Bush vs. Gore in energy consumption

First let me say that with regards to Gore’s personal behavior, my goal is not to win this argument because I don't know that I am right. For that part of it, my goal is to find out how hypocritical Gore is being. It seems to me that he is mostly being honest and is genuinely trying to help the environment as best he can, but I will consider evidence to the contrary. I don't know if any data regarding how many people's minds he changed. I personally know two people who went to the movie with a skeptical mindset. They had both told me in the past that they thought GW was a stupid thing for the environmental movement to focus on. They didn't know if it was real and didn't think it was a big deal even if it was happening. They came back from the movie and were both really surprised at what they had learned and had were suddenly worried about the future effects of warming. I realize that's just an anecdote, but I suspect it is representative of a broader picture.As for misstatements, there are only two deceptive parts of the movie that I am aware of. One is where he overlays plots of CO2 and temperature and asks "do these curves fit"? The audience is left thinking that rising CO2 in the past caused increasing temps when in fact it was the other way around. The other is when he talks about melting ice causing rising ocean levels which flood cities. He says something like "if [blah] icesheets melt, here is the badness that will happen". He never mentions that projections suggest this melting will take centuries to occur. Neither of these deceptions is a falsehood, and while they annoy me, I don't feel think they're that big of a deal.Overall, four years ago I was pissed about how everyone I talked to was dismissing global warming as "no big deal", and wouldn't put in the effort to learn anything about it. Thanks largely to Gore I think, it is now broadly realized that GW is a danger, and that we should try to do something about it. There are still plenty of misconceptions out there about it, but I don't blame Gore for these.I'll address the rest of your post in a second entry.

First let me say that with regards to Gore’s personal behavior, my goal is not so much to convince you of anything as to find out what is true. I really don't know how hypocritical Gore is being. I suspect that he is mostly honest and is genuinely trying to help the environment as best he can, but I will consider evidence to the contrary. As I understand it, Gore did not set out to make and promote a movie. What he did was he made a slideshow and went around showing it to as many people as possible in the hopes of spreading awareness about the problem (while at the same time getting rich through speaking engagements, but I can’t say as how that’s a problem). To get speaking engagements at places to convince audiences of things you need to travel around to them which requires plane tickets and the burning of lots of CO2. Sad, but true, so Gore bought carbon offsets to reduce the damage as much as possible. After extensive presentations (Gore estimated that he showed the presentation 1000 times), he had spread enough interest that a film crew got involved and we all know the rest.Since then, you can argue that Gore should be doing all his future speaking engagements via video conferencing. That would be a very unprecedented way to do things, and maybe he should be trying it. But I can't blame him for thinking that that's a less effective approach and that he should be meeting people face to face and that the benefit of convincing crowds of people in person is greater than the cost of the CO2 from his roundtrip flight - especially after offsets.As for his home electricity bills, I think the point has been made on this thread that has per square foot usage is smaller than the average in the region he lives in, and he gets his power from renewable sources. As for his personal jet, that sounds a bit excessive to me, but he claims that he flies commercially. I don't know how true this is, but I certainly don't trust FOX News about anything, especially when it comes to statements about the former VP. If there are non-biased sources of information about this that anyone has I would consider it.

