Carlson on Gore: "[H]e's going to global warming hell"
On the March 21 edition of MSNBC's Tucker, host Tucker Carlson suggested that "if [global warming] is a moral issue" then former Vice President Al Gore is "a major sinner" who is "going to global warming hell," because, according to Carlson, Gore "won't even join [the] fight" against global warming by reducing his own carbon emissions. Carlson's remarks came in response to Gore's testimony before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works earlier in the day, during which Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) asked Gore to pledge "to consume no more energy in your residence than the average American household by one year from today." Carlson aired a brief clip of Inhofe requesting that Gore commit to the pledge, then showed only a small part of Gore's response, and -- ignoring its substance -- went on to cite the fact that Gore "rides on private aircraft," and further asserted, "I use less carbon than he does. That's an outrage."
From Gore's response to Inhofe during the March 21 hearing:
GORE: We live a carbon-neutral life, Senator, and both of my businesses are carbon neutral. We buy green energy. We do not contribute to the problem that I'm joining with others to try to help solve. We pay more for green energy, and I think that utilities ought to provide more green energy that doesn't produce CO2, and we are in the midst of installing solar panels.
Media Matters for America has noted previous examples of media figures, including Carlson, ignoring or misrepresenting Gore's efforts to reduce his carbon footprint.
From the March 21 edition of MSNBC's Tucker:
CARLSON: This an exchange between Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma and the former vice president Al Gore. This happened just about 40 minutes ago. Watch this.
[begin video clip]
INHOFE: I'm going to ask you if you would like to commit here today -- do you know how many hundreds of thousands of fans you have out there that would like to follow your lead. And this pledge merely says, as you can read it up there, that you're agreeing to consume no more energy in your residence than the average American household by one year from today, not right now. You've got a whole year to try to do this.
Now, the one thing I'd like to have you not use in response to this question, which is a yes or no question, is the various gimmicks.
[...]
GORE: You know, one of the other recommendations that I would have is that you also set standards for green energy produced by utilities, and one reason I say that in response to what you are saying here is that that's what we purchase, and we pay more for it because it's still relatively uncommon.
INHOFE: Senator Gore --
GORE: If I could just --
INHOFE: Well, you can't.
[end video clip]
CARLSON: OK, see, Rich [Masters, Democratic strategist], here's the problem that strikes me for Al Gore. You know, global warming is real. I'm not attacking the idea of global warming. But if you're running around casting a wagging finger at the rest of humanity and saying, "I am more moral than thou," and you won't even pledge to use the same amount of energy, green or not, the same amount of energy, emit the same amount of carbon as the average American, then you're an appalling phony who ought to be quiet.
It seems to me it's kind of hard for him -- he'll never be able to live up to that standard he sets for others, so he can't run.
[...]
CARLSON: My point is this: He is not setting this up as a scientific debate. This is not a question that we work out through analyzing data. This is a moral question, this is a question of virtue. Are you good enough to join the fight against global warming? And he won't even join that fight. I use less carbon than he does. That's an outrage.
MASTERS: What he is setting up here is he absolutely tying into -- the evangelical movement now, by the way, has come to the point, and they're calling it a moral issue. And it is a moral issue in America. Is it scientific issue? Yes. Is it political issue? Yes. Is it a moral issue? Will this country decide --
CARLSON: Then he's immoral. If it's a moral issue, then let me just say -- and I don't think it is, I think it's a scientific issue -- if it is a moral issue, he's a major sinner. I mean, he's going to global warming hell. Because he rides on private aircraft. Don't you think he ought to take the bus?
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I think he was better at Dancing With the Stars he is being a pundit.
i don't know i kind of like tucker
According to the generally accepted rules about religion, you can't condemn someone to Hell unless you yourself are a True Believer.
Actually, you can't condemn anyone to Hell, period. According to the book, you may warn about Hell, but it up to God only to determine who goes where, and when.
gore pays extra to have his household energy produced by either wind or solar. period.
