webodec3ARCHIVEPreview
Open in TheBrain

GORE 1

==

bak 5 22 zombie jobs

SEE BTU

see revelle easterbrook

see GORE2 6/15

see inc truth

capt 818

---

AHA GORE IS ROOT OF ALARMISM AGW RELIGION?

MMA

Fox cheers Trump’s repeal of the EPA endangerment finding — a move that could cost thousands of lives and billions of dollars in health care costs | Media Matters for America

Fox cheers Trump’s repeal of the EPA endangerment finding — a move that could cost thousands of lives and billions of dollars in health care costs

Special ProgramsClimate & Energy

Written by Allison Fisher

Published 02/13/26

Ignoring these benefits, Fox News and Fox Businesses personalities celebrated the repeal while pushing climate denial talking points to bolster support for this huge rollback of pollution safeguards — including dismissing the overwhelming scientific evidence that underpins the endangerment finding, suggesting that cold weather in winter somehow disproves climate change, or outright calling climate science a “hoax.”

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin has referred to the endangerment finding as “the holy grail of the climate change religion,” while The New York Times reports that “dozens of conservative activists, lawyers, scientists and others had worked for years to prepare the case against the endangerment finding,” including a secretive campaign underwritten by The Heritage Foundation. As documented by Media Matters, this effort has also relied on a decades-long right-wing media campaign to undermine climate science.

Marsh continued, “So it's not an either or — you don't have to pick dirty air in order to have a strong economy.” Later in the program, author and climate expert Porter Fox pointed out that “back when the endangerment finding was adopted in 2009, we were looking at a billion-dollar climate disaster roughly every month or so. Now it's every three weeks. So, you know, if Trump is going to claim that $1.3 trillion will be saved by easing these regulations, just do the math. In less than 10 years, we're already going into the red, and those billion-dollar disasters are getting more and more expensive and more and more frequent every year.” The New York Times, [2/12/26; CNN, CNN News Central, 2/12/26, 2/12/26]}:

Citation

From the February 12, 2026, edition of CNN News Central

Citation

From the February 10, 2026, edition of Fox Business' Varney & Co.

The argument that the U.S. shouldn’t act to regulate pollution because of the emissions output of other countries has been employed by climate deniers for more than a decade. It discounts the domestic benefits of climate action and the role of U.S. leadership in driving solutions, and also falsely suggests that other countries are not taking action. For example, according to a new analysis, China’s emissions fell by 1% in the last three months of 2025, and the drop “extends the ‘flat or falling’ trend in China’s CO2 emissions that began in March 2024 and has now lasted for nearly two years.” Fox Business, *The Evening Edit*, [2/10/26; Newsweek, 12/1/23; Carbon Brief, 12/2/26]}:

Citation

From the February 11, 2026, edition of Fox Business' The Big Money Show

Video

Citation

From the February 12, 2026, edition of Fox Business' Kudlow

//

  1. ### The Trump administration launches assault on the EPA’s endangerment finding following decades-long right-wing media campaign

08/14/25 2:26 PM EDT

  1. ### Fox News shields EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin as he promotes the most destructive climate rollback in EPA history

07/31/25 12:45 PM EDT

  1. ### Right-wing media hyped a supposed “shovel” attack against ICE. Prosecutors just dropped the charges.

02/13/26

---

---

https://www.desmog.com/2023/02/21/oreskes-conway-the-big-myth-free-market-capitalism-climate-change-mont-pelerin-society/

science historians Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, authors of the classic 2010 book Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, have released a new book placing that doubt machine into a longer arc of U.S. business and political history.

The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market explores an even more ambitious history dating from the dawn of the 20th century to the present day.

The book documents how today’s prevailing anti-regulatory and anti-government postures that deride Big Government and cheer for Big Business did not arise simply from grassroots demands. Instead, they arose from well-funded industry campaigns creating what Oreskes and Conway have called a manufactured consensus “quasi-religious belief” in deregulated markets and an accompanying diehard opposition to governmental solutions to public policy problems.

Fighting Public Utilities, Child Labor Laws

One of the first campaigns in that spirit occurred within the electricity utility industry via an organization which eventually became known as the Edison Electric Institute.

What is now colloquially calledEEI, was launched in 1885 as the National Electric Light Association, or NELA. At the time, it “represented more than five hundred of the largest privately owned electrical utilities, accounting for more than 90 percent of U.S. kilowatt output,” according to the book.

In the 1920s, according to Oreskes and Conway, “electricity industry leaders organized one of the largest propaganda campaigns in the history of the United States.” The campaign aimed to persuade the public thatmunicipal-owned electricity was a bad thing, advocating instead for investor-owned utilities. In the end, though, it resulted in higher rates for homeowners and small businesses and bigger profits for company owners and their bankrollers.

The initially unpopular campaign framed its activities under the guise of freedom and market efficiency. NELA’s influence operation — involving rewriting K-12 and university textbooks, courting and funding industry-friendly professors, utilizing astroturf campaigns, deploying sophisticated lobbying techniques to facilitate regulatory and legislative capture, and other deceptive practices — resembles much of the fossil fuel industry’s political pressure that DeSmog has covered and uncovered week-in and week-out for over a decade and a half.

At the time, it was the first of its kind industrial-scale full-court press, and it provided a roadmap for other corporate hegemons in subsequent decades. And NELA’s goal went far beyond merely winning a PR campaign, Oreskes and Conway conclude; it had much deeper ideological underpinnings.

“[U]nlike conventional PR, the aim was not simply to create a positive impression of a particular business or even of the whole industry,” they write. “Rather, the goal—expressed outright in numerous documents—was to change the way Americans thought about private property, capitalism, and regulation” altogether.

Core to NELA’s campaign, Oreskes and Conway wrote, was the idea “that free-market capitalism was the embodiment of freedom, writ large, and that any restriction on the freedom of any business would put us on a slippery slope to tyranny.”

Private ownership of the electricity industry was, up until then, relatively rare in the United States and even more so throughout the industrializing world. But as of 2017, 72 percentof U.S. electricity customers got their power from investor-owned utilities. NELA’s campaign, in other words, changed history as we know it.

