We have noted before that the rich are different from you and me- they emit a lot more carbon dioxide. Presumptive Republican presidential candidate John McCain is no exception; Joe Romm of Climate Progress ran the numbers on as many of McCain's homes he could find information on.

For years, every time we did a post on Al Gore, someone would comment about the carbon footprint of his house and how much it consumed compared to the average American home, even after he wrapped it in solar panels. It got tiresome, but now Its Payback Time!

Now under construction, 23 Marina sets a new bar for wretched excess: 57 of its 288 apartments have private swimming pools on the balconies. They are not huge at 5.2 meters (17 feet) by 2 meters (6-1/2 feet) but multiply that by 57 and you have a lot of surface area evaporating fresh water into the dry desert air. One of these puts paid to all the so-called "green" buildings going up in Dubai.

There is no question that athletes have to keep hydrated and go through a lot of water. But Lance Armstrong breaks all the records again with his little pile in Austin, where he used 330,000 gallons of water for his acre of gardens and swimming pool, at a time when Texas is going through a dry spell. “We are definitely short on rain,” Lisa Rhodes, a spokeswoman for the water authority, said with a sigh to the New York Times.

Image Modern Mechanix