Arianna Huffington on Real Time with Bill Mahr

[Durandal]

Bill Mahr had Ariana Huffington on his show, Real Time, tonight. This woman is a renouned conservative dolt. Back during the '96 election, Bill Mahr had her and Al Frankin doing a bit called "Strange Bedfellows" on Politically Incorrect. I remember laughing my ass off at Frankin beating her every argument down senselessly. I rolled my eyes when she was announced as a guest tonight.

Then I got really scared.

SHE FUCKING MADE SENSE.

She was criticizing the administration's policy on foreign affairs, was against the war on Iraq, blamed corporate mistrust and the lack of campaign finance reform for the shitty economy and even made fun of Bush. She said that our complete focus is on Iraq because the Axis of Evil having a whole three countries was too complex for Bush! She even said that people should ditch their SUV's to conserve gas, as she had done a year ago.

Could someone please tell me when exactly this woman grew a brain? I was seriously entertaining the notion of calling the show to see if I could ask her what spurred this about-face, but by the time I realized that I was agreeing with her, it was a little too late.

Dennis Miller was on as well, and of course, he had nothing substantial to say, just his usual slew of vague references, one-liners and totally inapplicable analogies. I like it when people try and make a point through humor, but Christ, I wanted to smack Miller in his fucking head. Huffington said that if he kept his shit up, he'd become Dubya's Sammy Davis, Jr, which shut him up for pretty much the rest of the show.

[Joe]

God, I so want to get into this, but I have to go to bed now.

[Vympel]

She seemed to make sense recently. I read one article especially where she didn't seem like a conservative dolt.

I don't know much about American politics, but there seems to be a split in the conservative movement.

[RedImperator]

I don't know much about American politics, but there seems to be a split in the conservative movement.

There's always been different sub-groups within the conservative movement. Reagan managed to forge an alliance of convenience between Southern Christians, northeastern capitalist technocrats, and libertarians, groups that had little but their loathing of the post-60's left in common (and they loathed them for different reasons). The way it usually works, the Christians have enough weight on election day to get conservatives elected, but the money in the influence is tied up with the technocrats and they end up making policy, with the libertarians confined mostly to think tanks. The 2004 election will tell us if the political left is dead in the United States, though it's beating last November in the Congressional mid-terms wasn't a good sign. If that happens, I think you will see something of a split, but it will manifest itself more internally than externally. The Republicans will move to the center to preserve their majority and largely marginalize the Christian Right (much as Clinton moved to the center to save his own hide and left the radical left to bitch and complain and not much else).

As for a split now, there isn't much of one. Conservatives do tend to publically disagree with each other more than leftists (and privately, I've gotten into screaming, red-faced arguments at conservative conventions a lot more often than I have in classrooms full of Marxists). Huffington is more than entitled to her opinion, but she in no way represents a majority or even a significant minority of conservatives (save the capital-L Libertarians, who sound like the longhairs and nose-ringers about Iraq these days).

[Knife]

Basicly, she seemed to have drifted towards the political left after her husband left her for another man. Looks like the left has a convert, nothing more and nothing less. *shrug*

[Knife]

Oh, I must mention that even though she has been going around saying that people should get rid of their SUV's and in fact, she got rid of hers. She still lives in a huge house that sucks up power like no other in AC and heating. She still uses Limo's and on occasion, private Jets (by her own admission) which all of the above suck up more oil than my 92 GMC Jimmy. She is hardly a martyr.

[Enlightenment]

Oh, I must mention that even though she has been going around saying that people should get rid of their SUV's and in fact, she got rid of hers. She still lives in a huge house that sucks up power like no other in AC and heating.

Work those numbers. Assume an SUV requires an average power of 150hp. This is 112kw. The largest common household electric hookup is 200 amps @ 240v (yes, even in the US with 120v power at the outlets), or about 48kw.
An SUV that's merely cruising down the highway consumes over double the energy than a house that's on the verge of blowing its main breakers.

Also keep in mind that the electric power to run a house could be coming from different fuel sources with fewer associated environmental and geopolitical risks than gasoline.

She still uses Limo's and on occasion, private Jets (by her own admission) which all of the above suck up more oil than my 92 GMC Jimmy. She is hardly a martyr.

No major argument here except for the minor nit that all but the largest limos may well require less hp than an SUV.

[Knife]

Work those numbers. Assume an SUV requires an average power of 150hp. This is 112kw. The largest common household electric hookup is 200 amps @ 240v (yes, even in the US with 120v power at the outlets), or about 48kw.
An SUV that's merely cruising down the highway consumes over double the energy than a house that's on the verge of blowing its main breakers.

But how does SQFT-age work into that. MRS Huffington hardly lives in a standard size house. I heard what sqft her house was (again her own admission) but I don't remember what it was.

Also keep in mind that the electric power to run a house could be coming from different fuel sources with fewer associated environmental and geopolitical risks than gasoline.

True, but only to a certain degree. The same people with the same political viewpoint and/or view on ecological problems also have problems with coal fire plants and nuke plants. Yes, using coal and/or nuclear power does not help fund terrorist (according to Mrs Huffington's therory) but have their own problems and critics.

