I know, I know. Who cares what celebrities say or do? I just found this article amusing about what certain high profile green celebs say about saving the planet and what they actually do to save the planet.

Link to story




The part about driving his Prius to the moon was my favorite?

That was an eye-opener! In other "Madonna realted news" - I heard today that she will not appear in court today to finalize the adoption of her latest addition to the fam as she has "previously scheduled engagements"... So, I guess the nanny will take the child?????

Same as Nobel-winning Gore, Arianna Huffington and many other celebs -- they tell US little people what to do -- that's their contribution.

Hopefully, I can try to conserve at home to be a good example to my kids, not to want everything.

Hollywood has definitely had a disconnect from the get go of this green movement. They and many notables have missed the boat on credibility. Take that Green concert where many flew in by private jets and some went back and forth all weekend by helicopters. Then the famous house in Tenn.

Bradgalina, love it, thanks. It was a hoot. They take themselves so seriously. I remember Angelina being a bit pretentious and snobby during a movie media campaign, dropping suggestions for conservation and better living. She then jettied back to Cannes over the weekend. She barely mentioned the movie. The film tanked.

Arnold Schwartzenegger is another one that has me scratching my head -- he talks like an environmentalist, yet commutes by private jet between his home in Brentwood and office in Sacramento almost every day. At least it looks like his local airport will be curtailing his ability to commute now, because they're trying to cut back on large private jet traffic, for safety reasons...

[email="http://www.sacbee.com/111/story/907053.html"]link[/email]



carbon credits -- he should just rent an apartment in Sacramento instead and fly home less frequently, if he doesn't want to look like an absolute hypocrite. It's a free country, if he's got the personal wealth (and private donations) to live a lifestyle like this, that's his business...but at the same time he can't preach to anyone else that they need to conserve resources...

Have you been to deceiver.com? Maybe that's where you got this. It's all about the issue of celebs saying one thing and doing another.

I've been on the judgmental end of this argument a lot. I really do understand both sides of the argument, but I always ask, since when is it all or nothing?

Apparently you can't put forth ANY effort for ANY cause unless you do it 110%! Or else you suck and you're a hypocrite, liar a-hole. People want to shove things far right or far left and there is NO room for anything in the middle.

I caught a lot of crap when I was half-assed vegetarian. I ate fish and seafood only.

"Oh oh oh! Fish don't have feelings, do they?

Lobster scream when they are boiled alive!

Shrimp have faces too, Heather.

I hope you know that when your house was built, thousands of creatures died for it!"

There are those who will say that this treatment is only given to people who "spout" and "preach" their views, but that's wrong. I admit I was a hellraiser about "my" issues when I was younger, but I haven't been a preacher for at least 10 years and I continually get shat upon for my practices. Don't even try to "chip in" for any cause, you'll get the third degree.

You could have just mowed over that nest of baby bunnies. Well, I saw it and thought I might as well mow around it. WTF you a-hole hypocrite, you wear cow hides, you eat screaming lobster, you laugh at KFC abusing chickens and that stray cat deserved a foot in it's mouth after it shat in your garden. Oh ok, I'll just go ahead mow them down.

I actually had someone snort at me just last week when I came inside from smoke break. "You'll kill yourself out there smoking but you can't stand to see an animal hurt."

Well yeah.

What am I missing, in this argument as a whole? Why do I suck because I want to do what I can to help a cause that I'm sensitive to? Do you really think that my becoming an all-out hippie, living on nuts and berries and worshipping The Animal would be MORE conducive? What about me or my lifestyle angers/confuses people so much? I'm not shoving anything down anyone's throat and yet they feel I should be vulnerable to their ridiculous comparisons and should feel enlightened by their "common sense approach." wtf?

I feel compelled to just go poop in my neighbor's dinner. Might as well! The vegetables are tainted anyway!

Can I get a Hell Yeah!

Hell Yeah! Sister

The next time someone jumps you for what you are doing. Just smile and say. Why thank you. It will drive them nuts.

HELL YEAH!!! Lets go smoke some cigars and beat down baby seals.

Sorry if people give you grief for your small inconsistencies. We all have them in our beliefs.

My beef is with true hypocrites. Like if you'd give hagopinion grief for smoking cigars on your way by his desk going to your smoke break. With the rich celebrities, don't talk about how green you are, then rack up 100's of thousands of air travel miles a year with your entourage. That's just too outrageous for me.

heather,who are these people that you let give you any kind of grief? If they're suppose to be friends then it sounds like you need to find new friends. If they're strangers...tell em to F off!


