Lore wrote:It's the easiest thing in the world to point at someone else as an excuse for not doing what's right.
ennui2 wrote:Lore wrote:It's the easiest thing in the world to point at someone else as an excuse for not doing what's right.
In that respect, Al Gore has been a disaster, by stepping into the hypocrisy trap. It's chum in the water for the right-wing. Unfortunately nobody of his stature came around who lives even close to a no-impact-man lifestyle.
"By marketplace standards, the house is startlingly small," says David Heymann, the architect of the 4,000-square-foot home.
Constructed from a local limestone, the house has eight rooms in a long, narrow design to take advantage of views and breezes. A porch stretches across the back and both ends of the house, widening at one end into a covered patio off the living room.
The tin roof of the house extends beyond the porch. When it rains, it's possible to sit on the patio and watch the water pour down without getting wet. Under a gravel border around the house, a concrete gutter channels the water into a 25,000-gallon cistern for irrigation. In hot weather, a terrace directly above the cistern is a little cooler than the surrounding area.
Wastewater from showers, sinks and toilets goes into purifying tanks underground — one tank for water from showers and bathroom sinks, which is so-called "gray water," and one tank for "black water" from the kitchen sink and toilets. The purified water is funneled to the cistern with the rainwater. It is used to irrigate flower gardens, newly planted trees and a larger flower and herb garden behind the two-bedroom guesthouse. Water for the house comes from a well.
The Bushes installed a geothermal heating and cooling system, which uses about 25% of the electricity that traditional heating and air-conditioning systems consume. Several holes were drilled 300 feet deep, where the temperature is a constant 67 degrees. Pipes connected to a heat pump inside the house circulate water into the ground, then back up and through the house, heating it in winter and cooling it in summer. The water for the outdoor pool is heated with the same system, which proved so efficient that initial plans to install solar energy panels were cancelled.
The features are environment-friendly, but the reason for them was practical — to save money and to save water, which is scarce in this dry, hot part of Texas.
ennui2 wrote:Lore wrote:It's the easiest thing in the world to point at someone else as an excuse for not doing what's right.
In that respect, Al Gore has been a disaster, by stepping into the hypocrisy trap. It's chum in the water for the right-wing. Unfortunately nobody of his stature came around who lives even close to a no-impact-man lifestyle.
nobody of his stature came around who lives even close to a no-impact-man lifestyle.
dissident wrote: Why is the presentation of scientific facts supposed to be about who can live the most ascetic lifestyle?
Lore wrote:A lot of the BAU crowd, would just love it if Al Gore went from one conference to another by train, or floated across the Atlantic in a sailboat. Maybe then he'd only be a quarter as affective.
A lot of the BAU crowd, would just love it if Al Gore went from one conference to another by train, or floated across the Atlantic in a sailboat. Maybe then he'd only be a quarter as affective.
He'd still be labeled as a kook for doing it while giving the opposition an even greater chance to slow up and shoot the messenger because they hate the message.
I'd give Al a carbon pass to keep spreading the message any day over the CEO of Exxon Mobile flying around in his corporate jet from one business holding to another.
the purpose is "to have a billion voices with one message - to demand climate action now" from governments rather than to continue the world's reliance on fossil fuels.
The conversation on global warming has been stalled because a shrinking group of denialists fly into a rage when it's mentioned.
Al Gore
As human beings, we are vulnerable to confusing the unprecedented with the improbable. In our everyday experience, if something has never happened before, we are generally safe in assuming it is not going to happen in the future, but the exceptions can kill you and climate change is one of those exceptions.
Al Gore
When you have the facts on your side, argue the facts. When you have the law on your side, argue the law. When you have neither, holler.
Al Gore
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quote ... LQS98p6.99
For the many scientists who consider themselves both political conservatives and supporters of the consensus position on anthropogenic climate change, ideology and party affiliation provide little shelter from attacks and harassment. Katharine Hayhoe is an atmospheric scientist at Texas Tech University, a political conservative and an evangelical Christian. In 2007, Terry Maple, the co-author of Newt Gingrich's forthcoming book on environmental entrepreneurship, asked her to write a chapter reviewing the scientific facts surrounding climate change. For most of his political career, Gingrich championed the virtues of science, but last year, while campaigning in the Republican presidential primaries, he dropped Hayhoe's chapter after Rush Limbaugh discovered her contribution and ridiculed her as a "climate babe."
"Nice to hear that Gingrich is tossing my climate chapter in the trash," Hayhoe tweeted on hearing the news. "100+ unpaid hours I could've spent playing w[ith] my baby . . ." The day after Hayhoe's tweet, the American Tradition Institute (ATI), a conservative think tank, announced that it had filed a FOIA request with Texas Tech University "relating to collaboration on a book, using public time and resources." The ATI's paperwork referred to Hayhoe as a "climate activist."
"I can delete the hate mail I got calling me a 'Nazi bitch whore climatebecile,'" Hayhoe says, "but responding to nuisance lawsuits and investigations takes up enormous amounts of time that could be better spent teaching, mentoring, researching, doing my job."
David Schnare heads the Environmental Law Center at the ATI, which since its inception in 2009 has sued the employers and former employers of a number of climate scientists, including Mann and James Hansen, the outspoken head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. The ATI wants the researchers' correspondence and research records. "We are not a venal organization," Schnare says. "Our law center seeks to defend good science and proper governmental behavior and to expose the converse. Citizens have the right to know how government money is spent. Scientists who feel they shouldn't have to respond to these requests shouldn't be working in a government institution, because this is the price of entering."
Mann directs Penn State University's Earth System Science Center. Several months ago, he arrived at his office with an armload of mail. Sitting at his desk, he tore open a hand-addressed envelope and began to pull out a letter. He watched as a small mass of white powder cascaded out of the folds and onto his fingers. Mann jerked backward, letting the letter drop and holding his breath as a tiny plume of particles wafted up, sparkling in the sunlight. He rose quickly and left the office, pulling the door shut behind him. "I went down to the restroom and washed my hands," he says. "Then I called the police."
For someone describing an anthrax scare, Mann is surprisingly nonchalant. "I guess," he says, "it's so much a part of my life that I don't even realize how weird it is."
"Weird" is perhaps the mildest way to describe the growing number of threats and acts of intimidation that climate scientists face. A climate modeler at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory answered a late-night knock to find a dead rat on his doorstep and a yellow Hummer speeding away. An MIT hurricane researcher found his inbox flooded daily for two weeks last January with hate mail and threats directed at him and his wife. And in Australia last year, officials relocated several climatologists to a secure facility after climate-change skeptics unleashed a barrage of vandalism, noose brandishing and threats of sexual attacks on the scientists' children.
Violence unleashed against green activists is on the rise. London-based rights group Global Witness says more than 700 environmentalists were murdered in the decade that began in 2001. Either because documentation of such crimes is more thorough in Brazil than elsewhere or because its frontier is the most violent—perhaps both—more than half of the global death toll was recorded within its borders. In any event, Brazil is considered the most dangerous country in which to work as an environmentalist today.
Gore had started the first full day of events at the annual gathering in Davos by telling delegates: “This is the year of climate”.
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