Today, its successor EEI and its member companies continue to wage deceptive PR campaigns to fight renewable energy and bolster the continued consumption of fossil fuels.

The NELA campaign’s legacy, however, goes far beyond its sector alone, according to Oreskes and Conway. “Perhaps most importantly, NELA pioneered a strategy of insisting that these claims were true, regardless of the facts,” they wrote.

Broadening their view beyond the fossil fuel industry, Oreskes and Conway also detail how the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) propelled similar efforts across other industries during the same era. Like EEI, fast-forwarding to the present-day, NAM has served as a key node of climate denialism. 

But in its earliest days,NAM maintained a different sinister focus, according to The Big Myth: advocating against child labor laws amid what the authors described as a “pandemic” of workplace deaths both among young workers and the adult workforce.The sheer volume of such deaths served as one of the first major wakeup calls in the need for a more active regulatory state, the book maps out.

In making its case for child labor and against regulations protecting children, NAM espoused “that the federal government had no business interfering in business” and called such a notion “socialistic in its origin, philosophy and associations.”

Libertarian Fringe to (Neo)Liberal Mainstream

While both NELA and NAM laid the groundwork for a paradigm that’s alive and well today, their ideas were not adopted globally until the formation of theMont Pelerin Society,a group created in 1947 that like EEI and NAM has received close scrutiny from DeSmog for years. Oreskes and Conway devote a whole chapter of The Big Myth to Mont Pelerin.

Like NELA and NAM, Mont Pelerin’s roots lay in anti-regulatory and business-funded ideology. But unlike them, Mont Pelerin came out of academia and via professors committed to the now globally pervasive neoliberal ideology they created. Mont Pelerin inspired similar groups that are, like it, still active today, such as the Koch Industries-funded Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University and the University of Chicago’s free market-oriented Economics Department.

Oreskes and Conway point to a legion of like-minded groups arising by the 1970s, riding the momentum of an academic community devoted to neoliberal ideology, and reacting to the gains made in environmental protection and other areas. Formation of these groups accelerated after the metaphorical call-to-arms made in a memo written to theU.S. Chamber of Commerce by the then-tobacco industry attorney and soon-to-be Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell.

Known today as the Powell Memo, the 1972 letter called for Big Business to undergo “careful long-range planning and implementation, in consistency of action over an indefinite period of years, in the scale of financing available only through joint effort, and in the political power available only through united action and national organizations.”

The Powell Memo, Oreskes and Conway concluded, spearheaded free market fundamentalist groups such as the Cato Institute, Koch Family Foundations, Scaife Family Foundations, Olin Foundation, Heritage Foundation, and the Federalist Society, among others. All of these entities, and the groups they fund or work alongside in coalitions, remain powerful forces within U.S. and global politics.

The Big Myth further highlights how those think tanks and companies also played a key role in defeating the 2009 and 2010 congressional push, led by then-President Barack Obama, to pass a federal, market-oriented climate bill known as the American Clean Energy and Security Act.[waxman markey]  Critics would charge that the policy approach taken in the bill, emblematically, embodies the very “market fundamentalist” ethos reigning over U.S. politics for the past 100-plus years.

During the congressional debate over a bill that would haveenshrined the policy lever of cap-and-trade, the Koch-funded Tea Party network also ascended[vid]

previous congressional pushes in the 2000s for what was ultimately a business-friendly climate policy, had enjoyed bipartisan support. But The Big Myth explains how as the Tea Party network took flight, Republican Party support for the climate bill — and broader climate action — eroded to a near-zero level. It has mostly remained there since.

At the same time, the reality of climate change had and has continued to become all the more clear. That reality though, Oreskes and Conway wrote, clashes with the religion of market fundamentalism.

“[H]ad the market fundamentalists spent so much time defending the magic of the market-place that they simply couldn’t accept market failure on a global scale?” the authors asked of the legion of climate-change deniers who helped to kill the bill. “To accept the enormity of what climate change portended for civilization was to accept that capitalism, as practiced, was undermining the very prosperity it was supposed to deliver. And not just in some distant future, but now.”

Although this “quasi-religious belief” in the power of the market holds the greatest sway with conservatives, Oreskes and Conway argue that belief in the “magic of the marketplace” has become an intoxicating ideology withinliberal circles too, including within climate policy debates.

“Even in supposedly liberal enclaves like Cambridge, Massachusetts,” where Oreskes teaches at Harvard, “many people think climate change will be best addressed by technological innovation in the marketplace,” the co-authors surmise, perhaps in alluding to the prototypical industry-friendly policies pushed by former Obama Administration U.S. Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz — a professor at the nearby Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“The rise of right-wing think tanks helped spread the pro-market, antigovernment gospel across the country and insert what had been decidedly niche views into the mainstream,” the authors explained of the ideology’s spread. Other scholars have referred to this as the “force field” effect, moving the gravitational pull of what’s possible within U.S. politics further and further toward right-wing, corporate-created policy solutions.

The ideological roots of anti-democracy, anti-environmental, and anti-regulatory campaigning explored in The Big Myth also serve as the heart and soul of the book Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming, written by DeSmog co-founders James Hoggan and Richard Littlemore.

If you have learned from DeSmog’s reporting shedding light on the climate change denial machine, you’ll love The Big Myth, an excerpt from which follows below. The book is a must-read for all students of the sordid history of public relations and governmental capture.

Go grab a copy and checkout some recent interviews on the book, as well, for further background. A video of Professor Oreskes discussing the book can also be seen below.

Excerpt from The Big Myth

In the 1990s, as capitalism was being declared triumphant in many quarters, scientists had proved that man-made climate change was under way.1 Climate change was textbook market failure. It arose from everyday economic activity— using fossil fuels—but was about to impose a huge external cost, inundating major coastal cities around the globe, making hurricanes and cyclones even more deadly than they already were, and dislocating tens or even hundreds of millions of people. It was also textbook environmental injustice, as poor people would almost certainly bear the brunt of a problem created by the rich.

