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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Anthony, it seems he had some problem with permitting the panels. The house itself is claimed to have had extensive remodeling/renovation. I don’t know all that has been done, but these things can take some time. He bought the house apparently in 2002, but did he use the house immediately, or start remodeling immediately? He’s added other features as well, from what I hear, such as solar fans, geothermal system and rainwater catchment. I doubt the reason for installing the panels was in response to criticism, since there is news from around a year before Johnson complained about the electric bill, of Gore having difficulty getting permission to put them on the roof. Also, it is possible that the panels in the pics may have been all that the city or HOA would allow Gore to install. The house has received a high rating by the USGBC, and the claim is that his bill for both electric and gas is now much lower.
Followup on my last post,
“Gore bought his multimillion dollar home in 2002 in Belle Meade, an exclusive city encircled by metropolitan Nashville, and he has embarked on an ambitious renovation. But his contractors ran into a legal barrier last summer when they sought to apply for a permit to install solar panels on the roof.”
“A conservative group that disputes the findings about global warming criticized Gore last month, complaining that his home uses too much electricity.”
“New rules on April 1 will allow homeowners to install solar panels on their roofs. But there’s a caveat: “Solar panels may be installed upon the roof of a building so long as they are not visible from the street or from any adjoining property,” according to the ordinance.”
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,259938,00.html
slowtofollow (16:31:42)
REPLY: There are more pics on the facebook site of the fellow from TN, follow the links. I don’t have a facebook account and don’t want one – Anthony
Yes – this is what is claimed. Like you I’m not a facebooker so can’t verify this. Have you? Has anyone? By now I’d have thought they’d have made it off facebook if they were on any consequence?
A Response to solenadon (20:22:01) :
[1] Al Gore Enriches himself.
“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.”
Ref 1: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=54528
Ref 2: http://www.investors.com/editorial/editorialcontent.asp?secid=1501&status=article&id=258075474834657
[2] Regarding the facts of AGW. Suggest more extensive reading on your part of
http://www.climateaudit.org/ and
of course http://wattsupwiththat.com/
http://www.climate-skeptic.com/
http://climatesci.org/
Could we call it a violence footprint? I don’t care about the carbon–Mother Earth will handle that. I care about the violence. Mother Earth will handle that too, in Her Own fashion, if the humans can’t learn to fight with words better.
Glenn (21:35:49) :
Read the article. As a matter of fact, the pictures did have time stamps on them.
Smokey (16:34:49) :
Glenn (21:35:49) :
Those pics are a joke, with no time stamp on them…
“Read the article. As a matter of fact, the pictures did have time stamps on them.”
The pics that come with the article are a joke, with no time stamp on them. There’s nothing in the article supporting the claim.
“The kicker, though, were the dozen or so floodlights grandly highlighting several trees and illuminating the driveway entrance of Gore’s mansion.”
http://politics.nashvillepost.com/2009/03/29/al-gore-will-leave-the-lights-on-for-ya/
The real kicker is that the pictures on this website do not reflect “grand” highlighting of trees or the driveway entrance. A “time stamp” on a picture isn’t evidence of when the pic was taken, either, only of the time the photographer decided to put on the pic. And in light of the way Johnson makes these accusations and only claims to have time-stamped pics, I wouldn’t trust him not to change a time stamp on a pic, if he even has pictures of that evening. A good way of timestamping is to place a newspaper in the photos, not behind some inaccessible Facebook page.
This is bad publicity for ~snip~ and good for Gore’s.
Glenn,
See, now you’re changing your story — just like I knew you would.
You complained that the pictures had “no time stamp on them.” <— [Those were your words.]
But the article makes it clear that there were, in fact, time stamps on the photos: The article states:
Quit digging that hole deeper, Mr. Glenn. Your HE-RO is a washed up scamster.
Find a better hero.
Smokey (18:35:54) :
“Glenn,
“See, now you’re changing your story — just like I knew you would.”
Evidence? What was my original story and what was my changed story, so that we may compare?
“You complained that the pictures had “no time stamp on them.” <— [Those were your words.]”
Well of course. But unless I had at some point “complained” that they had timestamps on them, you have failed to support your claim that my “story has changed”.
