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Goatskin thongs and flower miles Rosa Steppanova February 7, 2008 DURING the celebration of Lupercalia young men lashed young women with goat-skin thongs, known as Februa. Valentine’s day, the day for lovers, can be traced to pre-Christian Rome, and one of the ingredients in this ancient fertility rite gave its name to the second month of the year. Valentine’s day is still primarily a day for lovers, and a favourite day for proposing marriage, for the giving of chocolates, heart-shaped balloons, diamond rings, and of course flowers. Did you know that the average journey for every component in a mixed...

Mayor Gavin Newsom announced that San Francisco’s mandatory carbon-footprint reduction program will begin as scheduled on the first of March. “There never was a problem as serious as global warming and we must take action now,” said mayoral spokesman William Simonson. “San Franciscans are among the most enlightened people of the world and they are eager to do their part,” he continued. Phase One of the program requires all citizens to cease jogging and other aerobic activities. “Each time a San Franciscan exhales, they add to the already over-burdened carbon dioxide load of the atmosphere.” Simonson explained that “jogging increases...

Carbon Footprint of the MLA by: Malcolm A. Kline, January 25, 2008 This may not be like the Nazis fighting the Soviets but it is a tad like trial lawyers going after HMOs, where you hope that both sides lose. At least one academic, University of Minnesota at Twin Cities associate professor Mark Fedelty, has concluded that travel to academic conferences contributes to global warming. “However, it is true that air travel puts large amounts of carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, soot, and even water vapor directly into the atmosphere, all of which makes an inordinate and unsustainable contribution to global...

The overriding environmental issue of these times is the warming of the planet. The Democratic hopefuls in the 2008 campaign are fully engaged, calling for large — if still unquantified — national sacrifices and for a transformation in the way the country produces and uses energy. The Republicans do not go much further than conceding that climate change could be a problem and, with the notable exception of John McCain, offer no comprehensive solutions. In 2000, when Al Gore could have made warming a signature issue in his presidential campaign, his advisers persuaded him that it was too complicated and...

The Global Warming movement has been compared to a religion -- albeit one without God, but with a vision of sin and repentance, damnation and salvation. Not quite. Real religion is about improving the human condition by encouraging moral conduct in obedience to the will of God. The proponents of Global Warming are creating a suicide cult, which -- if followed to its logical conclusion -- will lead to human extinction. Forget the Kyoto Treaty. Forget the Luddite Lieberman-Warner bill to cut so-called greenhouse gas emissions by 70% by 2050, which would cost the U.S. an estimated $1 trillion and...

STAVANGER, Norway, Dec. 10 (UPI) -- Former U.S. Vice President and Nobel Peace laureate Al Gore consented to casts of his bare feet being taken to decorate a peace pathway in Norway. Sunday, Gore had the castings taken in Stavanger, from which bronze footprints will be made for a Path of Peace created by the human rights foundation, Point of Peace, the Stavanger Aftenblad newspaper reported. "Funny and nice, a very good idea. I have never heard of this, but I think it is a very good idea," Gore told the newspaper.

Dear friend, In four days I'm going to Bali, Indonesia to address the UN Climate Change Conference. In front of representatives from the world's countries, I will speak about the need for a visionary treaty to be completed, ratified and brought into effect everywhere in the world by 2010. I need you, your friends and family to sign this petition calling for a new, positive leadership role by our elected leaders. I will bring your signatures on stage with me as a clear demonstration of our resolve. This petition shows our commitment to solutions to the climate crisis. Please add...

Al Gore buddy owner of sunken ship that left huge carbon footprint on Antarctic Ocean floor. You’d never read this in the mainstream media: The owner of MS Explorer that sank, leaving a huge carbon footprint at the bottom of the Antarctic Ocean Friday is an acolyte of teensy-weensy carbon footprint crusader Al Gore. The legendary polar expedition ship…”had at least five faults at its last inspection,” according to Greenpeace spokeswoman Bunny McDiarmid. “Maritime records show the MV Explorer has completed more than 40 cruises to the ice, but has lately been suffering maintenance and safety problems.”