But it also had a textbook answer: putting a price on carbon. Economists called this solution a “Pigouvian tax”—after the Cambridge economist Arthur Pigou, who in the early twentieth century had helped develop the concept of negative externalities. (Pigou also suggested it would be reasonable for governments to subsidize activities that had “positive externalities,” such as education.) The idea of pricing social and environmental costs of carbon was hardly radical; Pigou was firmly mainstream, a respected scholar at Cambridge University, a leading figure in what came to be known as the Cambridge school of economics.2 The obvious benefit of the Pigouvian approach was that it remedied the market failure directly by embedding information—in this case scientific information—into the price of fossil fuels. Then consumers could decide for themselves whether or not to buy more expensive fossil fuels, and producers of alternatives could compete on a level playing field.

The Clinton administration proposed to address climate change through a Pigouvian tax, the so-called “BTU” tax (referring to the heat content of fuels as measured in British Thermal Units).3 But it was opposed—indeed, ridiculed—by a broad coalition of conservatives, including, the Chamber of Commerce, the American Petroleum Institute, and virtually every right-wing think tank in America.4 

The notorious Global Climate Coalition, a network of fossil fuel producers and users that in the 1990s successfully prevented the U.S. Congress from ratifying the Kyoto protocol to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, was originally established as a committee of the National Association of Manufacturers. Even though the idea of putting a price on carbon was a mainstream economic approach to market failure, Republicans framed it as just another example of Democrats’ penchant to “tax and spend.” The Wall Street Journal mocked it as Al Gore’s “favorite tax.”5

In his 1979 paper on nonmarket failure, economist Charles Wolf had slipped into his conclusion the idea that one cause of nonmarket failure was “premature but politically effective demands for government action.”6 In the 1990s, many Republicans picked up on this theme, arguing that it was premature to act on climate change. Even at the time, that was wrong: scientists already had a consensus that man-made climate change was under way and likely to be very costly.7 To act in the 1990s would have been appropriate. It would have been timely. But Clinton was unable to generate congressional support for action; Republican opposition made it clear that any proposal to put a price on carbon would be dead on arrival. In 1999, when Vice President Al Gore ran for president on a platform prioritizing climate change, journalist Gregg Easterbrook (brother of Judge Frank Easterbrook) embarrassed him on the campaign trail with a false story that his mentor—climate champion Roger Revelle—had experienced a deathbed conversion and died thinking climate change was not a serious problem.8 (He had not.)

As the 1990s became the 2000s—and scientists declared the evidence “unequivocal”—market fundamentalist did not adjust their views. To the contrary, their opposition hardened.9

In 2006, Lord Nicholas Stern, former chief economist of the World Bank, concluded on behalf of the UK government that, yes, fixing climate change would be expensive—perhaps as much as 1 percent of global GDP per annum—but not fixing it would cost much more: at least 5 percent and perhaps as much as 20 percent.10 Here was a solid argument from a man who could scarcely be accused of being any kind of -ist other than an economist. In response, conservatives dug in deeper. Senator Ted Cruz promoted the canard that global warming had stopped; Senator James Inhofe called it a liberal conspiracy to bring down capitalism.11 No matter what solutions were proposed—market-friendly or not—the right wing found reasons to oppose them. The science wasn’t settled (they claimed). It would be too expensive to fix. We could just adapt. It was all a hoax. Often these claims were couched in libertarian terms, as when in 2011 former House Speaker Newt Gingrich deemed the push to address climate change “the newest excuse to take control of lives.”12

The singular exception to climate denial in Republican Party leadership was Senator John McCain. He and conservative Democrat Joe Lieberman introduced Climate Stewardship acts in 2003, 2005, and 2007 to address the carbon dioxide emissionsthat drive climate change by creating an emissions trading system—a proven mechanism, albeit more complicated than a Pigouvian tax. But when given the chance to use it to address climate change, Republicans refused.13 The 2003 bill failed on mostly party lines, with a few Democrats and nearly all Republicans in opposition. But it was a closer call than many expected, and soon Congress faced intense lobbying pressure against climate legislation, particularly from NAM and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The 2005 version came to a vote and failed 60–38, with only a handful of Republicans voting yea.14 Two years after that, McCain could not even persuade Republican leaders to bring a climate bill to the Senate floor.15

In 2009, Congress tried once more, with the American Clean Energy and Security Act (better known as Waxman-Markey, for its primary sponsors, Massachusetts representative Ed Markey and California representative Henry Waxman). For the fourth time in a decade, Congress had the opportunity to address climate change using a market mechanism, and for the fourth time rejected it.The bill barely passed the Democratic-led House; nearly all Republicans voted against, as did Democrats from fossil-fuel-producing states (and a few Democrats who found the bill too weak). The Senate never brought it to a vote. Democrats concluded they could not overcome the “wall of opposition” they faced from their Republican colleagues, opposition fortified by fierce lobbying.16 One analysis concluded that, in the eighteen months between January 2009 and June 2010, electric utilities, oil and gas companies, trade associations, and think tanks spent at least $500 million against climate change legislation.17 Another study tracinganti-climate lobbying back to 2003 places the figure at closer to $1 billion.18

The fossil fuel industry’s economic interests in preventing climate action have always been obvious; less understood is how it has camouflaged those interests. No one ever said, “I am denying climate change to protect corporate profits.” They said they were protecting jobs, protecting the economy, and protecting free markets from government “encroachment.” They said they were fighting for capitalism and freedom.

But historically, capitalism has never been just one thing: Adam Smith’s eighteenth-century vision of a democratic, distributed marketplace populated by small bankers and businessmen was a far cry from the industrial capitalism that developed in early nineteenth-century England and Germany—with its cruel “Satanic mills”—or the monopolies and managerial capitalism that came to dominate America in the late nineteenth century, much less the globally financed capitalism that emerged at the end of the twentieth century. China has liberalized its markets while continuing to oppress and even murder its ethnic and religious minorities. There are many capitalisms. American market fundamentalists fight for a form of capitalism that is both brutal and ignorant: that brushes aside market failure, anticompetitive practices, and external costs, in part by denying the facts of science, the facts of history, and the necessary role of government in making capitalism work.19

The question is not whether government should set limits that prevent individual autonomy from producing collective harm, the question is where we draw the lines. That is not an economic question, it is a political one. Market fundamentalists have managed to distract from the political aspects of these decisions and frame them as questions of “economic freedom.” Thus, a reasonable response to climate change is rejected as unreasonable “government encroachment.”