“But the article makes it clear that there were, in fact, time stamps on the photos: The article states:”
A claim isn’t evidence. And the fact that the claim was made doesn’t support your contention that my “story changed”. The article does not make it clear that there “were” timestamps on any photos, or on the photos specifically on the website. You quoted the relevant passage yourself; “I *have* timestamped pictures”. But that doesn’t mean he was referring to the photos on the website (they are undoubtedly *not* timestamped). You let me know if you see a timestamp on these pics:
http://politics.nashvillepost.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/goreearthhour.jpg
“I have time-stamped pictures of the floodlights illuminating Al Gore’s driveway entrance and several trees between 8:40-9:00pm during “Earth Hour,” which is certainly an inconvenient truth for Mr. Gore.”
What is inconvenient here is Johnson not supplying evidence that his pictures were taken when he claims they were. He supplies no pictures of the house, or entranceway and only a few pictures of dimly lit address number on a fence and a tree, which actually contradicts his claim of “grand”
lighting.
Quit digging that hole deeper, Mr. Glenn. Your HE-RO is a washed up scamster.
Find a better hero.”
Johnson may have “timestamped photos”, but the *fact* is that the ones on his website are not.
You are taking his word that he has timestamped photos and claiming that he does as a “matter of fact” have such photos. You couldn’t dig a hole any deeper than that for yourself, IMO.
Excuse me if I don’t bow before your amazing logic, Gore is not my hero, I haven’t changed my story and you haven’t shown that I have.
You haven’t taken many pictures at night, have you?
Fridtjof (18:30:13) :
What I really don’t understand is why sincerely concerned “believers” defend (or deny) Gore’s hypocrisy. They should be angry at him!
Yeah, they should be angry at him, but then they wouldn’t be “believers”. They call everyone else “deniers” because they think that everyone thinks like them, as either a “believer” or “denier” – same difference = none. Pretty strange, and we are not going to be able to crack that nut – the “believers” thinking that the “deniers” are just like them, only “wrong”, “evil”, or whatever. “Believers” simply cannot understand science.
AnonyMoose (10:11:37) :
Glenn:
He supplies no pictures of the house, or entranceway and only a few pictures of dimly lit address number on a fence and a tree, which actually contradicts his claim of “grand” lighting.
“You haven’t taken many pictures at night, have you?”
Actually I have, and with more than a cellphone camera. Shouldn’t you be asking that of Johnson? Have you ever taken pictures at night of an object that is illuminated by *floodlights*?
Provide a url to the pics he claims to have of “floodlights illuminating Al Gore’s driveway entrance and several trees.” ON Johnsons site all I see is an address number on a fence and what might be construed as one or two trees close together (in any event, not “several”) probably lit by low volt landscape lights.
Oh, c’mon, Glenn! If you can’t see that Gore was publicly owned by forgetting to turn off his lights for Earth Hour, you’re in need of a little friendly deprogramming.
Check out Graeme Rodaughan @19:10:50:
Go ahead, read the rest. It’ll do you some good.
And sorry I was disloyal to the Prophet. Please convey my remorse to the Anointed One. If you like, I’ll admit that you’ve convinced me I was wrong by your deft questioning of the statement of a no good, lying photographer you’ve never met.
In fact, I concede that maybe Mr. Gore really did turn his lights out, and this is all a big misunderstanding. Someone who made the internet possible would never, ever forget to turn out the lights, would he? Well, would he?! Never.
So of course Al Gore turned his lights out for the sacred Earth Hour. He probably did it five minutes early.
Like Glenn I haven’t seen anything to back up the written claims made over the lights at Al Gore’s place. If anybody has, please could you supply a link or statement confirming it? The author of the original story apparently had a camera with him so if the floodlights were visible to the naked eye then even a point and shoot should have caught them. Go out tonight and photo your street lights – try flash on/off etc etc.
It’s good to see the update showing the PVs on the roof and I’d suggest it is unlikely that PV would be used for pool heating. Also check the time of year of the satellite shots – the trees are bare and it looks as if, in contrast to some neighbouring properties, the pool has a winterizing cover on it.
Isn’t the whole point of WUWT and Surface Stations one of questioning and validation of data to improve the standard of debate? I’m not a Gore fan or a pro AGW -I like the Surface Stations project as it clearly improves the understanding of some of the data used in the “climate” debate. I’d think checking out and verifying a story like the lead post would be in the same spirit.