For being a liar and a hypocrite, our new Wanker of the Week is Al Gore, the man who describes himself as the man who "used to be the next President of the United States". This is slightly funny, I suppose, which is just as well because it's actually the only joke he knows. He did attempt another one at the recent Oscars ceremony - he declared "My fellow Americans, I'm going to take this opportunity right here and now to formally announce my intentions to ..." before the orchestra broke in and he walked off the stage. Not exactly side-splitting.
That he should have won an Oscar for his film "An Inconvenient Truth" is a joke of major proportions, however, because a truth is just what it is not. It is, basically, a very long lie based on no reputable science and if you're a cynic like The GOS you'll probably think it was designed to further the money-making efforts of Gore's ethical investment company.
The main point of the movie is that, unless we do something very serious, very soon about carbon dioxide emissions, much of Greenland's 630,000 cubic miles of ice is going to fall into the ocean, raising sea levels over twenty feet by the year 2100.
Where's the scientific support for this claim? Well actually there isn't any. According to the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a rise in sea level of between 8 and 17 inches is predicted by 2100. Gore's film therefore exaggerates the rise by about 2,000 percent!
Even 17 inches is likely to be high because it assumes that the concentration of methane, an important greenhouse gas, is growing rapidly. In fact it isn't - atmospheric methane concentration hasn't changed appreciably for seven years.
And Greenland? Patrick Michaels, senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute and well-known author of global warming texts, recounts how satellite data published in November 2005 revealed that Greenland was losing about 25 cubic miles of ice per year. Dividing that by 630,000 yields the annual percentage of ice loss, which, when multiplied by 100, shows that Greenland was shedding ice at 0.4 percent per century. And "was" is the operative word - in February 2006 another paper was published in America showing that the recent acceleration of Greenland's ice loss had suddenly reversed.
So, Al Gore, your film's a bit of a porky, then? Never mind, I expect you meant well.
So why the hell did this farrago of celluloid nonsense win an Oscar, then? According to Chris Reed, one of America's most influential bloggers, it's because "Academy Awards voters have a habit of picking movies that they think reflect well on them - movies that showcase favourite causes ("Crash"), tell the stories of America's victims ("Dances With Wolves") or illustrate how the people who live between the coasts are all philistines ("American Beauty"). A computer programmed to design a movie that hits all of Hollywood's buttons could not have done better than Gore did with his lecture/sermon/harangue on global warming."
And as Michael Baines has kindly pointed out to The GOS, Al Gore doesn't even take his own predictions seriously. The Tennessee Center for Policy Research has pointed out that Gore's Tennessee home uses energy at more than 20 times the national average rate.
They say "Gore deserves a gold statue for hypocrisy. His mansion, located in the posh Belle Meade area of Nashville, consumes more electricity every month than the average American household uses in an entire year, according to the Nashville Electric Service (NES).
In his documentary, the former Vice President calls on Americans to conserve energy by reducing electricity consumption at home.
The average household in America consumes 10,656 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year, according to the Department of Energy. In 2006, Gore devoured nearly 221,000 kWh-more than 20 times the national average.
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.
Gore's extravagant energy use does not stop at his electric bill. Natural gas bills for Gore's mansion and guest house averaged $1,080 per month last year.
"As the spokesman of choice for the global warming movement, Al Gore has to be willing to walk the walk, not just talk the talk, when it comes to home energy use," said TCPR president Drew Johnson.
In total, Gore paid nearly $30,000 in combined electricity and natural gas bills for his Nashville estate in 2006."
And you don't need us to point it out - that's a terrible lot of hot air.
One last point: just how seriously should we be taking this award anyway? I mean, we're talking about an award given to a global warming documentary by a lot of people who mainly live in California. You remember California? That's the state where the latest vogue is to have a massive air conditioning system - in the garden.
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