In June, CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Al Gore about his apparent energy-use hypocrisy:
TAPPER: This is a criticism we hear from conservatives all the time when talking about people like you or Elon Musk or Leonardo DiCaprio, that you, yourself, have a large carbon footprint.
GORE: Yes. Well, I don’t have a private jet. And what carbon emissions come from my trips on Southwest Airlines are offset. I live a carbon-free lifestyle, to the maximum extent possible.
As Ann Althouse noted at the time, for a carbon-based organism like Gore to claim to be living carbon-free is a demonstration of shocking ignorance by someone who has been making his millions as an earth-science huckster. To me, the amazing thing was that after repeatedly showing that he couldn’t pass a middle-school science test (as when he declared on national TV that the core of the Earth was “several million degrees”)
After he found himself the official guru of global warming hype, Gore should have had the sense and discipline to educate himself and really learn about the topics he was purporting to be an expert on. He obviously didn’t bother; like the similarly lazy Sarah Palin, he figured that the people who agreed with him weren’t going to be that discerning, so mastery of facts wasn’t worth the trouble.
The other infuriating aspect of Gore’s answer to Tapper was his “offset” excuse. That just meant “I’m rich, so I pay to for all my carbon pollution.” Gore really believes that leaving a carbon footprint the size of Godzilla is responsible conduct for a climate change shill telling the peasants that they must change their life-style, because he can “offset” it. He really believes that’s fair and honest.
In the wake of Gore’s sequel to his error and hype-filled climate change alarmist documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” the National Center For Public Policy Research, which had embarrassed Gore with its 2007 revelations after his first documentary, checked to see if Al, as he promised at the time, had addressed his own polluting ways. It checked Gore’s electricity usage information through public records requests and conversations with the Nashville Electric Service (NES), and found..
….The past year, Gore’s home energy use averaged 19,241 kilowatt hours (kWh) every month, compared to the U.S. household average of 901 kWh per month.3,4
….Gore guzzles more electricity in one year than the average American family uses in 21 years.5
….In September of 2016, Gore’s home consumed 30,993 kWh in just one month – as much energy as a typical American family burns in 34 months.
….During the last 12 months, Gore devoured 66,159 kWh of electricity just heating his pool. That is enough energy to power six average U.S. households for a year.
….From August 2016 through July 2017, Gore spent almost $22,000 on electricity bills.6
….Gore paid an estimated $60,000 to install 33 solar panels. Those solar panels produce an average of 1,092 kWh per month, only 5.7% of Gore’s typical monthly energy consumption.
Verdict: Al Gore uses vastly more electricity at his home than the average American. Still.
But he “offsets” it, of course, so it doesn’t count.
The report concludes in part:
Upon winning the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, Gore stated, “The only way to solve this [environmental] crisis is for individuals to make changes in their own lives.” Judging by his own home electricity consumption, Gore is failing to live up to the standards he expects of everyone else. After the embarrassing revelations that his home wolfed down nearly 20 times more electricity than the average American household, Gore made updates in an effort to make his home more energy efficient. Even those costly measures could not prevent his home energy consumption from rising even higher.
This year, Gore’s electricity consumption averages 19,241 kWh per month, or more than 21 times the typical usage in an American home. That is a considerable increase from Gore’s 2007 home energy consumption of about 18,400 kWh per month, which spurred a six-figure green renovation of the house.
Gore apologists blame the size of Gore’s home – a mansion, by any measure – for his extreme electricity use. That argument does not stand up to the facts. According to standards of energy efficiency, an “efficient” home burns between five and 10 kWh of electricity per square foot each year. Gore’s home annually burns nearly 23 kWh of electricity per square foot. Other Gore supporters claim that his rooftop solar panels offset the home’s energy use. That assertion is simply false. Gore’s solar panels produce only 5.7% of his total energy usage. In other words, the solar panels provide less than three weeks’ worth of electricity over the course of an entire year.
Finally, some assume that, since Gore donates to NES’s Green Power Switch program, he receives only clean, renewable energy to his home. In truth, the energy pouring into Gore’s house is the electricity that all TVA customers receive – the majority of which comes from nuclear and coal–fired power plants. Only 3% of the electricity going into Gore’s home comes from a renewable source such as solar or wind power.
Al Gore has attained a near-mythical status for his frenzied efforts to propagandize global warming. At the same time, Gore has done little to prove his commitment to the cause in his own life. While Gore encourages people throughout the world to reduce their carbon footprint and make drastic changes to cut energy consumption, Gore’s own home electricity use has hypocritically increased to more than 21 times the national average this past year with no sign of slowing down.
If one is looking for reasons why so many Americans are skeptical about climate change, the fact that the most prominent and honored climate change policy advocate is an unprincipled hustler, a hypocrite, and a science ignoramus has to rank high. Gore is like the sex-crazed TV evangelists who helped make organized religion look ridiculous in the 1980s and 90s. Climate change has become like a religion to the Left, so there is some symmetry in this. Those lying, frolicking ministers were rejected and ejected by their churches, however, while Al keeps preaching, hustling, and offsetting.
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Pointer: Elizabeth I
Ethics Alarms 
The man behind the guru of Global Warming is George Soros. I wonder if he’s still paying Gore $30m a year to promote Global Climate Change? Follow the money and you’ll find Soros and his many schemes. talk about evil.
