Al Gore Leaves The Light On For Ya
From Nashvillepost.com
By Kleinheider
Even during Earth Hour. President of the Tennessee Center For Policy Research Drew Johnson takes a Saturday drive by Al Gore’s during the time most environmentalists went dark:
I pulled up to Al’s house, located in the posh Belle Meade section of Nashville, at 8:48pm – right in the middle of Earth Hour. I found that the main spotlights that usually illuminate his 9,000 square foot mansion were dark, but several of the lights inside the house were on.
In fact, most of the windows were lit by the familiar blue-ish hue indicating that floor lamps and ceiling fixtures were off, but TV screens and computer monitors were hard at work. (In other words, his house looked the way most houses look about 1:45am when their inhabitants are distractedly watching “Cheaters” or “Chelsea Lately” reruns.)
The kicker, though, were the dozen or so floodlights grandly highlighting several trees and illuminating the driveway entrance of Gore’s mansion.
I [kid] you not, my friends, the savior of the environment couldn’t be bothered to turn off the gaudy lights that show off his goofy trees.
More here
Here’s a look at Al Gores Nashville mansion:
Vice President Al Gore has purchased this home, in Nashville’s exclusive Belle Meade section, for a reported USD2.3 million. The deed for the Colonial-style home, which sits on 2.09 acres of some of the city’s most expensive land, was signed on June 17, 2002. Gore and his wife, Tipper, will keep other homes in Tennessee and Virginia. It was published February 28, 2007 that research group in Tennessee, where the former vice president lives, claims that Mr Gore’s 20-room, eight-bathroom home in Nashville consumes more electricity in a month than the average American household uses in a year.
Photo and description Source: Daylife
You can see it here on Google Maps
From an aerial view looking south you can see what could be a handful of solar panels, though the orientation is puzzling if that is what they are. Update: in comments it it pointed out that they may also be skylights, which seems more probable. So it appears there are no solar panels on Mr. Gore’s home. Note the SUV fleet.
Here is a view looking east:
UPDATE: The photos above don’t show solar panels, however an alert commenter found this photo showing the placement on the one flat section of roofing shown in the aerial views above:
The 34 panels look to be between 200 and 250 watts each, for a total capacity at full sun of 6.8 to 8.5 kilowatts for the system.They will provide an offset, but will not fully replace energy consumption there. Given the 10,000 sq foot size and the pool, this is an undersized installation for the home. Some ground based panels would have helped.
– Anthony
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A recent rock concert in Australia decided they would be ‘green’ and, rather than using mains electricity they had people riding bicycle generators.
Don’t these people realise that we humans exert CO2 and the people exerting themselves to produce the power will be exhaling lots more than normal.
Hypocrisy abounds
OOPS!
Should have been “Don’t these people realise that we humans exhale CO2…”
I don’t think Gore’s a hypocrite, he’s a salesman. If you pay attention, you’ll see that Al virtually never practices what he preaches. I doubt if most snake oil salesmen were big consumers of their own goods, advertising jargon to the contrary. Gore’s in the “selling Al Gore” business, not the “save the world” business, and judging by his modest, well-lit home, he’s doing rather well.
Not so much a hypocrite as a huckster.
A significant portion of Al Gore’s family wealth was derived from….OIL!
One thing to remeber about Earth Hour, all the power plants were still running, still generating, still burning coal, oil or gas.
Turning off some lights for 60 minutes doesn’t conserve energy, doesn’t reduce emissions.
@ur momisugly all WUWT fans,
I was going to single out one of the above hilarious statements as my favorite of the evening; imagining there are a few that would be in the running for quote of the week.
Couldn’t pick.
You’re all danged funny. (with a few jaundiced exceptions)
Thanks, Anthony, for creating a venue where we can learn AND laugh.
Lord knows – we need the levity.
Comforting to know that Al will return his lights to normal operation for the next 3,759 hours. Every little bit “heps!”
“Al Gore is a post-modern Elmer Gantry. Read the book; watch the movie. It is the perfect description of this charlataine.”
I beg to differ… Al Gore is a post-modern Elmer Fudd.
There are many people in the world who would aspire to have Al’s Carbon Footprint.
May we all be blessed to have a CO2 footprint as large as Al’s.
This is doubly amusing because Nashville was supposed to be one of the “premier cities” for Earth Hour. Vanderbilt University had a huge event for it with glow-in-the-dark games and soy candles (lol) and acoustic music. The honky-tonks on Broadway turned off their lights and the musicians played acoustic. The NHL game was scheduled for an earlier time so that the arena could observe Earth hour. The city really stepped up to show its support for Earth Hour, but Al Gore–the guy largely responsible for this nonsense–couldn’t be bothered to stop illuminating his trees for an hour.
Good metaphor for this whole debacle if you ask me.