All this may make one wonder: was this ever reallyabout capitalism? Or freedom? Or was it all just one long, semi-continuous, shape-shifting defense of the prerogatives of big business? Of freedom for capital and capitalists? Or had the market fundamentalists spent so much time defending the magic of the market- place that they simply couldn’t accept market failure on a global scale? To accept the enormity of what climate change portended for civilization was to accept that capitalism, as practiced, was undermining the very prosperity it was supposed to deliver. And not just in some distant future, butnow.

ref bib...

---

---

Al Gore student of  Roger Revelle (Greenhouse Effect)   As a visiting professor at Harvard University, he taught a freshman course attended by then-student Al Gore

Gore 2007 La Jolla visit:

The “Keeling Curve,” a seminal data set established in 1958 by Scripps atmospheric chemist Charles David Keeling, documents the rise of carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere. It was Revelle’s vision to capture these measurements, and he recruited Keeling to Scripps to collect the landmark data. An account appears in Gore’s Academy Award-winning, multimedia global warming film, “An Inconvenient Truth.”

“This is the image that first enlightened me on the subject of global warming,” said Gore.

---

==

Libel lawsuit

On September 20, 2000, WND published an article[4] claiming that Clark Jones, a Tennessee car dealer and fund-raiser forthen-Vice President Al Gore, had interfered with a criminal investigation, had been a "subject" of a criminal investigation, was listed on law enforcement computers as a "dope dealer," and implied that he had ties to others involved in alleged criminal activity.

 In 2001, Jones filed a lawsuit[5] against WND; the reporters, Charles C. Thompson II and Tony Hays; theCenter for Public Integrity, which had underwritten Thompson and Hays' reporting on the article and related ones[6]; and various Tennessee publications and broadcasters who he accused of repeating the claim, claiming libel and defamation. The lawsuit had been scheduled to go to trial in March 2008[7], but on February 13, 2008, WND announced that a confidential out-of-court settlement had been reached with Jones.[8] A settlement statement jointly drafted by all parties in the lawsuit states in part:

"Discovery has revealed to WorldNetDaily.com that no witness verifies the truth of what the witnesses are reported by authors to have stated. Additionally, no document has been discovered that provides any verification that the statements written were true.

"Factual discovery in the litigation and response from Freedom of Information Act requests to law enforcement agencies confirm Clark Jones' assertion that his name has never been on law enforcement computers, that he has not been the subject of any criminal investigation nor has he interfered with any investigation as stated in the articles. Discovery has also revealed that the sources named in the publications have stated under oath that statements attributed to them in the articles were either not made by them, were misquoted by the authors, were misconstrued, or the statements were taken out of context."[9]

http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/graphics/wndlawsuitdocs/jonessuit.pdf

==

==

https://www.salon.com/2000/10/05/gore_internet/

Did Gore invent the Internet?

Actually, the vice president never claimed to have done so -- but he did help the Net along. Some people would rather forget that.
SCOTT ROSENBERG
OCTOBER 5, 2000 

That Al Gore once claimed to have "invented the Internet" is now part of electoral folklore -- one item in a litany of Gore "exaggerations" or "lies" that his opponents trot out to discredit him. At Tuesday's debate the line became the basis for a flatfooted one-liner George W. Bush lobbed to deflect Gore's onslaught of statistics: "This is a man who has great numbers -- I'm beginning to think not only did he invent the Internet, he invented the calculator."

The sheer cheek of Gore's purported claim invites mockery. Everybody knows the Internet is an extraordinarily complex piece of engineering that only incredibly smart scientists could have "invented." Politicians need not apply.

But things that "everybody knows" are always worth examining for defects. And the "Gore claims he invented the Net" trope is so full of holes that it makes you wish there were product recalls for bad information.

Gore never claimed to have "invented" the Internet. What he said was:

During my service in the United States Congress I took the initiative in creating the Internet.

As my colleague Jake Tapper carefully reported here last year, at worst that statement is a minor exaggeration of Gore's legislative record -- and miles away from the "I built it from scratch!" lie into which it has been twisted.

The life trajectory of the "I invented the Internet" Gore meme has been well traced by Phil Agre back to the original coverage of Gore's comment by Wired News' Declan McCullagh. McCullagh's first report, while never using the word "invent," interpreted Gore's statement as an outrageously false boast, and supported that view with one quotation from a conservative foundation spokesman. (That quote -- "Gore played no positive role in the decisions that led to the creation of the Internet as it now exists -- that is, in the opening of the Internet to commercial traffic" -- offers its own wildly distorted view of Internet history, narrowing its focus to "the opening of the Internet to commercial traffic" as the only significant milestone to shape today's Net.)

From McCullagh, the tidbit got picked up by the TV pundits and became the butt of late-night political jokes. The word "invent" practically leaped into Gore's mouth. News outlets across the board -- including Salon -- have now burned the distortion of the vice president's words into the public mind.

If that were the end of the tale, we could just dismiss it as one more round of election-year spin and counter-spin in which the lies won out over the truth. But this particular snow job springs from a deeper ideological well, and that makes it more interesting.

Several of the people who could claim to have "invented" the Internet, or key pieces of its protocols -- in particular, Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn -- are out there on the Net today defending Gore, asserting that he was the politician in Washington who took the "initiative" to support the Net in its early days.

Implicit in their argument is a broader awareness of what it took to create the Internet. Anything as successful as the Net is not and cannot be successful as technology alone; technology does not exist in a vacuum. And just as the Internet required the services of brains like Kahn and Cerf and all the others who contributed code to its foundations, it also needed bureaucratic and legislative patrons.

It took social engineers as well as software engineers to build the Net. And that may be why the response to Gore's original statement was so savage: Not because his claim was a lie, but because it was a truth that a lot of people today are trying to forget or bury.