I think the fact that the world is starting to open it's eyes to fact that our planet has a finite amount of resourses is a good thing. I do however think it's absolutely hilarious that all of a sudden it's " cool" and "chic" to be "green"

I just do what I can, how I can, when I can, and not give the Azzholes a thought. I don't get caught up in the whole celebrity and hollywood stuff to begin with. I think they are ALL a bore. Just make your music, write your books, or make your movies. I don't care about your personal lives.

Woe to you, hypocrites! ha. I don't know. Hypocrite is a finger pointing misnomer.

You can give people credit for the positive things they try to accomplish in their lives or you can find their inconsistencies. Seek and ye shall find. Anytime, anyday. In all of us. Hypocrite should be everyone's middle name, IMO.

I admire people who try to use some discipline in their lives and do anything to try and bring good to this planet. Movie stars have a lot of power and money and kudos to the ones who are mature enough to use it in a positive way instead of drinking and drugging their way through life.

Yeah, they use jet planes, but it's part of their job to be world travelers. They have alot of safety issues to deal with in this life too. So, hyypocrites they may be, but they are doing some good as well.

Just depends on which side of the picture you choose to look at.

There's flying because of your job, then there is circling the country a few times during the day just so you can stop and say hi to your wife at work and get back to LA for jury duty. You'll never make me believe that's a necessary part of their lives. They weren't just driving across town on their lunch breaks. The rest of us would go without seeing our spouses that day because of work obligations.

Nobody is perfect, but if you're going to present yourself as somebody trying to promote a cause, you should at least try to practice what you preach. Look at that thing with Al Gore's house. He got called out for being the global warming poster child, yet having a 10k sq/ft house with massive utility bills. He went out and made "green" upgrades to his house and I commend him for recognizing his hypocrisy and fixing it.

If you want to live your life being a half vegan or whatever, fine. My problem starts when you want to push your causes and choices on other people, but not make the sacrifices yourself.

I agree SMan. I won't argue the lack of consistency. And the privledged lifestyle that many feel entitled to. But, even in their wealth, they are working it out in some ways. I'm just saying that it's all relative. I don't see them pushing their agenda on me. It may seem that way when people get up to preach, but it's still my responsibility to decide. Nobody can push an agenda on anyone. We have choices to make. So do they.

I don't have a problem with being called out for hypocrisy. I live trying to find the hypocrisy on a day to day basis in my life. Honestly, I see so much in myself that I do not want to put the effort out to change.

It's all so relative. Sometimes I think that all our good intentions are going go to heck with WWIII. Nuclear war would really mess up the enviornment. And yet, it's a reality.

Still, we can all do better with protecting the enviornment. Baby steps. All of us. Especially in the USA.

So this is what you were doing. You had me looking all over for a polar bear thread.


Btw you were right, I do like Shania. Sorry I disappeared, lost my internet.

Looks like there are still a whole lot of "un" green McMansions being built in Cali...

Mega-Mansions still going strong...

Just this week I had a friend start lecturing me about recycling when he saw me throwing a plastic Gatorade bottle in the trash. I reminded him how since he drove there, alone, in a full size SUV and lives in a 3K+ sq/ft McMansion with just him and his wife that he might not be the best person to lecture others on enviromental impact.

BTW, I love that new Gatorade G2, which a low cal version of Gatorade. It's much less sweet and doesn't cancel out half your workout with the calories that come with chugging a bottle of the regular stuff.

Exactly!

Cool.

Energy Guzzled by Al Gore’s Home in Past Year Could Power 232 U.S. Homes for a Month


I'm glad he made those “energy-efficient” home renovations.

Aww, but Udmas, they're distorting the statistics to make it sound worse than it is. You have to compare month to month, not month to year. It's not so bad when you consider that his monthly energy use could power 19.333 typical homes for the same month.

I think he must have some ultra-fancy energy-guzzling dramatic accent lighting in the special room that houses his Oscar or something, to use that much. Ridiculous!

Not quite, but here is his side, just to be fair.

From Snopes:

Of course his house is going to use more energy than the average home.

What I was wondering is why is he using 10% more after he took steps to make his home more energy-efficient.

They are just miscellaneous people, co-workers, internet snits and casual acquaintences. No one of real importance. My friends do give me crap about it sometimes, for example, I eat a lot of meat now but I still don't buy leather, suede, fur, feathers or wool. It's just too easy NOT to and I'm already in the habit. When I'm shopping for clothes and shoes and I dismiss an article because it has authentic animal products, after all these years I still get The Eye Roll or, "ya know Heather, all that makeup you love is made from animal fats and ground fish scales." To which I exclaim in my most innocent of voices, "OMG for real?" We usually don't hassle each other very much though I admit we've had some knock down-drag out fights when we're drinking.