I e-mailed Gore and offered a big discount on Carbon Offset Credits that I own.
His people e-mailed back and said my publicity dep't is not what they're looking for. I guess when you're selling absolution, ya have to offer a whole package...
you realize you're reduced to babbling nonsense?
Does your balance sheet show net positive on your Carbon Footprint, or are you in deficit? If it's a deficit, you must get going on the required mitigation. It's a personal responsibility issue.
Can you follow that? If not, go back to your SuperMarios game.
I recycle extensively. I do it because it's the right thing to do. It has noting to do with absolution.
What the F*ck are you talking about? Why are you lying about Al Gore? Do you have any facts to contribute to the debate?
That's a great idea. Maybe we can replace welfare with carbon credits by letting liberal global warming alarmists pay people to sit home and not drive anymore.
or maybe you guys could stop all these "either or" false choices and join in solving the problem. not likely, though.
Nice one. You got a liberal-stereotype twofer in there - welfare queens and global warming scaremongers. You could have gotten a triple-play if you'd mentioned Michael Moore or Barbra Streisand...
And the amazing thing is that he still had the Clintons sitting on the bench.
He's probably saving them for the second game in the double header. But Leather's worried that the second game may be cancelled because of severe icing conditions predicted back in the 1970's.
perhaps we should drop carbon credits in favor of the pollution credits that republicans sell. Remember those? (cough, cough...)
Sen. Inhofe's suggestion may have been a little grandstanding, but Gore could have emphatically said "Yes", instead of all this "carbon-neutral", "carbon-footprint", "green energy" talk.
Despite the media's love affair with Gore and this issue, he just comes off as a hypocrite.
well, with you and your comrades. nothing could change that.
I don't know. Tommy has become quite the (accidental) authority on hypocrisy over the years. I can no longer deny his apparent expert ability at recognizing hypocrisies seemingly everywhere, but in his own arguments.
Tommy, Gore looks nothing like a hypocrite. It was 100% pure partisan hate by Innofe and the Repubs. Al Gore has done more for the cause of Global Warming than any other America.
It's a scam. If you mean he's the biggest con artist of all-time you are right.
nah, bush convinced you guys he was fit for the office of president. talk about a con job. but you ate it up.
It's awesome. He somehow got the entire scientific community to back him in his plan to make some money off selling carbon credits.
Fortunately, you can buy a pretty decent climatologist just for the cost of beer and kung pao. Those guys don't make squat.
You're just a bucket of right-wing spew. Your opinions mean nothing, thank God.
SAVE DEMOCRACY, VOTE FOR A DEMOCRAT!!
Attack the messenger, let the planet burn!!
He is on a vital mission promoting the word, and the moron thinks that calling him names for using a plane makes him a hypocryt!! So; he should take a bus? That would stiffle him, huh!!
Tommy, are you really calling him a hypocryt after his over 30 years of enviromental advocacy?? Which is he a "tree hugger" or a "fat cat hypocryt" ??? Stick too a story, pick one side of the fence of the other!!
Sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo weeeeeeeek you should find that cave in the wilderness and wait for the end of days, and don't forget that tin-foil hat!
He was VP for 8 years and did nothing for the environment.
check the constitution. his powers were limited.
Not much Gore could have done other than break ties in the Senate. Clinton was the President and deserves some blame for not instituting more environmentally friendly laws, although, to be fair, I think Clinton did better than his predecessors for the most part.
What could have Gore really done as VP? Oh, Cheney sure is doing his part with that energy plan, huh? Never feel like criticizing him, though. Tucker? Right wing F***tards? Hell no, he's their hero. Got us into Iraq and all. American hero.
Actually, maybe with these new expanded powers of the office of Vice President, the next one could do even more. Oh, wait, not unless a rehash of Iran/Contra, this time invloving American blood and wrecking the standing of the US throughout the world. That don't matter though, we're the biggest kid on the block, so we really don't need to think about the consequences of our actions.