I don't really trust Dr. Cranium either, but I try to keep quiet about it. He tends to be a bit spiteful about challenges to his authority. ;-) Well, I think people should be worried about the future consequences of global warming. It is not just a scientific puzzle to solve - in the worst case scenarios a significant fraction of the world population could die due to floods, drought, and famine, and a significant fraction of the species on the planet would die out. It's been a while since I saw the movie, but I don't remember any serious misstatements about Katrina ... or any other topics besides the two I mentioned. It is not reasonable to say that global warming caused Katrina, and I don't think he did so. But it is reasonable to say that more flooded cities and a worsening of storms such as hurricanes are likely consequences of runaway climate change, and to remind people of just how devastating such disasters can be.Were his slides less detailed than they could have been? Yes. When he presented the dangers did he sometimes gloss over possible caveats? Sure. But he was trying to cram a lot of technical info into a 90 minute movie to be seen by the general public without boring them to death. I thought he did a good job of conveying the dangers in a reasonably accurate and entertaining matter, which is exactly what made the movie so effective. Obviously I don't know what Gore was thinking. Maybe he was just out to make a buck and had ill intentions. But in his shoes I might have made the same decisions. It all comes down to what you're trying to accomplish. If your target is a bunch of people who are concerned about climate change and one of your principle goals is to pass on ideas to them about how to change their lifestyles to reduce greenhouse gasses, then what you describe would be a novel and possibly very effective approach.In Gore's case, I suspect his primary target was the skeptics, and his primary goal was to convince them that there was significant danger that was being ignored in Washington. Earlier this decade lots of people didn't take the issue very seriously. If I were him and I thought I had knowledge that there could well be an impending disaster, and that the only chance to avert it is to convince people of its validity, my goal would be to convince as many people as possible as fast as possible of the danger. Flying around to speak to large audiences in cities around the world would be an efficient way to do this. Maybe he should have also tried some of the things you’re suggesting, but I can see why he took the actions he did. I'm sure Gore could be living in a more environmentally friendly way if he tried. But I think he has educated a lot of people about the basics of GW who would have never paid much attention to it in a reasonably accurate way. And I think some level of fear is needed to get the public to demand action on the issue.Have fun in Chicagoland. I'm back in CA this week where it's nice and warm.

I never liked the pure puzzle games, but I loved the adventure games. Hardly anyone makes them anymore since they are too intellectual for today's average gamer. Your first link was more charitable towards the movie than I am, ending with: "Overall, our verdict is that the 9 points are not "errors" at all".Your second link had this to say: "How well does the film handle the science? Admirably, I thought." It then went on to address two minor errors/exaggerations. I was not aware of these, but I am in agreement with the author that neither are of much concern to the point of the movie.In total, it looks like there is only one falsehood that has been found in the entire movie: you can't visually see the effect of the clean air act in the ice cores, but that has nothing to do with CO2/global warming anyway and was probably just an honest mistake. There are also a couple of minor exaggerations and the two more major parts that I pointed out which could mislead the audience but were still factual.All in all, despite the obvious motivation Gore would have to bend facts to agree with Democratic politics, his movie was more accurate than a lot of the science programming you'd see on the Discovery Channel in the US, so I really can't complain too much. That also annoyed me. I had to struggle not to laugh during a couple of the cheesy transitions when it cuts to Gore in a dramatic, still pose. I could also have done with less details about his personal life. To rephrase what I was saying before, there are three basic steps to making things better. 1) Convince people there's a problem. Then 2) Develop strategies and laws that can be applied to businesses and try to get them passed, and 3) Develop and communicate ideas for how individuals can improve things. What you want to see is much better for 3 but I think would have made 1 and 2 less effective. I think that Gore's approach was fantastic for 1 and will strongly drive 2, but he hasn't done as much for 3. Maybe he needs to change tacts and work on 3 for a bit - this would require him to become a more effective role model as you want to see - or maybe we need someone else with less baggage to step in here. What we are seeing is almost certainly beyond the slow paced cycles of nature. Ice that has been frozen for more the 50,000 years is melting and we are only at the beginning of the projected increase in temperature. Of course it won't be the end of the world, and I know that some environmental crazies like to make this claim, but it doesn't mean that we won't run into terrible problems as a result of the sudden warming. Based on past trends, statistically I am more likely to be killed by a stray deer than by terrorists, so I consider conservative "the terrorists are going to get us" fear mongering irrational and I hate it. Global warming on the other hand is a very rational thing to be afraid of because the science tells us that there is an ~X probability of Y devastation that would lead to millions of deaths. I wish you could just present the evidence and have people act on it, but human nature is to ignore long term consequences unless you repeatedly pound the facts into their heads that there is significant danger.Got to go. Hope you're having a good Christmas!