I've actually tried organic makeup and it sucks. Kiss My Face products cost me a small fortune and I gave most of them away because they just lay on top of my skin and don't blend with anything. It's like smearing chapstick on my face.

Anyway, SMan, on the general topic at hand though, I think it's all relative to lifestyle. The choices Brangelina are making seem out of proportion because they live on a more grand scale than we do. Some may say they are doing very little to help in comparison to the harm they do, but I'll bet the "little" effort they put forth would drastically outweigh the average person and probably most small towns like, oh, um, Haterstown. The thing is, some people don't care at all and I think the celebs "spout" pearls of wisdom on saving the planet because they want people to consider doing SOMETHING or ANYTHING, you know? Let's all pitch in. You aren't supposed to think, "oh, Brad Pitt just flew around the world 17 times so why shouldn't I dump my used oil in the river."

With any celeb though they'll get criticism any which way they go. If the royal couple decides to pitch a tent on a remote island and live off the land, people will find something wrong with that too. There's just no pleasing everyone all the time.

I get it though. Bashing celebs is fun. I do it all the time.

Very well put!

Maybe CO2 isn't a big deal anyway...

Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/03/goddard_polar_ice/
Are the ice caps melting?
By Steven Goddard
Published Thursday 3rd July 2008 15:46 GMT

PBEM The headlines last week brought us terrifying news: The North Pole will be ice-free this summer "for the first time in human history," wrote (http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/exclusive-no-ice-at-the-north-pole-855406.html) Steve Connor in The Independent. Or so the experts at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colorado predict. This sounds very frightening, so let's look at the facts about polar sea ice.

As usual, there are a couple of huge problems with the reports.

Firstly, the story is neither alarming nor unique.

In the August 29, 2000 edition of the New York Times, the same NSIDC expert, Mark Serreze, said (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F00E3DD1E31F93AA1575BC0A9669C8B63):

"There's nothing to be necessarily alarmed about. There's been open water at the pole before. We have no clear evidence at this point that this is related to global climate change."

During the summer of 2000 there was "a large body of ice-free water about 10 miles long and 3 miles wide near the pole". Also in 2000, Dr Claire Parkinson at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center was quoted as saying: "The fact of having no ice at the pole is not so stunning."
Royal Navy submarines at the North Pole, May 1987

Submarines regularly surface (http://www.royal-navy.mod.uk/server?show=nav.2546&outputFormat=print) at the North Pole

Secondly, the likelihood of the North Pole being ice free this summer is actually quite slim. There are only a few weeks left where the sun is high enough to melt ice at the North Pole. The sun is less than 23 degrees above the horizon, and by mid-August will be less than 15 degrees above it. Temperatures in Greenland have been cold this summer, and winds are not favorable for a repeat. Currently, there is about one million km2 more ice than there was on this date last summer.

So what is really going on at the poles?
The Tipping Point that wouldn't tip

Satellite records have been kept for polar sea ice over the last thirty years by the University Of Illinois. In 2007 2008, two very different records were set. The Arctic broke the previous record for the least sea ice area ever recorded, while the Antarctic broke the record for the most sea ice area ever recorded. Summed up over the entire earth, polar ice has remained constant. As seen below, there has been no net gain or loss of polar sea ice since records began.

Global Sea Icea Area 1979-present (http://regmedia.co.uk/2008/07/03/ice_change_large.jpg)

Click to enlarge

Last week, Dr James Hansen from NASA spoke about how CO2 is affecting the polar ice caps.

"We see a tipping point occurring right before our eyes... The Arctic is the first tipping point and it's occurring exactly the way we said it would," he said.

Well, not exactly.

Hansen is only telling half the story. In the 1980s the same Dr Hansen wrote a paper titled Climate Sensitivity to Increasing Greenhouse Gases [pdf (http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/effects/downloads/Challenge_chapter2.pdf)], in which he explained how CO2 causes "polar amplification." He predicted nearly symmetrical warming at both poles. As shown in Figure 2-2 from the article, Hansen calculated that both the Arctic and Antarctic would warm by 5-6 degrees Centigrade. His predictions were largely incorrect, as most of Antarctica has cooled and sea ice has rapidly expanded. The evidence does not support the theory.

In 2004, Dr Hansen returned to the subject. This time, he explained (pdf) (http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2004/2004_Hansen_Nazarenko.pdf) that most of Arctic warming and melting is due to dirty snow from soot, not CO2.

"Soot snow/ice albedo climate forcing is not included in Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change evaluations. This forcing is unusually effective, causing twice as much global warming as a CO2 forcing of the same magnitude," he wrote.

Once the snow dirties, it absorbs sunlight, warms, and quickly melts. Then the land and air above warms, causing higher temperature readings. This affects the Arctic more than the Antarctic simply because there aren't many people living near the Antarctic. The Arctic is polluted by European cities and oil fields in Siberia - where gas flaring generates huge amounts of soot.