Like Gore, apparently Californians didn’t get the memo to go dark. http://sowellslawblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/busted-earth-hour.html
As I watch the snow fly on March 29th,Al’s home is no Sistine Chapel,I want a Sistine
Chapel if I have to pay Carbon Indulgences…
Peter Hearnden, I agree: Al Gore does not need anyone else to make him the center of attention and ridicule as he does it himself masterfully. As for the science, we all know what it is worth: a political award. However, when one preaches like he does, he cannot expect that technology and people will not be curious about his actions… just as Eliott Spitzer’s wife must be now…
Last year I did turn every lights on, this year I simply ignored it and went my business as normal, just like the neighborhood did from what I could see.
If people get the politicians they deserve, people in the U.S. must have been very, very bad.
OT, but Anthony might want to cover this one:
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/42214/title/Bracing_for_global_climate_change_is_a_local_challenge
Pat (17:49:23)
http://www.nationalgrid.com/uk/Electricity/Data/Realtime/Demand/Demand8.htm
So where does the electricity go instead?
[snip]
BTW The Goreacle was on Simpsons tonight, consoling Homer about losing a Class President election in HS. “I lost a Presidential Election, and I did OK (pulls out Nobel and whispers to “Alfred”).
Not nearly as funny as the ManBearPig (lisping “I’m CEREAL!”) episode on Southpark, but pretty good to see Al hanging at Moes.
“For scientists the answer is clear enough, as the examples mentioned are the result of natural climate variability, which does not contradict the human-induced long-term warming trend.”
Why does the term ‘climate variability’ only apply when it is colder?
I’m getting pretty tired of the media, government and environmental special interest groups dictating what is truth.
This whole AGW farce is ten years past it’s use-by date. It is no longer about science, weather or climate. It’s about a political agenda and a Socialist, global agenda at that.
I don’t mind Political debate, nor a redefinition of societal goals and direction….. But only if the process is based on facts and knowledge to arrive at an accepted truth for people to discuss.
Once again we have a “Vanguard” of elites pretending to support the interests of the people, the planet and the future…… But as usual. It is all based on a lie.
It’s an obvious lie and it’s time it was called one.
(I posted this by accident on another thread, it was meant for this one. sorry ’bout that)
DJKP (13:45:06) :
. . . As well, blaming Mr. Watts for what we as readers post on his blog is a little silly.
Absolutely disagree, DJKP. Mr Watts is indeed responsible for what we readers post, because he makes this space available to us and interferes little with what profound or inane things we post.
cf, if you would, to RealClimate, where anyone posting the least slightly embarrassing question or inconvenient fact challenging the AGW orthodoxy is summarily excised. Questions that cannot be answered are not asked, at least after the ‘moderator’ notices them.
The choir preaching is done over there on RC. Our congregation includes saints, sinners, and agnostics, all given freedom to comment and challenge, and Mr Watts is indeed to blame for it.
Peter Hearnden (13:13:41):
Fwiw, I happily switched off some lights last night. But, some snooper found that Al Gore had lights on. Big deal, it doesn’t change the science does it?
Sir… Please, give me a comprehensible (scientific) definition of “climate change”. Why AGWers and the IPCC evade explaining ecological succession?
Dear Al,
Do you want to make MY taxes and energy costs a lot higher because you know you’ll not feel any burden or pain yourself from doing so?
Just wondering.
Cause that’s really mean.
Especially when I won’t see any beneift ever.
If I coulda, I woulda had the TV on and the oil heater going. After the weather blew out the electricity and if I hadn’t had a wood stove in the bedroom, I would have had to fire up the kerosene space heater as well as the wood cook stove in the kitchen. People who have lived in the lap of “all utilities paid” luxury era have no idea how farmers in remote parts of this country do every thing they can to stay warm. It was true 100 years ago, it was true 50 years ago. It is true now. There are many people who can’t stay warm at night, including folks in cities. The people that started Earth Hour have no idea that people die in cold weather. Turning off the electricity for an hour when it is fed to you 24-7 otherwise is just pandering. Plain and simple.
Instead of this smarmy campaign, we should be asked to voluntarily turn off our electricity for an hour and donate the cost to charities that keep the elderly and homeless from freezing to death.
If you want to know how to act, watch the profet. He is obviously not heading the way he says everyone else must head. I wonder why…
Isn’t Gore’s new book to be about solutions to the ‘climate crisis’? I wonder if saving energy by switching off the unnecessary light will be mentioned as one of them.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
– Verse 1 of W B Yeats’ “The Second Coming” (1920).
Just thought this thread needed a bit of culture, and some perspective.
Too much needless anger and pathos…
Don’t bother about Al Gore – Al and all this global warming lunacy will soon be just another example of “popular delusions and the madness of crowds”.
Like Y2K, Tulip Mania and other such nonsense, people will be wondering what all the fuss was about, and how folks could be so gullible.
And all the politicians who fell for this warmist fear-mongering will be trying to graciously back away from their idiotic statements, like “the science is settled” and “we must act now to save the planet”.
That means you too young Barack – it’s not too late to take a science course.
Obama isn’t our first green President, but few have exhibited his total lack of experience.
Regards, Allan