I got a kick out of this defense of Ol’ Al:
https://newrepublic.com/article/144199/al-gores-carbon-footprint-doesnt-matter
I lost track of the rationalizations after the twofer: “Al’s a big-shot and all big-shots are entitled to do it.”
What’s he doing in that house, anyway? Growing pot under grow lights? Running a meth lab? Aging steaks?
You forgot having massages.
Now, now…
Excelsior!!!
“Carbon offsets” are just the indulgences of the church of climate change.
Yep.
And he continues his disingenuous ways: https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/business/julia-seymour/2017/01/23/gore-rewrites-inconvenient-claim-about-nyc-flooding-sequel
If Gore is unable to trumpet that his home residence is LEED-certified (for “Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design”), then he needs to shut up. NASA is working on a prototype all-electric airplane (including engines that do not burn fossil fuels); if Gore has not already donated a significant amount of his estate to that project, then he needs to SHUT UP.
Electricity is generated using fossil fuels. The vast majority of electrical power comes from fossil fuels.
Take a quick look into what is needed to create solar panels and windmills, and learn that you cannot get enough power to convert to these green options nationwide, and they cost far more than traditional sources.
Hydro power works, but is limited in total generation.
We are not allowed more Nuke plants either.
Electric cars and planes need to charge somehow. Mostly, these innovations simply remove the pollution to the generating location.
the term is TANSTAAFL: There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch
Mercy me, I could write about Al Gore all day long!
Gore’s “Alliance For Climate Protection” has hit a rough patch, undoubtedly caused by the Global Warming that”s here and worse than the models predicted.
http://www.wucnews.com/2014/01/global-warming-high-priest-al-gore.html#sthash.9Hq9oHzB.dpuf
A “Who’s Who” of rent-seeking Lefties (Gore, Soros, Raines, Strong, Obama (?), the Lefty Foundations, etc.) were beached when the ”Chicago Climate Exchange” (CCX) was quietly shuttered after failing to fulfill its one task: enriching Gucci-Slippered Carbon Traders and generating ten$ of Trillion$ out of thin air.
“When founded in November 2000, CCX’s carbon trading market was predicted to grow anywhere between $500 billion and $10 trillion.”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/11/08/public-carbon-trading-dead-in-the-usa/
No mention of his appropriately nicknamed the “BS 1” opulent houseboat?
It’s berthed on Center Hill Lake (Smithville, TN) a two hour luxury SUV caravan trip from Nashville. And the only marina there doesn’t even sell the biofuel it uses, so that needs to be trucked in as well.
Carbon Indulgences? Leave aside the fact that their efficacy is questionable at best; Gore doesn’t even actually pay for his.
As part-owner & Chairman of Generation Investment Management LLC, many of the offsets are part of his compensation package.
The rest? Per Bill Hobbs:
“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,” Hobbs writes. “To be blunt, Gore doesn’t buy ‘carbon offsets’ through Generation Investment Management – he buys stocks.”
Gore is a monumental POS, but don’t take my word for it, pick up a copy of “Al Gore: A Users Manual.”
https://www.counterpunch.org/1998/06/15/al-gore-a-user-s-manual/
The kicker? Not only was it released BEFORE Gore saw the Global Warming enhanced light, but it’s written by Über-Lefty Jeffrey St. Clair, co-founder of Lefty-Centric Counterpunch.org (“The Fearless Voice Of The American Left Since 1993.”)
“Gore is like the sex-crazed TV evangelists who helped make organized religion look ridiculous in the 1980s and 90s. Climate change has become like a religion to the Left, so there is some symmetry in this. Those lying, frolicking ministers were rejected and ejected by their churches, however, while Al keeps preaching, hustling, and offsetting.”
I’ve been reading a collection of the public statements of Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. There’s much that’s applicable in other political contexts. Here’s al-Zawahiri, quoting a 13th century scholar:
“It is [the believer’s] duty to befriend a fellow believer – even if the latter is unjust to him; for injustice does not break the bond of loyalty imposed by [similar] faith.”
And again: “[The believer] needs know that he is obligated to befriend a believer – even if [the believer] is oppressive and violent toward you, while he must be hostile to the infidel – even if [the infidel] is liberal and kind to you.”
So the philosophical agreement trumps the personal behavior, and monsters are treated as friends as long as they remain correct on this supposedly higher plane.
Al Gore is a hypocrite, who knew; but then again, who’s surprised after-all he IS a Democrat. (Snark)
“It checked Gore’s electricity usage information through public records requests and conversations with the Nashville Electric Service (NES)”
How is anyone’s electricity usage for their private home anyone else’s business? I would not want my electricity use or any other private business transaction being subject to a public records request. What next, people requesting my tax and medical records?
Nor would I, but when one claims that others are destroying life on earth by their energy usage habits, one should expect such questions to be asked. I think public utility records are, in fact, public.
Just because it is a public company it should not mean that each customer’s individual records should be made public, even if that customer is a hypocrite like Al Gore. The law needs changing to protect customer’s private business.
“I object!”
“Your honor, the defendant put the question into play when he claimed others are the problem”
“Objection overrulled”