Don Surber - wrong as usual

by: Carnacki

Sat Dec 15, 2007 at 02:47:11 AM EST

In his current column, our Keats of the Kanawha offers up some standard anti-Gore fare: "Al Gore is a big fat hypocrite whose farts cause more global warming than the exhaust from a million SUVs":

It is difficult to take his sermons on the coming doom seriously when his mansion in Tennessee consumes 10 times the electricity of an ordinary home. ... Rather than lead by example, Gore and other millionaire celebrities engage in carbon offsets.

Once again Don is that late-to-the-party kind of guy, showing up when the liquor is gone and the guests have already left. He hangs around, nonetheless, boring the hosts until they finally kick him out at 1:00 a.m. I say this because on the same day as Surber's column, the wires were flooded with stories about Gore's recent renovations to his home:

Al Gore, who was criticized for high electric bills at his Tennessee mansion, has completed a host of improvements to make the home more energy efficient, and a building-industry group has praised the house as one of the nation's most environmentally friendly.

The former vice president has installed solar panels, a rainwater-collection system and geothermal heating. He also replaced all incandescent lights with compact fluorescent or light-emitting diode bulbs - even on his Christmas tree.

"Short of tearing it down and staring anew, I don't know how it could have been rated any higher," said Kim Shinn of the U.S. Green Building Council, which gave the house its second-highest rating for sustainable design....

There's a theory held by some that the Charleston Daily Mail's owners keep printing Surber as part of a deliberate attempt to run the Daily Mail into the ground so they can divest themselves of the weaker of the two Charleston papers without violating the Joint Operating Agreement. It's the only reason that makes any sense why a newspaper would publish his ill-informed rantings.