An Inconvenient Truthiness

Former Vice President Al Gore, still basking in the glow of his Oscar win, has taken some hits from the right wing bloggers on the power consumption of his Tennesee home.  And this includes posts on Orange Punch and Orange Juice blogs.

The news came from an organization no one has ever heard from and how the heck did they get a copy of Gore’s private residence power bill anyway?  The truthiness behind the announcement was picked up chapter and verse by all the usual suspects and I’m guessing Steven Greenhut never made a call to find out if the numbers are true.

 

But let’s assume that they are.  This tidbit from the Anonymous Liberal blog:

The press release claimed that Al Gore’s home in Nashville consumed 221,000 kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity last year compared to a national average of 10,656 kWh per household. I have no idea whether the number cited for Gore’s house is correct, but let’s assume it is. The 10,656 number comes from data published by the Department of Energy. But it’s an average of all households nationwide (including apartment units and mobile homes) and across all climate regions. As it turns out, the region in which Gore lives–the East South Central–has the highest per household energy usage of any climate region in the country, a good 50% higher than the national average quoted in the press release (I assume this is due to the combination of cold winters and hot, muggy summers). So that’s misleading in and of itself. Moreover, Gore lives in a large home (10,000 sq. ft.). If you look at the data, it’s clear that Gore’s energy usage per square foot (even assuming the 221,000 kWh number is accurate) is well within the average range for his climate region. So all this accusation boils down to is a claim that it is somehow “hypocritical” for Al Gore to live in a large house.That’s awfully weak. Gore’s a former Senator and Vice President of the United States. Does he have to move into a studio apartment before he has the right to talk about climate change?I remember walking through the Register’s newsroom with my cub scout pack several years ago, when the Reg still did that.  Reporters have lots of fun signs and clips adorning their desks and monitors and such.  My favorite sign reads: “Your mother says she loves you? Check it out!”

I remember walking through the Register’s newsroom with my cub scout pack several years ago, when the Reg still did that.  Reporters have lots of fun signs and clips adorning their desks and monitors and such.  My favorite sign reads: “Your mother says she loves you? Check it out!”The rightwing noise machine in OC still doesn’t get it on global warming.  So they are participating in what they do best.  Make Gore’s strength – his record on the environment – a weakness by suggesting he is a hypocrite.  Never mind the long track record of hypocrites from the right such as Rush Limbaugh’s drug use, Sean Hannity’s suggestion that Fox News doesn’t have a bias (even though Rupert Murdoch admitted it does), Dick Cheney’s position on gay marriage despite having a lesbian daughter, Mark Foley’s House position on Missing and Exploited children and his interesting IMs to male pages; Ted Haggert’s meth purchases and gay male prostitute massages; Bill Frist lying about his video diagnosis of Terry Schiavo, George Allen’s “Macaca” explanations, and so on and so on.
 

AN UPDATE: MSNBC did an update on this last night and pretty much rips apart the news release and exposes the non-partisan group that pushed out the news as being connected to the American Enterprise Institute, beholden to big oil, nay-sayers on global warming and the like.