In fact, scientists at the University of California have estimated that up to 94 per cent of Arctic melt (http://www.physorg.com/news100354399.html) is due to dirty snow.

In other words, then, Antarctic temperatures and ice are going the opposite direction of what Dr. Hansen predicted, and most of the Arctic warming is due to soot, not CO2. His own research directly contradicts his recent high-profile statements about the Arctic and CO2.

Dr Hansen also talks frequently about the unprecedented temperature rise in the Arctic, yet his own temperature records show that much of the Arctic (including Greenland) was warmer from 1920-1940 than now. The NASA graph below from Nuuk, Greenland is typical of long term records of the region.

Nuuk, Greenland is a key location because it is located in the southwest portion of the island and is not far from the mouth of the Jakobshavn Glacier - the most rapidly moving glacier in the world and a poster child for global warming campaigners. It is also the largest city and capital of Greenland, located just south of the Arctic Circle. NASA literature from the last few years focuses heavily on anomalous melt in southwest Greenland as a concern for sea level rise.
Temperature anamoly at Nuuk

Temperature anamoly at Nuuk

During the ice age scare in the 1970s the Arctic cooled dramatically, and is only now returning to temperatures comparable to sixty years ago. Most of the other Arctic locations with long-term records show similar trends. Long-term NASA temperature records in the Arctic are very sparse, but most show a pattern similar to Nuuk. Most of the other Arctic locations with long-term records show similar trends.

Ostrov (http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=222206740006&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1), Hatanga (http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=222208910006&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1), Gmo (http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=222202920005&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1), Bodo Vi (http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=634011520003&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1), and Reykjavik (http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=620040300000&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1) are good examples.

Another pollution problem reported by NASA is known as the Arctic Haze (http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/MediaAlerts/2006/2006051022278.html). This is a human-generated brown cloud which hovers over the Arctic and traps heat. Additionally, we know that the summer of 2007 had unusually low cloud cover in the Arctic (http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=1&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.arm.gov%2Fscience%2Fresearch%2Fpdf%2FR00143.pdf&ei=5YhnSKOTLp2qiAGSwpCDCw&usg=AFQjCNHV8GPsFFWEJrsfGwZJU5mKeD5w1A&sig2=VUvm8kJts2R_wotunDCGPw), which contributed to the unusual melt. But probably the most important factor in the anomalous "melt" was a spate of strong winds (http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/quikscat-20071001.html) which blew all summer up the Bering Strait, across the pole and out into the warm waters of the North Atlantic. This compressed the sea ice towards Greenland and revealed a large area of open water north of Siberia and Alaska.

But in 2008 we are not seeing that. The winds and temperatures in the Arctic are quite different, and as of today there is more ice than normal (http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/recent365.anom.region.9.html) around Siberia. The Arctic melt season ends in about seven weeks because the sun will get too low. As of June 26 (http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/ARCHIVE/20080626.jpg), there is no indication that the North Pole is in danger of melting.

The BBC's Richard Black wrote an article last week claiming that Arctic Ice is melting "even faster than last year." Looking at the Cryosphere Today map (http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=06&fd=30&fy=2007&sm=06&sd=30&sy=2008), it is abundantly clear that ice is melting more slowly than last year. By the end of June, 2007 the Hudson Bay was essentially ice-free. This year it is close to normal, with cold temperatures predicted for most of the rest of the short melt season. Someone is apparently having trouble reading maps at either the BBC and/or NSIDC.
Northwest Passage?

Last summer, the headlines read "First ever traversal of the Northwest Passage". This sounds very dramatic, except that it is entirely incorrect. As the BBC reported: "In 1905, Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen became the first person to successfully navigate the Northwest Passage, in a wooden sailboat." The Northwest Passage has been navigated at least one hundred times (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6999078.stm) over the last century.

According to official US Weather Bureau records (pdf) (http://docs.lib.noaa.gov/rescue/mwr/050/mwr-050-11-0589a.pdf) from 1922, there was open sailing very close to the North Pole that year. Anthony Watts unearthed (http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/03/16/you-ask-i-provide-november-2nd-1922-arctic-ocean-getting-warm-seals-vanish-and-icebergs-melt/) this quote from the Weather Bureau:

"In fact, so little ice has never before been noted. The expedition all but established a record, sailing as far north as 81 degrees in ice-free water.

We must check back in seven weeks to see if the North Pole is ice-free. My money is on the experts being wrong - again. As the great physicist Dr Richard Feynman said, "Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts." ®

Editor's note: This is one in an occasional series examining "PBEM", or "Policy-based Evidence Making".