much ado is being made about al gore’s utility bills as of late. but the nytimes finds out that, as usual, the numbers don’t really add up:

the group, the tennessee center for policy research, issued its statement a day after the film “an inconvenient truth,” which tracked mr. gore’s campaign to educate the world about the ravages of global warming, won an academy award for best documentary feature. by its count, mr. gore’s mansion “consumes more electricity every month than the average american household uses in an entire year,” the statement said.

but here is where the story gets a little blurry.

— more, including the rest of the nytimes excerpt, after the jump:

the group cited some damning kilowatt-consumption figures — 221,000 for the gores in 2006, compared with the american average of 10,656, for instance — which, it said, were obtained from the nashville electric service. it put the gores’ average monthly electric bill at $1,359. of course, those figures immediately rocketed through cyberspace…

the associated press, however, apparently asked a spokeswoman from the nashville utility company, laurie parker, if the policy group had actually obtained the information from them, and she said the utility never got a request from the policy center and that no information was ever turned over to them.

so the a.p. decided to review the utility records itself, and came up with slightly different kilowatt consumption numbers: 191,000 for the gores in 2006 — compared to a typical nashville home of 15,500 kilowatts.

it remains unclear at this point why there would be two contradictory sets of numbers floating around — even if both sets do show mr. gore’s mansion to be a bit of an energy hog.

we shan’t get into gore’s offset argument here. needlenose does an excellent job describing, step-by-step, how everyone can follow gore’s lead and purchase renewable energy credits for their own carbon footprint.

but as the times points out in another article , the group whining the loudest about gore’s bill, the tennesse center for policy research, itself “disputes that global warming is a serious problem.” and therin lies the conundrum that makes it impossible for the hardly-ever-right wing to win this squirmish.

for their arguments to hold any weight, the right must admit that global problem is an important dilemna that the world must deal with. otherwise their complaints about gore’s electricity bill are irrelevant. and who complains about the irrelevant, besides those who are already irrelevant?

on the other hand, if they concede that global warming is important, and people like gore shouldn’t be using so much of the earth’s resources (which is a valid point), then every gop pioneer and gazillionaire is at least as guilty, if not more so, than al gore of wasting energy.

tho the mmm (multi-millionaire media) are once again failing to apply this or any logic to the current fracas being raised, the truth about the right’s argument is that it is self-cancelling. either the right believes in global warming and that something should be done about it by people (which would include themselves) or it’s a non-issue, not worth the pixels being used to describe it.

if they think gore’s warnings are mere babbling about cloudcuckooland, why are they worried about his consistency? if nobody cares about how much energy any huge mansion uses irrespective of the partisanship of the owner, what difference does gore’s electric bill make?

we happen to know his cable bill is enormous! there are people in china who have never seen the sopranos, and he gets 7 premium services! and pay-per-view wrestling! now that’s something for glenn beck to hyperventillate about.