Al Gore’s home and business office uses a great deal of electricity. It recently ran a bill for electricity and natural gas of $2,400 in one month. Meanwhile Bush’s “home” is heated and cooled using a geothermal heat pump system. After this, the analysis and truth simply falls apart.
The email had two pictures, the top picture was Gore’s mansion and picture below it was Bush’s “home." Unfortunately, even these photographs were a sham.
Thru a simple google.com search, I found real photos of Al Gore's home and business and George Bush's vaction house. The white house is Al Gore's home and office in Nashville. The ranch struture is George Bush's vacation house in Crawford.
The green house is 4,000 sqft? Not likely. And, notice the large electric air-cooled air conditioner next to it? The green house is actually the original house at the ranch and is only used as a guest house.
The ranch house is only one of several buildings at the Bush "complex." Notice what a lovely day it was when the inner group took a stroll around the ranch house?
Bush has never made this place his home. He had it designed and built, starting in 1998, when he was already living in the governor's mansion in Austin. This "home" is a vacation spot, that's all. This house is NOT the residence of the President of the United States, and it never has been.
Wikipedia says architect David Heymann was hired to design a limestone house for the ranch.
I want to stay in touch with real Americans," said the President to a crowd of Crawford residents shortly after the 2001 inaugural ceremonies. As the locals knew, the President and the First Lady had already put those plans in motion several years earlier by purchasing a spread in the heart of "real America" during his second term as governor of Texas. Flush with a $14.9-million profit from the sale of the Texas Rangers in 1998, the couple had set out in search of a retreat within easy driving distance of the Governor's Mansion in Austin. When the Bushes came across a 1,550-acre tract 20 miles west of Waco just outside the town of Crawford (population 701), they took a second look.
Gore's power use:
Al Gore's home does use a great deal of power, but why?
1. Nashville is fairly cold in the winter and very humid during the summer. A majority of the cost for air-conditioning in the east is dehumidifying, not cooling,
2. Being an international business, Gore's offices have a high computer cooling load, and
3. Gore occupies his home year-round.
Comparing a power bill of $2,400 for a 10,000 sqft office and home to the average single family home is comparing apples and oranges.
Bush's power use:
The email completely fails to address Bush's power use, but (having designed air conditioning systems for 15 years) we can make some simple inferences:
1. While hot, Crawford is not humid during the summer. If Bush's ranch were in the east, a geothermal heat pump would not be sufficient to keep it cool in the summer.
2. Geothermal heat pump systems use inefficient compressors to transfer heat between a building and a heat sink. The compressor is the major energy hog in a heat pump system. All Bush is saving is the cost of running a boiler or cooling tower.
3. Bush is only at the house for a week or two at a time; not even enough time to run up a representative monthly electricity bill. How much electricity does he and his entourage use while at the Crawford ranch?
4. Why is there no mention of the power consumption of the green house?
Despite the lies and misinformation, a more interesting question remains: By allowing his architect to design an eco-friendly vacation house, at great cost, isn't the President agreeing with the Nobel Prize winner that environmentalism makes for good economics?
Text of the email:
Here's some interesting information.
You can check this out on Snopes.com under "The Story of Two Houses"
House #1 A 20 room mansion ( not including 8 bathrooms ) heated by
natural gas. Add on a pool ( and a pool house) and a separate guest
house, all heated by gas. In one month this residence consumes more
energy than the average American household does in a year. The
average bill for electricity and natural gas runs over $2400. In
natural gas alone, this property consumes more than 20 times the
national average for an American home. This house is not situated
in a Northern or Midwestern "snow belt" area. It's in the South.
House #2 Designed by an architecture professor at a
leading national university. This house incorporates every
"green" feature current home construction can provide. The house is
4,000 square feet ( 4 bedrooms ) and is nestled on a high prairie in the
American southwest. A central closet in the house holds geothermal
heat-pumps drawing ground water through pipes sunk 300 feet into the
ground. The water (usually 67 degrees F. ) heats the house in the winter
and cools it in the summer. The system uses no fossil fuels such as oil or
natural gas and it consumes one-quarter electricity required for a
conventional heating/cooling system. Rainwater from the roof is collected
and funneled into a 25,000 gallon underground cistern. Wastewater from
showers, sinks and toilets goes into underground purifying tanks and then
into the cistern. The collected water then irrigates the land
surrounding the house. Surrounding flowers and shrubs native to the area
enable the property to blend into the surrounding rural landscape.
~~~~~
HOUSE #1 is outside of Nashville, Tennessee; it is the abode of
the "environmentalist" Al Gore.
HOUSE #2 is on a ranch near Crawford,
Texas; it is the residence the of the President of the United States,
George W. Bush.
An "inconvenient truth".