The Internet didn't spring full-blown out of some scientists' heads, nor did it just grow, like some techno-Topsy powered by the mysterious magic of the marketplace. It emerged from the world of government-subsidized university research, and every step of the way along its passage from academic network to global information infrastructure was shepherded by the state. As the Net's parent, the government didn't do everything right; but it managed to nurture the network through its youth -- then get out of the way once it was mature enough to move out of its parents' digs and shack up with private industry.

Libertarians and conservatives are uncomfortable admitting this. Their vision of Net history is a stirring saga of markets overwhelming states, technological imperatives vanquishing stifling bureaucracies and free information "routing around" government blockages. There's some truth in this vision -- but it's only part of the story.

The other part of the Net's history is a complex, and sometimes dull, chronicle of federal research grants, bureaucratic infighting and legislative initiatives that stitched together a messy but functional patchwork quilt of linked computers -- the famous "network of networks" that arose primarily in the 1980s, when the term "Internet" first came into play, and that remained a dark horse in the race to connect the public until around 1994.

Government alone couldn't have built today's Internet, but private industry, left to its own devices, wouldn't have, either. Without the critical spark of government-funded research lighting a fire of networked inventiveness, we'd probably have been stuck with the morass of competing proprietary online spaces that vied for the consumer's dollars in the early 1990s -- when AOL, Prodigy, Compuserve, the prototypical MSN and other long-forgotten entrants like AT&T's Interchange and Apple's E-world all stared at each other across unbridgeable technological and business divides.

In those days the Internet was, we were told, too complex and geeky to ever reach the masses. That piece of conventional wisdom died a fast death as, one by one, the proprietary spaces folded or took down their walls and accepted that Internet connections were what people wanted.

Libertarians typically believe that the government can't do anything right, and they prefer to forget or ignore the part government has played in the Net's triumph. Giving Gore credit means admitting the government's role; distorting and mocking his claims helps deny it.

McCullagh, who is outspoken in his libertarian views, argues that, though he didn't use the word "invent," it is "a not entirely unreasonable paraphrase of the vice president's remarks," and suggests that the pro-Gore comments from Cerf may have a partisan basis: "I'm a big fan of Vint Cerf, and I think he's an able defender of the vice president, but let's put his defense of the vice president in context. Cerf is an executive at a large telecommunications company, and I suspect he acts more like a Washingtonian than a technologist nowadays. For instance, Cerf was a guest of honor at the White House's New Year's Eve gala, appeared with the president and first lady at an October 1999 White House 'Millennium Evening' lecture, and joined the president and vice president at a July 1997 event to introduce administration policy proposals."

Well, technologists do have a right to their political leanings, don't they? But the defense of Gore currently underway feels to me less like a party-line effort than like the repayment of a debt of gratitude by Internet pioneers who feel that Gore is being unfairly smeared.

That's what you'll hear from Phillip Hallam-Baker, a former member of the CERN Web development team that created the basic structure of the World Wide Web. Hallam-Baker calls the campaign to tar Gore as a delusional Internet inventor "a calculated piece of political propaganda to deny Gore credit for what is probably his biggest achievement."

"In the early days of the Web," says Hallam-Baker, who was there, "he was a believer, not after the fact when our success was already established -- he gave us help when it counted.He got us the funding to set up at MIT after we got kicked out of CERN for being too successful. He also personally saw to it that the entire federal government set up Web sites. Before the White House site went online, he would show the prototype to each agency director who came into his office. At the end he would click on the link to their agency site. If it returned 'Not Found' the said director got a powerful message that he better have a Web site before he next saw the veep."

That sounds like a pretty good description of the kind of "initiative" Gore claimed credit for in the first place. So the next time you hear an "Al Gore, Internet inventor" joke, think about the strange twisted path a politician's words can take in other people's hands -- and be glad we can use the Internet to try to straighten it out.

SCOTT ROSENBERG

Salon co-founder Scott Rosenberg is director of MediaBugs.org. He is the author of "Say Everything" and Dreaming in Code and blogs at Wordyard.com.

MORE FROM SCOTT ROSENBERG

==

==

That film was mocked and dismissed by climate deniers. For instance, an editorial in the *Wall Street Journal*, written by Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor of atmospheric science Richard Lindzen, argued that Gore falsely claimed there was scientific consensus around the reality of climate change. We’re currently observing the spectacle of Republicans in Congress fighting tooth and nail to sink President Obama’s Clean Power Plant proposal, even going so far as to suggest to governors that their states break the law to defy the federal government and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

So when you find Democrat Al Gore on the same side of an environmental issue as a far-right Tea Party leader, it’s eye-opening. But left and right are coming together over the issue of distributed solar power and the right of homeowners and businesses to install rooftop photovoltaic solar panels.

That shared interest was highlighted this week when Gore spoke at the Bloomberg New Energy Finance conference in New York this week back-to-back with Debbie Dooley, a national Tea Party activist, chairman of the Atlanta Tea Party and founder of Conservatives for Energy Freedom.

But while Gore has focused on the climate impacts of dirty energy and the need to switch to clean energy sources to prevent global catastrophe, Dooley ignores climate change altogether to focus on individual freedom and the “free market.”

“She is an activist for solar energy and decentralizing the grid, working with conservatives across the country who believe expanding renewable energy markets and customer choice are consistent with free-market principles,” says her bio. “She believes our nation is in the midst of a clean-energy revolution that unites grassroots activists from the left and right.”

An article in Bloomberg News called Gore and Dooley a “political odd couple” and noted that Dooley never mentioned climate change in her presentation, focusing rather on consumer choice.

“Solar equals independence—solar equals freedom,” she said, using a favorite Tea Party word. “Tea Party activists don’t like strong centralized units. There’s nothing more centralized than a utility, than the government telling you what power to buy. This is a battle that we will win. I am literally floored with the response I have been getting from conservatives with the right message.”

Gore had a startlingly similar message.

“People want their own opportunity to shape their own future, and renewable energy is part of that,” he said. “There is a war on solar with these legacy utilities, and coal companies using their historic political power, campaign contributions and lobbying to pass the most ridiculous laws and tax the people who want to put solar panels on their roof.”