A cold, abrupt end to a honeymoon By: DAVE DOWNEY - Staff Writer Encinitas couple that fled Witch Creek fire returns home after cruise ship sinks off Antarctica ENCINITAS -- Three times since marrying June 11 in a beachside ceremony at La Jolla Cove, Trevor Takayama and Torrey Trust have dodged disaster. In August, the Encinitas couple fled an approaching hurricane while camping in a Costa Rican rain forest, on a summerlong honeymoon tour of Central and South America. In October, the Witch Creek fire forced the newlyweds to evacuate the hilltop three-bedroom home she grew up in, near Manchester...

You can thank me (or throw eggs at me), not the miscounting in Florida, for Al Gore not being the president of the United States. You see, Tennessee did not vote for its favorite son in 2000. I was a voter in Tennessee in 2000. Had Gore been able to carry the state that knew him best, there would have been no need for recounts in Florida. Throughout the three weeks of recounting, the media descended upon Florida. No one came to Tennessee to ask us why we had not voted for our own former U.S. Senator. We did not...

During another typically bizarre day for Heather Mills, the former model yesterday urged people to try drinking milk from rats and dogs to help save the planet. Media-shy Heather started off by storming out of a radio interview with London's LBC station. She then drove a gas-guzzling Mercedes 4x4 to Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park to speak about ecological matters - and kept the engine running for part of the morning. Once there she proceeded to launch into an extraordinary ecological rant and exhorted the assembled crowds to try drinking rat's milk instead of cow's milk in a bid to...

As irrefutable evidence mounts that Nobel Laureate Al Gore's climate alarmism is about nothing other than lining his supposedly green pockets with green currency, manmade global warming skeptics around the world wonder when the former vice president's house of cards will collapse. Without question, if Gore were to lose the support of almost universally adoring Hollywoodans, the scam would implode quicker than a Democrat demanding a recount after losing a close election. As such, the following comments by actor and environmentalist Robert Redford, reported by the New Statesman last week, should bring hope to folks not buying the snake oil...

Cannot be posted due to copyright issues: http://blog.wired.com/cars/2007/11/who-is-the-gree.html

The picture of a French president who jogs, vacations in New Hampshire and even seems comfortable around President Bush is so unusual that it has earned Nicolas Sarkozy the nickname of Sarko the American. That, along with France’s toughened stand against Iran’s nuclear appetites, won Mr. Sarkozy bipartisan applause in Washington this month. It is certainly a relief to have a French leader who wants to improve relations with the United States. The two countries have plenty of common interests, including fighting terrorism, keeping Iran from developing nuclear weapons and nurturing democracy in Lebanon. Washington and Paris still differ on...

'WE have turned out the lights in the studio," NBC's Bob Costas told viewers of Sunday's Dallas Cowboys-Philadelphia Eagles game, "to kick off a week that will include more than 150 hours of programming designed to raise awareness about environmental issues." Discerning viewers with eyes keen enough to pierce the sanctimonious glare of Costas' candlelit silhouette may have noticed that the stadium's klieg lights still shone brightly. On a typical game day, a large football stadium burns about 65,000 kilowatt hours of electricity and 35,000 cubic feet of natural gas. The cars driving to the game spew about 200 metric...

The growth in human population and rising consumption have exceeded the planet's ability to support us, argues John Feeney. In this week's Green Room, he says it is time to ring the alarm bells and take radical action in order to avert unspeakable consequences. We humans face two problems of desperate importance. The first is our global ecological plight. The second is our difficulty acknowledging the first. Despite increasing climate change coverage, environmental writers remain reluctant to discuss the full scope and severity of the global dilemma we've created. Many fear sounding alarmist, but there is an alarm to sound...