Gore ought to run for President and choose Chuck Hagel or Jim Webb as a running mate and the theme will be: RENEWABLE ENERGY IS NATIONAL SECURITY! Shut these Chickenhawks and Media Parrots up. Idiots, idiots, IDIOTS!!!
Light a joint or somethin' and lower your blood pressure. Do you people realize how you make yourself look, repeatedly losing it as you do? Name-calling rants just make you look silly and frustrated.
Oh for the days before Iraq, when everybody on earth loved us!
Could you be just a little more absurd--it's funny.
Maybe it is time to ask the real reasons why your country is not loved the world over.Strange that bullies are not loved eh?
I find it remarkable that people often forget how much everyone supported us right after 9-11. Short memories indeed.
Many conservatives have this wierd kind of rationalization going on. They now try to convince us that the majority of countries hated the US all along. They seem to ignore much of the resentment that was created (and genuine goodwill that was vaporized) in the bullying, threats and insults we perpetrated while pushing for the illegal war in Iraq.
When it turned out that the reason for war was completely bogus, we then claimed that "we were all wrong", further deeply insulting the countries that weren't wrong at all and did not go along with the push for war.
It is a story of the guilty neocons playing the victim. Woe be to us that everyone irrationally hates us for no apparent reason of our own doing. --What a load of BS.
Could YOU be any more absurd? In fact you dont even rise to the level of absurdity. We DID have the worlds sympathy after 9/11. Even in IRAN they had huge demonstration in sympathy for the 9/11 victims on the first aniversary of the tradgedy.
http://www.angryharry.com/meWhoControlsTheWesternMedia.htm
France and Germany BOTH are STILL in Afghanistan. Your ridiculing of an absolutly valid point is ludicrous
yes we realize those big words are hard for you.
Excuse me? Are you kidding? What love affair?
Wait, I don't understand how you're trying to paint him as a hypocrite while conceding just about every point in the explanation he gave for the scandal. You seem a little confused, Tommy boy, don't you get that not all energy usage is environmentally destructive?
The big conservative reframing of this issue has been to make it a matter of personal abstemiousness rather than sound energy policy.
President Carter was ridiculed by the right wing for suggesting one might save energy by turning the thermostat down and wearing a sweater. Ever since then, environmentalists have been cast as dour, moralistic killjoys.
Gore has framed energy policy as a "moral issue" because it affects so many lives, American and otherwise. The trivialisation of this fundamental point is cynical and profoundly immoral.
You have once again assigned yourself a task which you will not be able to accomplish: documenting that "right-wing" folks were any more cynical than "left-wing" folks re:Clinton's exhortation to save energy by turning down the thermostat and wearing a sweater
Such a statement is ridiculous.
AND....
...it sounds paranoid.
Clinton's exhortation to save energy by turning down the thermostat and wearing a sweater
Nice try, but you are getting Bill Clinton confused with one James Earl Carter.
Makes sense. They also get George W Bush confused with a competent president.
It never ceases to amaze me how vocal the ignorant are.
The rational/ truth behind Gore saying that he spends more money on green energy is because it doesn’t pollute (or does so at a far lesser level then energy derived from fossil fuel combustion). The amount of energy used is completely irrelevant. The means by which the energy was produced is what matters. If you’re going to consume energy produced by a wind turbine rather then burning coal to drive a motor to create the same electricity then you’re not doing anything bad for the environment now are you? Asking him to use the same amount of energy as the average person whose energy is derived from coal or even nuclear energy simply shows that Inhofe is one of two things: (a) brazenly ignorant or (b) trying to make Gore look bad by using logical fallacy to his advantage, which is far worse then simply being a moron. Feel free to flame me now with your ill-conceived rants about manifest destiny and how global warning is a hippy farce conceived to stupefy rednecks. Please! allow me to relish in being correct! The ability to reason is the greatest thing humans have. Kindly use that gift from time to time and think before you do or write something stupid.