Dooley’s activism began when she joined forces with the Sierra Club to prevent Georgia Power from billing customers in advance for two nuclear plants projected to have huge cost overruns. She also helped fight off an effort by Georgia utilities to charge owners of rooftop solar an extra fee on their monthly bill, something utilities, backed by conservative groups like Americans for Prosperity, are pushing around the country. Currently, Dooley is one of the leaders of a battle in Florida to protect and expand the ability of homeowners and businesses to generate their own rooftop solar and sell it to their neighbors, bypassing big utility companies. The effort isengaging both conservative and liberal environmentalists.

“They have a lot of policies in Florida that actually effectively block the sun,” Dooley told Yale Environment 360. “So you have the Sunshine State that has policies put in place by these powerful utilities to stifle competition, and I just felt like something needed to be done.”

“We’re going to work together to accomplish something,” she said. “Those on the left believe in climate change and coal’s bad. Those on the right don’t like government-created monopolies— we believe in free-market choice and national security. It doesn’t matter what your reasons are, as long as we work together to accomplish a common goal. That’s all that matters, and we’re much more successful when we’re able to do that.”

YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE

Al Gore at SXSW: We Need to ‘Punish Climate-Change Deniers’ and ‘Put a Price on Carbon’

Tea Party Members and Environmentalists Join Forces in Support of Solar Energy

4 States Where Solar is Under Attack by Koch-Funded Front Groups

==

...

For the third time in the last few years, Al Gore, founder and chairman of the Climate Reality Project, spoke at the festival on Friday. Naturally, his interactive discussion focused on addressing the climate crisis. The former vice president focused on the need to “punish climate-change deniers, saying politicians should pay a price for rejecting ‘accepted science,'” said the Chicago Tribune.

Gore said forward-thinking investors are moving away from companies that invest in fossil fuels and towards companies investing in renewable energy. “We need to put a price on carbon to accelerate these market trends,” Gore told the Chicago Tribune, referring to a proposed federal cap-and-trade system that would penalize companies that exceeded their carbon-emission limits. “And in order to do that, we need to put a price on denial in politics.”

He called on the tech-minded SXSW crowd, which is dominated by Millenials, to harness technology to launch a grassroots movement to tackle climate change and call out climate deniers. “We have this denial industry cranked up constantly,” Gore said. “In addition to 99 percent of the scientists and all the professional scientific organizations, now Mother Nature is weighing in.”

Years from now, Gore said the next generation will look back at us and ask: “How did you change?,” according to Macworld. “Part of the answer may well be that a group of people came to South by Southwest in Austin, Texas in 2015 and helped to make a revolution,” Gore said.

Gore wanted these young, tech-savvy attendees to start a grassroots movement using social media like they did when “net neutrality was threatened or when the Stop Online Piracy Act threatened to blacklist websites that offered so-called illegal content,” said Macworld. That means signing petitions to fight climate change, utilizing social media to call out climate deniers in Congress and streaming the Live Earth Road to Paris concert on June 18, an event designed to draw attention to the climate talks in Paris this December.

The former Veep even gave a nod to Pope Francis during his talk, showing a slide of the pontiff and saying “How about this Pope?” Pope Francis celebrated his two-year anniversary as Pope on Friday, riding a wave of popularity “that has reinvigorated the Catholic Church in ways not seen since the days of St. John Paul II,” said the Chicago Tribune.Gore said he was looking forward to the Pope’s highly anticipated encyclical on the environment which is due to be released in June or July. “I’m not a Catholic,” Gore said, “but I could be persuaded to become one.”

==

In addition to Al Gore and Climate Reality Project President and CEO Ken Berlin, a variety of international celebrities, musicians, advocates and other special guests will join the broadcast, including: filmmaker Vanessa Black, singer-songwriter Colbie Caillat, activist Rodne Galicha, environmentalist Wanjira Mathai, singer-songwriter Jason Mraz, entreprenuer Patrick Ngowi, founder of the Barefoot College Bunker Roy, actor and activist Mark Ruffalo, actor and modelIan Somerhalder, Johan van der Berg and Daniela Velasco.

==

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-turning-point-new-hope-for-the-climate-20140618?print=true

~ kochs, myths

A growing number of large investors – including pension funds, university endowments (Stanford announced its decision in May), family offices and others – have announced decisions to divest themselves from carbon­intensive assets. Activist and "impact" investors are pushing for divestment from carbon­rich assets and new investments in renewable and sustainable assets.

Several large banks and asset managers around the world (full disclosure: Generation Investment Management, which I co-founded with David Blood and for which I serve as chairman, is in this group) have advised their clients of the danger that carbon assets will become "stranded." A "stranded asset" is one whose price is vulnerable to a sudden decline when markets belatedly recognize the truth about their underlying value – just as the infamous "subprime mortgages" suddenly lost their value in 2007 to 2008 once investors came to grips with the fact that the borrowers had absolutely no ability to pay off their mortgages.

Shareholder activists and public campaigners have pressed carbon-dependent corporations to deal with these growing concerns. But the biggest ones are still behaving as if they are in denial. In May 2013, ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson responded to those pointing out the need to stop using the Earth's atmosphere as a sewer by asking, "What good is it to save the planet if humanity suffers?"

==

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2000

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_activism_of_Al_Gore

http://archive.democrats.com/display.cfm?id=181

http://www.irregulartimes.com/gorebalispeech.html bali speech

I am not an official of the United States and I am not bound by the diplomatic niceties. So I am going to speak an inconvenient truth. My own country, the United States, is principally responsible for obstructing progress here in Bali. We all know that, but my country is not the only one that can take steps to ensure that we move forward from Bali with progress and with hope.

 ===

http://www.salon.com/2000/10/05/gore_internet/ invented

---

snopes on house http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/gorehome.asp

==

---

she and scalise went after gore:

milloy version:

Gore lies to Congress about personal finances

April 24, 2009

When Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn confronted Al Gore with his profiteering from global warming legislation at today’s House Energy and Environment Subcommittee hearing on the Waxman-Markey climate bill, Al Gore said that every penny he ever made from his business activities went into non-profit efforts. [See transcript below.]