Today we will learn whether Al Gore has won the Nobel peace prize. As someone who cares passionately about climate change, I'll be saying a little prayer. That he doesn't win, of course. The former US Vice-President has already taken over from Michael Moore as the most sanctimonious lardbutt Yank on the planet. Can you imagine what he'll be like if the Norwegian Nobel committee gives him the prize? More to the point, can you imagine how enormous his already massive carbon footprint will become once he starts jetting around the world bragging about his new title? Just after Gore...

Are the stars aligning for another Al Gore moment in the presidential campaign? The former-vice-president-turned-climate-change-crusader long has hovered over the campaign despite his professed disinterest in becoming a candidate. Now, with rumors of a possible Nobel Peace Prize swirling, he's once again back in the conversation. The peace prize announcement is due on Friday, so he doesn't have long to wait to learn if he has pulled off a unique grand slam for 2007: an Oscar, an Emmy, a bestseller and a Nobel. It would vault him once again back into the center of speculation about whether he might jump...

It is mid-afternoon in an airy, lower-Manhattan flat, on the ninth floor of a posh-looking building with a doorman. It is a bit dark and there are no lights on. There is a strange quiet feel to the flat, perhaps due to the lack of any appliances - no fridge humming, no TV interference, even no air conditioning, though it is hot and humid outside. Walk into the bathroom, and you will notice that there is no toilet paper, no bottles of shampoo or toiletries. In the kitchen, berries and cheese are laid out on the counter and there are...

The poor old Scandinavian moose is now being blamed for climate change, with researchers in Norway claiming that a grown moose can produce 2,100 kilos of methane a year -- equivalent to the CO2 output resulting from a 13,000 kilometer car journey. Norway is concerned that its national animal, the moose, is harming the climate by emitting an estimated 2,100 kilos of carbon dioxide a year through its belching and farting. Norwegian newspapers, citing research from Norway's technical university, said a motorist would have to drive 13,000 kilometers in a car to emit as much CO2 as a moose does...

Walking does more than driving to cause global warming, a leading environmentalist has calculated. Food production is now so energy-intensive that more carbon is emitted providing a person with enough calories to walk to the shops than a car would emit over the same distance. The climate could benefit if people avoided exercise, ate less and became couch potatoes. Provided, of course, they remembered to switch off the TV rather than leaving it on standby. The sums were done by Chris Goodall, campaigning author of How to Live a Low-Carbon Life, based on the greenhouse gases created by intensive beef...

Global warming has become the apocalyptic cult of the new millennium. None of the other jeremiahs, throughout the ages, can hold an end-of-the-world candle to ozone-layer mystics prophesying climate Armageddon. I just came across the ultimate Al Gore coffee table book, "The World Tomorrow: Scenarios of Global Catastrophe" by Yannick Monget. On the jacket, the author is described as "the founder and chief representative of the Ankaa Group, an organization dedicated to conceiving and developing ambitious projects for the environmental protection of Europe." If that weren't enough of a contribution to mankind, we are told Monget "has written several volumes...

From:www.strikebackusa.com The issue of illegal immigrants has become a non partisan way to screw the American middle class and the nation as a whole. I do however believe it is the left in their touchy feely, neo-pagan, one worlder outlook that is the engine driving this thing. I have not forgotten Bush and his outlook on the subject nor will I forgive any politician, Bush, Mc Cain, Kennedy, Clinton etc. etc. that would allow any type of amnesty for illegal immigrants. The left sees these people as new voters; the right sees them as cheap labor. I see them for...

Al Gore maintains that he won't seek the Democratic nomination for president in 2008 -- but his actions seem to belie his words. Gore has kept himself very much in the public eye as the White House races kicked into gear, providing plenty of evidence that he's eying another run for president: His award-winning global warming documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" brought him back into the limelight last year. His new book "An Assault on Reason" is a best seller, and when he launched his national book tour in May, one observer said the event seemed "more like a campaign stop...

FEW people in Africa would get to see Al Gore and his troupe of rock-star ecologists strutting their stuff last weekend - because most have neither television nor electricity. That's just as well, because they would be aghast at LiveEarth's bizarre message. In Africa, we have much more serious things to worry about than climate change. Indeed, if they achieve their objective, the concerts will have done harm to the people of Africa. Britain's former Secretary of State for the Environment, David Miliband, recently said that the rest of the world cannot aspire to the UK's standard of living because:...

