Fitting in a sort of 'shoot me in the head' kind of way

Fitting indeed that the Senate's Dimmest Bulb chairing the Committee that may or may not hold hearings on Climategate.

Hiding the Decline

A bit about the NY Times response to the hacking/leaking of sensitive emails surrounding the climate change debate:


The NYT’s environmental blog, Dot Earth, covered the disclosure of e-mails and other files from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, noted that the files are available on various other website, but did not reproduce any files on its site. As Andrew Revkin explained in the post:

The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won’t be posted here.

Am I wrong in thinking that this is a change in policy for the NYT? Hasn’t the Grey Lady published illegally obtained documents on national security and other matters in the past?

As I posted earler this morning, there are reasons to believe these documents were released by an internal whistleblower, rather than an external hacker. If so, would the same considerations apply? My initial thought is that arguments against publishing hacked documents might not apply to those disclosed by a whistleblower. In any event, it seems these documents contain substantial material of legitimate public interest, and this interest is not diminished by the way in which the documents were obtained. I readily concede that if the documents were stolen, as it appears, the individual responsible should be prosecuted, but this is a separate question from whether to disseminate the contents of the documents themselves.

Hide the Decline indeed (Well, they are trying).

LOL of the day

If Obama can't defeat the Republican headbangers, our planet is doomed

If a Bill dies in the Senate but Everyone was Paying Attention to Healthcare, did it really Die?

Appears we're about to find out:

The U.S. Senate should abandon efforts to pass legislation curbing greenhouse-gas emissions this year and concentrate on a narrower bill to require use of renewable energy, four Democratic lawmakers say.

Paul Krugman calls GW 'Denial' Treason...

And I would call him a hack. But that's redundant.

A Challenge of my own

I've got a challenge of my own...can Al Gore stay away from microphones and television cameras for even one day?

Am I living in the 80's?

Do we still subsidize corn growers out the wazoo? Or did I fall asleep and wake up twenty-years later to find there just isn't enough corn to go around?:

A recent study conducted by the Center for Agricultural and Rural Development at Iowa State University (which receives funding from grocery manufacturers and livestock producers) reported that U.S. ethanol production could consume more than half of U.S. corn, wheat and coarse grains by 2012, driving up food prices and causing shortages. The study estimates that booming ethanol production has already raised U.S. food prices by $47 per person annually. In Mexico, protests have already erupted over the high price of corn tortillas, a staple food in the local diet.

Asleep at the Switch

How did Katrina let this through?:

Water covers 71 percent of Earth's surface. Compared with the atmosphere, there's 100 times more CO2 in the oceans, dissolved as carbonate. As the post-glacial thaw progresses the oceans warm up, and some of the dissolved carbon emits into the atmosphere, like fizz from soda. "The greenhouse global warming theory has it ass backwards," Hertzberg concludes. "It is the warming of the Earth that is causing the increase of carbon dioxide and not the reverse." In vivid confirmation of that conclusion, several new papers show that for the last 750,000 years, CO2 changes have always lagged behind global temperatures by 800 to 2,600 years.

It looks like Poseidon should go hunting for carbon credits. The human carbon footprint is of zero consequence amid these huge forces and volumes, not to mention the role of the giant reactor beneath our feet: the Earth's increasingly hot molten core.

More signs of Global Warming

This one in my own back-yard:

It was announced earlier in the week that the always-popular Summer barbeque series is returning...in March.

Scuttled as last summer wound down, the ever-popular weekly workplace barbeque returns for the summer in early spring as sunshine begins to invade our little piece of the California coast.

I thank Global Warming for bringing back this fine tradition for an extra two months this year!

New Series: What's in The Nation

This afternoon I decided I needed something to laugh about. It's been a tough, tough week of work and I've devoted far too much of my time to slaving on behalf of the sales morons with whom I have to work (apologies to any sales-types in the audience). So I needed a cool-down. Something that would kick my weekend off in a good way. A variety of thoughts and considerations suddenly lead me to the belly of the beast, Christina Vanden Heuvel's hovel, The Nation.com. While there I perused the offerings to see what might appeal to me in such a battered and brutalized state. There was the expected Bush hatred, Halliburton, class warfare, Plame (still), and Iraq doom and gloom faire. But what caught my eye this afternoon was this preposterous title:

Al Gore, Global Statesman

Ha, ha...ha.....ha....ha....ha, ha, ha....ha....ouch......oh.....ha.....ha,ha, ha...stop....stop....my sides are hurting. Now that was good. Just what the doctor ordered. The piece starts here: Al Gore is not one of those Power Point politicians, which is ironic since Gore has been selling his Inconvenient Perverication routine via PowerPoint for twenty years, but I progress. And it ends here:

Gore has something of the 19th century about him. He is almost courtly in his manners. He can talk to Republicans, at least of the non-flat-earth variety. He has a deep voice and sometimes he thunders as few modern politicians can. At the same time you would be hard-pressed to find another major public figure so conversant with such a wide span of technology and with the earth, air, fire and water problems which are reaching crisis proportions in our century. It has been so long since we have seen one that we may not remember what one looks like. We may not recognize that Al Gore has become a statesman.

Seriously, stop it! This isn't fair! I'm having a coughing fit.

Anyway, after recovering from this episode, I quickly decided that I need to start doing a series about some of the hilarity that one can find over at David Corn's pone-y home. I think I may do them on Fridays since that seems to be a point in the week when we could all use a little comedy break. So until next time, this is your roving seeker of humor signing off.