Thanks, Slobbering Jim- Unfortunately, the Dittoheads won't be able to concentrate long enough to read your post, but will instead link to a propaganda video rather than offer any thoughts on the subject.
Hey, look down there V
Carlson is immoral for deliberately editing the response. But I have to say, it is not surprising. After Jon Stewart skewered him on Crossfire, I thought this toady would disappear. And, since his show runs opposite TDS, I'm thinking his audience must be pretty sparse, consisting of rightwing curs and jackasses, and of course Media Matters who watches, I am sure, just to keep the rest of us informed!
The right wingers have a point. Gore was VP for 8 years and didn't lie us into a war, didn't hold clandestine meetings with energy executives to create an energy policy, didn't even shoot a friend in the face with his shotgun, and didn't increase his millions by funneling non-compete contracts to a company he had recently CEO'd. Oh, and he didn't raise a lesbian daughter -- but if he had he would have supported her right to marry. You're right Leatherhead. What a loser!
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4520665474899458831&q=Global+Warming+and+swindle&hl=en
HE IS GOING TO GLOBAL WARMING HELL. Gore and the other Enviros are killing people in Africa with their craziness!!!!!
Great link BTW. Why have I not seen this before? I would like to take Gore and his scientists and the producers of this link and their scientists and sit down and have an old fashioned debate.
I don't doubt that both sides could score points. I am tired of chicken little's and head in the sand types. I just want some honest answers. No political spin or agenda. If in that debate the answer is "we don't know", that would do.
Yeah because a partisan video is SOOO much more convincing than the scientific consensus which is WITHOUT DISPUTE on the side of global warming. Not even a good try.
Yeah...like the IPCC people in the Video, or the Cofounder of Greenpeace, or the MIT/Harvard scientists.
Maybe you should just watch the video.
In fact, try actually listening to the arguments and data.
That's how science is supposed to work.
In fact, several of the IPCC scientists who are part of the "consensus" are in the Video. And they say they don't support anthropogemic global warming.
So what you are saying is false.
Yeah and that MIT scientist says he misrepresented him. The man has a history of making garbage documentaries like how silicone breast implants are GOOD for womens health. I think I will skip the video and the feeling I want that hour of my life back.
That is false, the scientist who you are talking about is not on the video.
Moreover, I would have no doubt that many of the people on this video lost their grants after this video...kinda like rating out the Mafia.
Lastly, most of the information stated in the video could not be edited or misrepresented. If someone says that "Humans are not causing global warming" or "CO2 has never determined global temp." etc, that can't be edited.
Well I think YOU are going to moron hell, the good news is you will probably see Tucker there.
Incredibly, hydrate contains twice the carbon of all fossil fuel, and whereas fossil fuel needs to be burned to emit GHG, hydrate needs only to melt. Briefly, carbon in the soil is "eaten" by microbes, and in the absence of oxygen the microbes emit methane (CH4). Some of that methane gets trapped in ice called hydrate. There is about 400 billion tons of methane trapped in permafrost hydrate (20% of the land on earth is permafrost). 50% of the surface permafrost is expected to melt by 2050, and over 90% by 2100. A release of less than 30 billion tons of methane would be like doubling the CO2 in the air. Worse, there is an estimated 10,000 billion tons of methane hydrate under the ocean. Substantial quantities of this has melted before with catastrophic results (55 million years ago-the PETM ushered in the Age of Mammals, and 250 million years ago-the "Great Dying" killed most life on earth). In other words, the carbon cycle has been upset before (possibly by volcanic eruptions), causing a chain reaction. Mankind's GHG emissions are over 30 times stronger a trigger than past severe runaway global warming events. This means the chain reaction will happen sooner, unfold faster, and therefore be much, much more severe.