That is a flat-out lie, according to this March 6, 2008 Bloomberg report that indicates that Al Gore invested $35 million of his own money in various for-profit endeavors.

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore left the White House seven years ago with less than $2 million in assets, including a Virginia home and the family farm in Tennessee. Now he’s making enough to put $35 million in hedge funds and other private partnerships.

Gore invested the money with Capricorn Investment Group LLC, a Palo Alto, California, firm that selects the private funds for clients and invests in makers of environmentally friendly products, according to a Feb. 1 securities filing. Capricorn was founded by billionaire Jeffrey Skoll, former president of EBay Inc. and an executive producer of Gore’s Oscar-winning documentary film on global warming.

Kudos to Rep. Blackburn for asking one of the “10 Questions for Al Gore” and exposing Gore as the fundamentally dishonest operator that he is.

Here’s the transcript from the April 24, 2009exchange between Al Gore and Rep. Blackburn. Note that not only does Al Gore lie to Rep. Blackburn, he tries to turn the tables by implicitly accusing her of being anti-business.

Rep. Blackburn: …You talked a little about [that] people have to have trust in what you’re doing and I think you know that this bill is going to fundamentally change the way America works and it’s going to effect families. We’ve all talked about how it affects individuals and what it’s going to do to their budgets and… ah… what it’s going to do to jobs in this country. And given the magnitude of those changes, I think it’s really important that no suspicion or shadow fall on the foremost advocates of climate change legislation. So I wanted to give you the opportunity to kind of clear the air about your motives and to set the record straight about your motives for some of your former constituents. And I’ve got an article from [the] October 8 [2008]New York Times Magazine about a firm called Kleiner Perkins… a capital firm called Kleiner Perkins. Are you aware of that company?

Al Gore: Well, yes. I’m a partner at Kleiner Perkins.

Rep. Blackburn: So you’re a partner inKleiner Perkins. OK. Now they have invested about a billion dollars in 40 companies that are going to benefit from cap-and-trade legislation. So is the legislation that we are discussing here today, is that something that you are going to personally benefit from?

Al Gore: [Sigh]… I believe that the transition to a green economy is good for our economy and good for all of us. And I have invested in it. But every penny that I have made, I have put right into a nonprofit, the Alliance for Climate Protection, to spread awareness of why we have to take on this challenge. And, Congresswoman, if you’re… if you believe that the reason I have been working on this issue for 30 years is because of greed, you don’t know me.

Rep. Blackburn: No, sir, I’m not making accusations. I’m asking questions that have been asked of me. And individuals… constituents… that were seeking a point of clarity. So I am asking…

Al Gore: I understand exactly what you’re doing Congresswoman. Everybody here does.

Rep. Blackburn: Well, are you willing to divest yourself of any profit. Does all of it go to a not-for-profit. Is it an education not-for-profit?

Al Gore:Every penny that I have made has gone to it. Every penny from the movie, the book… uh… from any investments from renewable energy. I’ve been willing to put my money where my mouth is. Do you think there is something wrong with being active in business in this country?

Rep. Blackburn: I am simply asking for clarification on the relationship.

Al Gore: I’m proud of it. I’m proud of it.

Rep. Blackburn: Thank you and I appreciate the answer…

---

bloomberg: note this says nothing about profits

Gore Invests $35 Million for Hedge Funds With EBay Billionaire

By Miles Weiss - March 6, 2008 00:07 EST

Gore invested the money with Capricorn Investment Group LLC, a Palo Alto, California, firm that selects the private funds for clients and invests in makers of environmentally friendly products, according to a Feb. 1 securities filing. Capricorn was founded by billionaire Jeffrey Skoll, former president of EBay Inc. and an executive producer of Gore's Oscar-winning documentary film on global warming.March 6 (Bloomberg) -- Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore left the White House seven years ago with less than $2 million in assets, including a Virginia home and the family farm in Tennessee. Now he's making enough to put $35 million in hedge funds and other private partnerships.

Since losing the 2000 presidential election to George W. Bush, Gore, 59, is best known for focusing attention on climate change through his book and movie, ``An Inconvenient Truth,'' which helped him win a Nobel Peace Prize. Gore's newfound wealth resulted, in part, from speaking engagements and ties to Silicon Valley firms with soaring stock market values, such as Google Inc. and Apple Inc.

``Gore got a lot of support from Silicon Valley when he ran for president because they knew the Internet was one of his primary concerns,'' said Tony Coelho, a former congressman and investment banker who served as chairman of Gore's 2000 campaign.

It's very legit that these people would pursue him'' after he left office, Coelho said, adding that Gore received Google and Apple stock options before their shares went into the stratosphere.''

Kalee Kreider, a spokeswoman for Gore and his wife, Tipper, declined to comment on the hedge-fund investment or how Gore has made his money.

Private Citizen'

``He is a private citizen, and as a private citizen he has never commented on his private finances,'' said Kreider, who works out of Nashville, Tennessee.

Gore donated his proceeds from the global-warming book and movie to his Alliance for Climate Protection, Kreider added.

John Jonson, chief operating officer at Capricorn, also had no comment.

Gore's investment, disclosed in a private-placement filing at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, was made through Carthage LP. The partnership, formed in December, has the same name as the ex-vice president's home town in Tennessee.

Skoll, 43, founded Capricorn after deciding in late 2001 that he wanted to diversify his wealth, at the time comprised primarily of EBay stock. The firm began taking on a few outside clients last year, according to SEC filings.

Father's Estate

In the last personal finance report he filed as vice president, Gore disclosed on May 22, 2000, that the value of his assets totaled between $780,000 and $1.9 million. In addition, Gore listed an interest in his father's estate that included Occidental Petroleum Corp. stock worth as much as $1 million.

He and Tipper Gore released tax returns for 1998 showing they earned $224,376 that year, less than half the income of President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, news reports at the time said.

Now Gore charges a $175,000 speaking fee and has a net worth ``well in excess'' of $100 million, including pre-public offering Google stock options, according to an article in Fastcompany.com last year. Kreider said the speaking fees vary and Gore doesn't disclose them.