Yeah, I used to love those games. Unfortunately I don't have much time for computer games anymore, and most of those old fun ones don't work on modern computers. Ok, I did not quite understand what you were saying before. To summarize it: hurricane frequency and intensity is likely to increase as a result of global warming, but the vast majority of hurricanes are less destructive than Katrina. To use Katrina as the example in the movie bothers you because that can't result from most hurricanes. I suppose I agree with that assessment at current sea levels. It may happen to New Orleans again, but if so it will again be because of engineering problems. Though in the future, if we have dozens or hundreds of cities hiding behind levees to ward off the rising seas, the rate of failures due to hurricanes may become a more regular issue. If GW models are correct and temperature rises continue to accelerate, the damage to humans and ecosystems will be very significant. I don't deny that this can happen naturally as well. Every 100,000 years or so ice ages and warm periods sweep over the earth, shuffling which areas are habitable and reshaping ecosystems. But this is so infrequent as to make me not care, and it does not make me feel any better about doing it to ourselves. Sorry, I wrote that quickly and sloppily. I don't mean to say that I am personally afraid of getting killed by GW - that would be irrational, like being afraid of terrorists getting you. The people who may be in danger are those who will be living in impoverished parts of the world that may turn into deserts, or the areas that depend on snow pack and glaciers for drinking water. And if the ice melts faster than projected there could be great hardship and deaths as hundreds of millions of people relocate away from costal cities. My point is that these are real dangers that may face a sizeable fraction of the earth's future population. I also don't want to see the mass extinctions humans are causing to be exacerbated by this problem. So I agree that it is wrong to scare people into acting because they are afraid for their own safety. But these dangers are significant, and humans are notorious for ignoring future problems that seem abstract. That's why I think these dangers need to be beaten into all of our heads, repeatedly, until we disprove them, or acknowledge them and take action.And I guess Al Gore did not emphasize such a distinction, so perhaps in that sense he was being a bit of a fear mongerer.

Well, I think Katrina is a demonstration of how people insist on living in places that are known to be dangerous or even doomed. It was known that the levees could not withstand a powerful hurricane. This did not stop people from living there. After the disaster, levees are being rebuilt stronger (we hope), but it is still known hurricanes occasionally will come along that will still have the power to break them. People still choose to live there. Out in CA hundreds of thousands of people still choose to live in areas that are virtually certain to get burned or are on earthquake fault lines. You may not know when disasters will come along to destroy these places, but you know they will come eventually, and yet people still put their lives at risk. The same thing will happen with rising sea levels. Insurance companies will stop covering homes and sea levels will rise, but people will refuse to leave the city that they love and will build walls around their city instead. These walls will eventually fail and the city will flood. Perhaps that is just evolution in action, as you said. At the end of the film he does make suggestions about what can be done to cut our CO2 impact. I agree that the emphasis is more on the danger than on the solutions, but as I've said before I think that is justified because at the time people still needed to be convinced of the danger. I don't think I'm blind about these things just because I agree with the liberal POV. For example, I agree with most things Michael Moore preaches, but his movies are full of lies and I don't trust him at all. We will probably have to just agree to disagree on this point, but I did not get anywhere near the same sense out of Gore. As I've said before, Gore covered a lot of topics, and there is only so much you can do in 90 minutes. And since he was aiming at a non-technical audience, spending too much time on data collection techniques, reconstruction models, etc, would have lost a large fraction of his viewers.

I completely agree that the personal sidetracks were out-of-place, and I cringed whenever one of them came on.Also, after having had more time to think about it, I think I am coming around to agree with you more. Climate change is a long term danger, not a short term one. My opinion is that long term dangers such as this are important to prepare for, but that does not give you the excuse to exaggerate the immediate threats. I agree with the message, but it was carried out in a deceptive way.That said, it's still a far cry from the exaggerations and lies of your typical Michael Moore movie. I certainly would not say that Gore is as bad as Moore .

I must be doing something wrong. This is a debate forum and I keep agreeing with people instead of arguing with them. As for Sicko, that did seem more evenhanded than Bowling for Columbine or F911, and based on my own dealings with health insurance companies I am fully prepared to believe that there isn't a shred of honesty between them. If only he had restrained himself and not done the Cuba bit at the end I think it would have been a really good movie.

I share Moore's views on most social issues, but I really don't trust the facts he brings up in his movies. I also haven't done a lot of research to back up my distrust, so I could be giving him an unfair rap, but I am skeptical.