This is a key point. It's not that anyone disputes that natural cycles are involved and the Earth has cooled and heated in the past - just that human rapaciousness has sped those cycles up and made them worse.
This also doesn't take into account the pollution factor. We are killing off animal species at record rates, not to mention killing ourselves off with pollution-induced diseases. It takes a TON of natural resources PER DAY to sustain the average consumer in America. We are literally biting off our nose to spite our face.
There comes a point where Gaia will fight back and right the imbalance we have introduced into the natural system. Doesn't it make more sense to fix the problem ourselves and restore balance in a sane, sustainable (and less dramaticly catastrophic) fashion?
Let's keep in mind that we should be very skeptical of Gore because he has so much to gain politically and financially by using scare tactics with global warming.
Lets also keep in mind that Gore uses his own company to get his carbon offsets. It is unclear if and how much money he may be making back in this arrangment because he is a private citizen and does not have to disclose his personal income.
Finally, I quote from the NY Post, "Kyoto, fully enacted by all its parties, would for all its cost reduce global warming by a mere 0.07 degrees Celsius by 2050 - a barely detectable amount." http://www.nypost.com/seven/03222007/postopinion/opedcolumnists/als_warming_lies_opedcolumnists_iain_murray.htm
Are the costs associated with "solving" a problem that is by no means agreed upon justified through the very little impact they will create? We need a debate about the costs and benefits, not morality.
"Lets also keep in mind that Gore uses his own company to get his carbon offsets. It is unclear if and how much money he may be making back in this arrangment because he is a private citizen and does not have to disclose his personal income."
Your point is almost moot enough to not warrant a response, but I'll try anyhow: Gore doesn't OWN the company, he is a stockholder of the company he gets his energy from. This is the ONLY company that services the TN valley with green energy. If Gore wants to use Green Energy, he has NO OTHER CHOICE but to use that one company, especially considering his city did not approve solar panels on residences at the time he was making the lifestyle change to a smaller carbon footprint.
Not trying to split hairs BLR, but I think you're confusing the debate.
You're correct in that Gore has to purchase his energy through Tennessee Vally and has requested the Green Energy option. All well and good, but the problem is he just did this in the last couple of months. Inconvenient Truth had been out for at least six months before he did this. Even President Bush's ranch has been "green" since 2001.
Better late than never, but I'd say it's an Inconvenient Timing issue.
The part I think you're confused about in your rebuttal of the above post is that Gore may or may not own stock in TV (I don't know if he does or not), but he DOES buy his "carbon offsets" from his own company:
http://www.generationim.com/media/pdf-generation-bios.pdf
http://www.generationim.com/
I think that is what the above poster was referring to. If I'm off base please set me straight.
Sorry for the double.
Your link is to an OPINION piece. You do know the difference between OPINION and NEWS, right? Please come back when you have an actual news article or study done by a reputable source.
I am not convinced many conservatives know the difference between opinion and fact. I think that explains most the success of Fox "News" Channel.
Interesting, a cost benefit analysis of catastrophes on a global scale vs happily keeping head in sand.
After their initial “GW doesn’t exist” denial phase, idiots like Carlson now accept there is Global Warming but are now in their “It’s just a natural cycle and we get a few more days at the beach.” phase.
Mother Nature is always coming up with new diseases and viruses to kill us or at least do some weeding out amoung us. We have always used science to find cures, vaccines, and even change government policies to fight this.
Global warming is here, it’s getting warmer, it’s going to change our earths climate patterns in predictable and unpredictable ways, and we better deal with it. Mama nature is not going to be interested in our, “but we’re human”, “we’re special”, “Jesus loves us” story – we’d better start figuring out how to take care of our own ass. Idiots like Carlson do not help.
If these tiny-minded pricks like Imhoff and Carlson would shut their huge pie holes and listen for eleven seconds or so, they would maybe just begin to understand what the Vice President is trying to say. Do they really expect him to ride around the zip-damned world on a donkey cart to bring his urgent message to us?