Dear Camille, To those of you against the war in Iraq, here is what you do not understand: Iraq is but one battle in the 60-plus-year ideological struggle we call "the war on terror." Do you really want to leave Iraq and wait for the enemy and ideology that dropped the World Trade Center to grow into a much stronger, deadlier and efficient killing force? Did you not understand or believe President Bush in his address to the nation on Sept. 20, 2001, when he said: "Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but does not end there ......

Hypocrisy takes the stage Lorne Gunter, National Post Published: Wednesday, July 11, 2007 EDMONTON -The '80s band The Police brought their reunion tour to Commonwealth Stadium in early June. Two nights before their concert I had occasion to visit the venue, and when I pulled into the parking lot I thought I had stumbled onto a new-truck show. Really. There were 16 to 20 gleaming semis all lined up, as if for viewing-- with matching trailers. Only when I saw the name of the Chicago-based tour production company on the doors of the cabs did I twig to the...

On the 23 of June, I had the opportunity to attend the Friends of Trees Conference in Barcelona. It has taken me a few weeks to digest all the information, which I, together with about 900 other people managed to inhale: The fumes of change, the organic revolution, the climate crisis, the need for solidarity and action. It was a most overwhelming task: and Al Gore's redundant joke of: "I used to be the next president of the United States," has hardly helped ease the intensity of the situation. The crowds clapped at every comment made by the speakers, who...

With Al Gore in the news for battling global warming and Al Gore 3rd in the news for getting toasted, my favorite NYPD detective recalled a story that helps explain how father and son each became a particular kind of loser. The story was told to the detective by a Secret Service agent some years back as they worked security for a dignitary visiting New York. Such details largely consist of just standing there for as long as 12 hours and the talk turned to a day when the Secret Service agent was assigned to then-Vice President Gore. The detective...

....I thought one of the points of having [a hybrid] was you couldn't go out there and burn up a lot of gasoline and get lousy miles per gallon statistics and so forth and so on. His sister picked him up in a Maserati. A V8 400-horsepower Maserati took Algore III home.

What you probably won't hear at the Live Earth concert: a call for higher taxes on gasoline and fuel. The current crop of US presidential candidates can only wish for the spotlight that will shine on Al Gore Saturday. He's the luminary for a globe-spanning, rock-star-studded, anti-global-warming concert called Live Earth. Most likely, though, his most radical idea won't get a mention. The former vice president (and almost president) wants to replace the current payroll tax with a consumer tax on fossil-fuel use. This "carbon tax" would, of course, raise the price of gasoline and home heating/cooling. And it would...

LAGUNA NIGUEL, Calif. (AP) - Al Gore's son was arrested early Wednesday on suspicion of possessing marijuana and prescription drugs after deputies pulled him over for speeding, authorities said. Al Gore III, 24, was driving a blue Toyota Prius about 100 mph on the San Diego Freeway when he was pulled over at about 2:15 a.m., Sheriff's Department spokesman Jim Amormino said. The deputies said they smelled marijuana and searched the car, Amormino said. They found less than an ounce of marijuana along with Xanax, Valium, Vicodin and Adderall, which is used for attention deficit disorder, he said.

A New Hampshire presidential poll by WHDH-TV and Suffolk University shows that local Democrats prefer Al Gore to any of the current contenders. Hillary Clinton has a solid lead over the rest of the current Democratic field. The poll, released this afternoon, shows 37 percent of likely Democratic voters backing Clinton or leaning towards her. Barack Obama was at 19 percent, with both John Edwards and Bill Richardson at 9 percent. Al Gore, however, could enter the race as the leader. When his name is added, Clinton loses more than a quarter of her support, while Gore is backed by...

