Sunday, October 28, 2007

Neocon "Inconvenient Truth" of Bush and Gore Homes Full of Lies

I received an email, which has been whipping around the internet, showing pictures of George Bush’s modest, energy efficient, home in Crawford, Texas and Al Gore’s expansive, power gobbling, home in Tennessee. The basic premise of the email was true, but its creator just couldn’t keep from lying.


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.

Fake photo of Al Gore's mansion
Fake photo of George Bush's 'home'


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.

Al Gore's real home and office

George Bush's real vacation house

Bush's entourage takes a stroll around the vacation house


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".

15 comments:

Sub Lumen said...

Very nicely done! The scope of your analysis was impressive. I will definitely be revisiting your blog, which I discovered via the Skilled Political Debate group at BlogCatalog.

I blog a bit about politics myself, at www.sublumen.com
Please visit when/if you can.

Anonymous said...

Which one of Gore's multiple houses are you talking about?

likwidshoe said...

That white house is Al Gore's old house.

He built is after he lost the race to the real White House.

You didn't debunk anything.

Nice try though.

Anonymous said...

Actually, what you're trying to "debunk" has been verified by Snopes.

You also don't seem to understand how a geothermal heat pump works.

Anonymous said...

You almost had me buying into your version of the truth... but the truth is, geothermal heat pumps are the MOST efficient means of heating and air conditioning ever devised... They utilize the earth's surface temperature (at about 5' below the surface it is about 57 degrees give or take a bit) to begin at a moderate temperature and then compress gas to lower the temps even further. In the winter heat pumps easily generate 120 degree heat and in the summer they easily cool everywhere in the world. If you doubt me check out the Dept. of Energy website. Sorry dude... your analysis is flawed.

GreyTheory said...

Anonymous ... How many cooling systems have you designed? I've done this for fifteen years. You are wrong and show your ignorance in your own analysis.

The most efficient cooling system is a 'swamp cooler' because it uses no compressor. A swamp cooler cools by an evaporative cycle, rather than by refrigerant expansion.

The compressor, which compresses a refrigerant from gas to liquid, is the greatest user of energy in any cooling system.

You're making the wrong comparison. You're comparing heat rejection while ignoring heat transfer. You're comparing geothermal against a boiler and a cooling tower, ignoring the compressor in both systems.

In this case, the boiler would be little used; it's Texas. Second, a cooling tower for this house would use no more than 5hp motor and run intermittently. While geothermal would require no energy to create a heatsink, a cooling tower requires very little energy to maintain the same heatsink.

However, the compressor for this house would use as much energy as any building's air conditioning system. The heat transfer system in geothermal or a tower system is identical. Nearly the same energy use.

However ... This post was not even about cooling systems, but petty and continuous lying.

Unknown said...

I live in Nashville near Gore's home. I promise you, he does not live there year round.

Marc Stauber said...

The Gore manse is indeed an energy eating property. Suck it up. The Bush home is more green and in line with current green building practices. Btw, Snopes verfies and cites why and how the Gore home is a massive energy eater.

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