gores points on global warming.
No, it should not. But The GoracleTM should not ignore or distortthe scientific method to make them–along with everyone else who joins The ConsensusTM.
Why, you ask? To avoid politicizing the debate:
Recognizing that personal and cultural beliefs influence both our perceptions and our interpretations of natural phenomena, we aim through the use of standard procedures and criteria to minimize those influences when developing a theory. As a famous scientist once said, “Smart people (like smart lawyers) can come up with very good explanations for mistaken points of view.” In summary, the scientific method attempts to minimize the influence of bias or prejudice in the experimenter when testing an hypothesis or a theory.
Under the heading “Common Mistakes in Applying the Scientific Method,” is the iceburg in the sea of reality the scientific method is employed to avoid–but the global warming enviromentalist extremists slam into like a ship out of control:
…the scientific method attempts to minimize the influence of the scientist’s bias on the outcome of an experiment. That is, when testing an hypothesis or a theory, the scientist may have a preference for one outcome or another, and it is important that this preference not bias the results or their interpretation.
The most fundamental error is to mistake the hypothesis for an explanation of a phenomenon, without performing experimental tests. Sometimes “common sense” and “logic” tempt us into believing that no test is needed. There are numerous examples of this, dating from the Greek philosophers to the present day.
Another common mistake is to ignore or rule out data which do not support the hypothesis. Ideally, the experimenter is open to the possibility that the hypothesis is correct or incorrect.
Sometimes, however, a scientist may have a strong belief that the hypothesis is true (or false), or feels internal or external pressure to get a specific result.
In that case, there may be a psychological tendency to find “something wrong”, such as systematic effects, with data which do not support the scientist’s expectations, while data which do agree with those expectations may not be checked as carefully.
The lesson is that all data must be handled in the same way.
Ya think?
I would post links to all this, but WordPress wouldn’t accept them.
Oh sure, now all those early post attempts appear, littering the thread.
Here’s the aforementioned link to the story that The GoracleTM owns the company he buys the carbon offsets from. The money paragraph:
As co-founder and chairman of the firm Gore presumably draws an income or will make money as its investments prosper. In other words, he “buys” his “carbon offsets” from himself, through a transaction designed to boost his own investments and return a profit to himself. To be blunt, Gore doesn’t buy “carbon offsets” through Generation Investment Management – he buys stocks.
If this doesn’t prove that The GoracleTM himself doesn’t believe his pet issue, that he is nothing more than an elitist that thinks that his wealth power is a product of his “greatness” and the rest of us should live like the Tasaday to preserve the view, nothing will.