Chris Matthews bushwacks Ann Coulter by setting up a call from Elizabeth Edwards during his full hour with Coulter on Hardball last night.Video Here Mrs. Edwards gets owned by Ann Coulter when it is brought up the sleezy tactics that Edwards (A Democrat candidate for President of the United States of America) has used in his profession as an Attorney that exploits doctors and children for his own enrichment.

Recently, The Sun — hardly the most erudite or sophisticated of Britain's newspapers, I grant you — published a feature article entitled "Why is TV more keen on Paris Hilton than on saving the planet?" Actually, it's not so much an article as a write-up of an interview with none other than Al Gore. "Al Gore is a man on a mission to save the planet — and is enraged that everyone else seems more interested in saving Paris Hilton," writes reporter Victoria Newton, who had a talk with the former Vice President. Now, I'm a little tired of Gore's...

Recycling worsens global warming Chris Mellor June 4, 2007 Fancy some contrary thinking? Try this; if you want to save the planet from global warming, don't recycle. There is lots of muddled thinking around global warming. The UK government is proposing to have all goods marked with a carbon index to indicate their friendliness or antipathy to global warming. The index would measure the amount of carbon emitted during the goods' manufacture and whether it can be recycled or not. Recycled? What has that got to do with global warming? My instinctive reaction was: none. Why on earth should sticking...

LONDON (AFP) - Al Gore said the war in Iraq mirrors the lack of action on climate change in that the best evidence has been ignored, in an interview published Saturday. The United States was sucked in by "crass manipulation" over the moves towards the invasion of Iraq, the former US vice president turned environmental campaigner told British newspaper The Guardian. And Gore, who is repeatedly asked if he will run for office again, said he did not have the skills it takes to get elected as US president -- though he admitted there was no job in the world...

Greener by miles 03/06/2007 Conscientious consumers are being urged to buy locally sourced food in the battle against climate change. But, as Richard Gray discovers, produce from the other side of the world can actually have a smaller carbon footprint Take a look in the average supermarket trolley and the food there will probably have travelled farther than most people clock up in a decade. A selection of just 26 items can have covered a total of 150,000 miles before reaching the British kitchen. With beef from Brazil, beans from Kenya, apples from New Zealand, chicken from Thailand and strawberries...

"The Issue of the Potential Impacts of Global Warming on Recreation and the Recreation Industry" Thank you for having this hearing today, Madam Chairman. I have to say, however, that we seem to have hearing after hearing after hearing on climate change – indeed, this is the Committee's second one this week alone – but we don’t seem to actually discuss legislation. While other Committees without jurisdiction on this issue attempt to write our nation’s global warming policies, this Committee sits idly by talking about tangential issues. I believe that if we do wrestle with actual legislation, then the folly...

Former US vice president Al Gore on Friday criticized the "trivialities and nonsense" of celebrity gossip in the media and called on people to focus instead on issues like Iraq and climate change. Gore, who is promoting his new book "The Assault on Reason," made the comments at a book signing in New York, where he was treated to a rock star reception by more than 1,300 cheering and screaming fans. "What is it about our collective decision-making process that has led us to this state of affairs where we spend much more time in the public forum talking about...

Apple board member and former US vice president Al Gore would win the presidency if he ran for election, says Apple CEO Steve Jobs. "If he ran, there's no question in my mind that he would be elected," Jobs told Time Magazine. "But I think there's a question in his mind, perhaps because the pain of the last election runs a lot deeper than he lets most of us see." The report explains the background Gore's strenuous campaigning to persuade people to address the growing threat of climate-change caused environmental collapse. "We have dug ourselves into a 20-foot hole, and...

This generation is one that thrives on media publicity, and right now global warming is in the spotlight. From melting icecaps to rising temperatures and sea levels, global warming seems to be the hot topic. With the help of Al Gore's Academy Award-winning film, "An Inconvenient Truth," the issue of global warming has been projected from television screens worldwide, including those at Central York High School. Both Gregory Wimmer and Eric Webb, teachers of global studies and environmental sciences at Central, have used Gore's film as a teaching tool. "In a social studies classroom, "An Inconvenient Truth" allows for an...