Why I like Don Surber

This is why I like Don Surber and why I link him often:

After reading the Editorialist’s coverage at the Washington Post of Al Gore’s overuse of electricity, I don’t want to hear about Republican hypocrisy ever again.
If Al Gore were a Republican, the story of his consuming 20 times the national average while lecturing the rest of us on cutting back on our energy use would be front page news from coast-to-coast. Late-nite comedians would have a field day. The editorial pages would puff up about Republican hypocrisy.

Instead we get excuses, excuses, excuses.

...

This story has been spun into an “attack” on Gore rather than the story of a Junk Food Junkie — an air-conditioned oil millionaire with a zinc mine who preaches one thing while doing another.
WaPo’s Editorialist is not alone in ignoring the hypocrisy. The Tennessean fell for it. AP fell for it.

As a proud member of the mainstream media, let me suggest that this double-standard — this refusal to hold Al Gore accountable for his actions which are contradictory to his words — only feeds the belief that the media is biased in favor of liberals — particularly born-to-the-manor, overfed, limousine liberals who consume 220,000 kilowatts of electricity each year in just one of his three homes.

I found Don's link via Glenn and I loved his quip even more: Well, look at the kind of people who own newspapers . . . .

The comment was his, the link was mine.

That's why it's called 'Hypocrisy'

Defenders of Al Gore apparently didn't take too kindly to all the commentary about his electric bill:

The right-wing is angry that Al Gore has won so much public attention and goodwill for his work on global warming...

1) Gore’s family has taken numerous steps to reduce the carbon footprint of their private residence, including signing up for 100 percent green power through Green Power Switch, installing solar panels, and using compact fluorescent bulbs and other energy saving technology.

2) Gore has had a consistent position of purchasing carbon offsets to offset the family’s carbon footprint — a concept the right-wing fails to understand. Gore’s office explains:
What Mr. Gore has asked is that every family calculate their carbon footprint and try to reduce it as much as possible. Once they have done so, he then advocates that they purchase offsets, as the Gore’s do, to bring their footprint down to zero.

It’s the latest in a series of desperate attacks by Drudge to paint Gore as a hypocrite.

That was just this morning. As the day went on things got more exciting:

WOW, lots of lefty email about the Al Gore story, charging lies, "swiftboating," and smears. Hmm. Is the story a lie? Well, there's this:

Kalee Kreider, a spokesperson for the Gores, did not dispute the Center's figures, taken as they were from public records.

"Swiftboating" seems to mean the disclosure of truths that are, er, inconvenient for Democrats. Likewise "smears." And, actually, in lefty blogland parlance these days, "lies" pretty much come out the same way. All definitions are permitted the definer, so long as they are clear, but don't expect me to be impressed with this batch.

UPDATE: But he's got Richard Cohen.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Bill Hobbs notes that the "smears" seem to be flowing the other way. That's not unusual.

Plus, perspective from Les Jones: "Our electric and water bill was $79.68 and our natural gas bill was $75.72. Gore is using roughly 2000% of the energy of our family of four in a house that's roughly 600% bigger, so basically three times as much energy even after adjusting for square footage. Does he have a 24 hour disco or something?"

Frankly though, I thought--and still do now at the end of the day--that the Good Captain pretty much nailed it: "Purchasing offsets only means that Gore doesn't want to make the same kind of sacrifices that he's asking other families to make. He's using a modern form of indulgences in order to avoid doing the penance that global-warming activism demands of others. It means that the very rich can continue to suck up energy and raise the price and the demand for electricity and natural gas, while families struggle with their energy costs and face increasing government regulation and taxation. It's a regressive plan that Gore's supporters would decry if the same kind of scheme were applied to a national sales tax, for instance."

And that's why it's called 'Hypocrisy' Al...

UPDATE: But wait--don't want to forget this:

Now compare this to President Bush's comparatively modest home in Crawford, Texas, which is a model of environmental friendliness:

The 4,000-square-foot house is a model of environmental rectitude

Geothermal heat pumps located in a central closet circulate water through pipes buried 300 feet deep in the ground where the temperature is a constant 67 degrees; the water heats the house in the winter and cools it in the summer. Systems such as the one in this "eco-friendly" dwelling use about 25% of the electricity that traditional heating and cooling systems utilize.
A 25,000-gallon underground cistern collects rainwater gathered from roof runs; wastewater from sinks, toilets and showers goes into underground purifying tanks and is also funneled into the cistern. The water from the cistern is used to irrigate the landscaping surrounding the four-bedroom home. Plants and flowers native to the high prairie area blend the structure into the surrounding ecosystem.

No, this is not the home of some eccentrically wealthy eco-freak trying to shame his fellow citizens into following the pristineness of his self-righteous example. And no, it is not the wilderness retreat of the Sierra Club or the Natural Resources Defense Council, a haven where tree-huggers plot political strategy.

This is President George W. Bush's "Texas White House" outside the small town of Crawford.

I'll guarantee you that in a blind enviro-test, 9 out of 10 people surveyed would conclude that the house in Crawford was Gore's while convinced that the palatial Belle Meade estate could not be anything but the property of the best friend Halliburton ever had.

THATS why it's called 'Hypocrisy'!

The Price of Al Gore's Hypocrisy

$1,359: Last August alone, Gore burned through 22,619 kWh—guzzling more than twice the electricity in one month than an average American family uses in an entire year. As a result of his energy consumption, Gore’s average monthly electric bill topped $1,359.

Since the release of An Inconvenient Truth, Gore’s energy consumption has increased from an average of 16,200 kWh per month in 2005, to 18,400 kWh per month in 2006.

I love the sweet oil-consuming, fume-spewing, polluting irony...