No major argument here except for the minor nit that all but the largest limos may well require less hp than an SUV

NO major argument? WOW . The limo might use slightly less gas, but I still find it some what hypocritical of her to want normal people to give up their large trucks and SUV's while she does not exactly drive around in a GEO Metro.

[Gil Hamilton]

But how does SQFT-age work into that. MRS Huffington hardly lives in a standard size house. I heard what sqft her house was (again her own admission) but I don't remember what it was.

Um, what does that matter? We are talking about the electrical hook-up. If she draws more power than Enlightenment described, her circuit breaker blows. Besides, the SUV is drawing more than double that 48kW. It's not like her house will be such an energy hog that it consumes more than double the average amount of power for a large house.

[TrailerParkJawa]

But how does SQFT-age work into that. MRS Huffington hardly lives in a standard size house. I heard what sqft her house was (again her own admission) but I don't remember what it was.

Um, what does that matter? We are talking about the electrical hook-up. If she draws more power than Enlightenment described, her circuit breaker blows. Besides, the SUV is drawing more than double that 48kW. It's not like her house will be such an energy hog that it consumes more than double the average amount of power for a large house.

Im with Knife on this one. Keeping her house cool during the California summer probably uses a lot of energy. And no, she does not live in a small or moderate California home. She lives in a 9,000 sq ft mansion. That is a lot of AC. That is a lot of building materials, etc.

[Darth Wong]

I think a little bit more math may be in order. How long do you sit in a car, on average? Let's say it takes half an hour to get to work and half an hour to get back; that's just 1 hour in the car per day. Environmental controls in a house may run for most of the day, and that's assuming her monster home does not have a larger electrical hookup than usual.

Perhaps specs for large residential AC systems would be useful.

[Darth Wong]

Heating is less efficient than air conditioning; we just don't recognize it because it comes in a different form, ie- gas for most people instead of electricity. Contrary to popular belief, an air conditioner can move a unit of heat energy without actually having to consume that much energy (think of it as a heat pump; it moves heat around rather than generating it, so there's no violation of CoE here).

According to lbl.gov, a large single-family home with a gas furnace will eat up 112,000 kW-hours per year (in chemical potential energy of gas), which is equivalent to a 150hp drain for around a thousand hours, or nearly three hours a day. The 9,000 square foot mansion in question is more than 3 times the size of the large single-family dwelling mentioned in the cited study, so it would probably require around 336,000 kW-hours per year.

Therefore, if you are pushing your engine at 150 hp for eight hours per day, every day (which is rather ridiculous), you would be burning more than the house does. So I think it's safe to say a large mansion will use up more energy than an SUV. It should be noted that the figure is for a Northern dwelling, which will require more heat. A Southern dwelling takes about half as much energy for heat (but more for AC), so it would still be equivalent to a 150 hp engine running for 4 hours daily, and that's still excessive. Most people don't sit in the car for 4 hours a day, and if they do, they're idling most of the time in traffic jams, not gunning at 150 hp.

By the way, 336,000 kW-hours is roughly equivalent to 1.2 TJ, in case anyone's curious, or 0.3 kilotons. This is roughly equivalent to the chemical energy that an internal combustion engine can get from 10,000 gallons of gasoline.

[Enlightenment]

According to lbl.gov, a large single-family home with a gas furnace will eat up 112,000 kW-hours per year (in chemical potential energy of gas), which is equivalent to a 150hp drain for around a thousand hours, or nearly three hours a day. The 9,000 square foot mansion in question is more than 3 times the size of the large single-family dwelling mentioned in the cited study, so it would probably require around 336,000 kW-hours per year.

I'm thinking mostly of AC load, hence estimates based on electric service.

On heating, the heating demand in somewhere like California (excluding mountain areas) is going to be rather lower than in the US northeast. If 112MW/h is the US national average then it is going to be on the high end for somewhere like California.

Furthermore, heating and cooling load requirements are a real bitch to calculate (grab a copy of the ASHRAE books to see what I mean) but they generally scale with the surface area of a building rather than its square footage. Linear extrapolation generally won't work even for BOTE calcs.

[Darth Wong]

I'm thinking mostly of AC load, hence estimates based on electric service.

Why? Comparing an SUV to a house is ridiculous if we think exclusively in terms of power draw from local utilities, since an SUV draws zero. We must think in terms of total power usage including use of chemical resources such as gasoline and natural gas.

On heating, the heating demand in somewhere like California (excluding mountain areas) is going to be rather lower than in the US northeast. If 112MW/h is the US national average then it is going to be on the high end for somewhere like California.

I already mentioned in the above post that the figure is roughly halved for southern climates, thus still making it much greater than SUV energy use.

Furthermore, heating and cooling load requirements are a real bitch to calculate (grab a copy of the ASHRAE books to see what I mean) but they generally scale with the surface area of a building rather than its square footage. Linear extrapolation generally won't work even for BOTE calcs.

That would only exacerbate the situation rather than mitigating it, since sprawling monster homes of that nature probably have an even greater ratio of surface area when compared to typical large single-family dwellings.