It goes zero to 60 in about four seconds. Its top speed is 130 miles per hour. And it doesn't use an ounce of gasoline. It's the Tesla Roadster, a new car that's fueled entirely by electricity and could be hitting the lot just in time. Today the Energy Department reported that the average gallon of regular gasoline is now $3.10 -- a new nominal record price for the United States. Meet The New Electric Car! The Tesla Roadster is named after Nicola Tesla, the largely forgotten genius inventor of alternating current electricity, and it's the brainchild of Martin Eberhard,...

Hollywood star Leonardo DiCaprio sent out a message about global warming at the Cannes Film Festival. The heartthrob has made a film, the 11th Hour, warning that human beings face extinction as a result of the environmental crisis. At a press conference in the South of France following the screening, The Blood Diamond actor, 32, attacked US President George Bush, saying: "It's very simple. He's done very little for the environmental movement." The Titanic star's latest film, which he narrates, follows another environmental warming documentary by former US Presidential candidate Al Gore, shown at the Cannes Film Festival last year....

Climate Change: A Danish commission looks at the negative effect of biofuels on the environment as a new study shows ethanol use may actually increase pollution. The Kyoto deal is full of unintended consequences. The recently formed Cramer Commission, named after Dutch Environment Minister Jacqueline Cramer, who chaired it before entering the cabinet, was formed to develop ways to ensure that crops used to create biofuels as replacements for oil and gas don't do more harm than good. It seems that in the rush to develop these alternative fuels, forests in Asia have been burned to clear land for palm...

Prominent political fundraisers who backed Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign are reserving support for the current slate of 2008 Democrats in hopes the former vice president will swoop in for another White House bid. H.E. "Sonny" Cauthen Jr. told The Washington Times he has been flattered to get calls from candidates asking for his help this time around, but said he is hesitating on picking one while he waits to see what Mr. Gore decides. "If he wants to run, I would be very supportive of that," said Mr. Cauthen, a founding partner of the Washington lobbying firm Cauthen Forbes...

Uh-oh. Don’t look now, but somebody who wants to be President forgot to take their medicine. It remains uncertain as to whether the failure to follow the prescription will be politically costly. But the Senator formerly known as Hillary Rodham Clinton seems to be caught in another little conflict, and this one could be a problem with, shall we say, “the faithful.” By “the faithful,” I mean the left-wing contingency within the Democratic Party that long ago abandoned any historic, western understanding of the relationship between the human person and the earth (an understanding that is so commonplace for most...

H aven't we heard enough from Al Gore, the U.S. windbag turned Hollywood celebrity who presumes to lecture Canadians on their environmental responsibilities? The failed U.S. presidential candidate spends a lot of time in Canada, perhaps because he finds it fertile ground for self-enrichment. The multi-millionaire with a carbon footprint the size of a Sasquatch was in Toronto at the weekend, preening himself among adoring fans. He was introducing a showing of his Oscar-winning movie An Inconvenient Truth, that apocalyptic vision of a world in meltdown that has earned him the soubriquet of "the world's most famous environmentalist." Gore, whose...

Companies and individuals rushing to go green have been spending millions on “carbon credit” projects that yield few if any environmental benefits. A Financial Times investigation has uncovered widespread failings in the new markets for greenhouse gases, suggesting some organisations are paying for emissions reductions that do not take place. Others are meanwhile making big profits from carbon trading for very small expenditure and in some cases for clean-ups that they would have made anyway. The growing political salience of environmental politics has sparked a “green gold rush”, which has seen a dramatic expansion in the number of businesses offering...

The current debate about global warming is "completely irrational," and people need to start taking a different approach, say two Ottawa scientists. Carleton University science professor Tim Patterson said global warming will not bring about the downfall of life on the planet. Patterson said much of the up-to-date research indicates that "changes in the brightness of the sun" are almost certainly the primary cause of the warming trend since the end of the "Little Ice Age" in the late 19th century. Human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), the gas of concern in most plans to curb climate change, appear to...