Gore has served as a senior adviser to Mountain View, California-based Google since February 2001, shortly after leaving public office. Google spokesman Jon Murchinson said in an e-mail: ``We have not provided comment on if or how we compensate Mr. Gore in his role as an advisor to Google.''

Metropolitan West

The former vice president also served as vice chairman of Metropolitan West Financial Inc., a money manager run in part by former Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc. executives, starting in 2001.

He co-founded Current Media Inc., a cable television and Internet company, in 2002 and is listed as its executive chairman in a January SEC filing for the company's initial public offering. It said he earned $1 million in salary and bonus last year, and owned 3.7 million shares of company stock.

Gore joined Apple's board in 2003 and co-founded London-based Generation Investment Management in 2004. Last November, he became a partner with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm.

Capricorn, in managing Skoll's fortune -- estimated at $4.2 billion by Forbes magazine last March -- primarily allocates money to different private partnerships, including hedge funds and energy and real-estate funds.

Skoll Foundation

One of Capricorn's clients, the Skoll Foundation, had almost $264 million, or 78 percent of its assets, invested in more than 75 partnerships at June 30, 2006, according to its most recently available tax filing with the Internal Revenue Service.

The funds included Eric Mindich's Eton Park Capital Management LP, Ralph Whitworth's Relational Investors LLC, and Arthur Samberg's Pequot Capital Management Inc.

``They don't put all their eggs in one basket,'' said Homi Vazifdar, a managing director at theCanyon Group, of Larkspur, California, who is familiar with Capricorn's investment style.

Stephen George, Capricorn's chief investment officer, previously worked as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. specializing in helping technology clients develop expertise in e-commerce. New York-based Goldman underwrote San Jose, California-based EBay's initial public offering.

To contact the reporter on this story: Miles Weiss in Washington at mweiss@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Larry Edelman in Boston atledelman3@bloomberg.net

==

wiki

Al Gore is the former Vice President of the United States (1993–2001), the 2000 Democratic Partypresidential nominee, and the co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He has been involved with the environmental activist movement for a number of decades.

Contents

  [hide] 

Childhood[edit source | editbeta]

Gore stated in an interview for the New York Times that his interest in environmentalism began when he was a teenager:

As I was entering high school, my mother was reading Silent Spring and the dinner table conversation was about pesticides and the environment [...] The year I graduated from college the momentum was building for Earth Day. After Vietnam, as I was entering divinity school, the Club of Romereport came out and the limits to growth was a main issue.[1]

Politics[edit source | editbeta]

Congress[edit source | editbeta]

Gore has been involved with the environment for a number of decades. In1976, after joining the United States House of Representatives, Gore held the "first congressional hearings on the climate change, and co-sponsor[ed] hearings on toxic waste and global warming."[2][3] He continued to speak on the topic throughout the 1980s[4] and was known as one of the Atari Democrats, later called the "Democrats' Greens, politicians who see issues like clean air, clean water and global warming as the key to future victories for their party."[1][5]

In 1989, while still a Senator, Gore published an editorial in the Washington Post, in which he argued

Humankind has suddenly entered into a brand new relationship with the planet Earth. The world's forests are being destroyed; an enormous hole is opening in the ozone layer. Living species are dying at an unprecedented rate.[6]

In 1990, Senator Gore presided over a three-day conference with legislators from over 42 countries which sought to create a Global Marshall Plan, "under which industrial nations would help less developed countries grow economically while still protecting the environment." ^[7]

The Concord Monitor says that Gore "was one of the first politicians to grasp the seriousness of climate change and to call for a reduction in emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouses gases.[8]

Vice presidency[edit source | editbeta]

As Vice-President, Gore was involved in a number of initiatives related to the environment. He launched the GLOBE program on Earth Day1994, an education and science activity that, according to Forbes magazine, "made extensive use of the Internet to increase student awareness of their environment".[9] In the late 1990s,Gore strongly pushed for the passage of the Kyoto Protocol, which called for reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.[10][11] He was opposed by the Senate, which passed unanimously (95–0) the Byrd–Hagel Resolution (S. Res. 98),[12] which stated the sense of the Senate was that the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol that did not include binding targets and timetables for developing as well as industrialized nations or "would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States".[13]On November 12, 1998, Gore symbolically signed the protocol. Both Gore and Senator Joseph Lieberman indicated that the protocol would not be acted upon in the Senate until there was participation by the developing nations.[14]The Clinton Administration never submitted the protocol to the Senate for ratification. In 1998, Gore began promoting aNASA satellite that would provide a constant view of Earth, marking the first time such an image would have been made since The Blue Marblephoto from the 1972 Apollo 17 mission. The "Triana" satellite would have been permanently mounted in the L1 Lagrangian Point, 1.5 million km away.[15] During this time, he also became associated withDigital Earth.[16]

2001 - present[edit source | editbeta]

Generation Investment Management[edit source | editbeta]

In 2004, Gore co-launched Generation Investment Management, a company for which he serves as Chair. The company was "a new London fund management firm that plans to create environment-friendly portfolios. Generation Investment will manage assets of institutional investors, such as pension funds, foundations and endowments, as well as those of 'high net worth individuals,' from offices in London and Washington, D.C."[17]

We Can Solve It[edit source | editbeta]

Gore and The Alliance for Climate Protection created the We Can Solve It organization, a web-based program with multiple advertisements on television focused on spreading awareness for climate crisis (global warming) and petitioning for the press putting more attention on the crisis, the government doing more to help the environment, and their ultimate goal is the end to global warming. Although focused mostly upon the United States, and Americans, it is an international petition and effort. It already has over one million signatures.[1]

Lectures and conferences[edit source | editbeta]

In recent years, Gore has remained busy traveling the world speaking and participating in events mainly aimed towards global warmingawareness and prevention.[18] His keynote presentation on global warming has received standing ovations, and he has presented it at least 1,000 times according to his monologue in An Inconvenient Truth. His speaking fee is $100,000.[19] Gore's global warming presentations in several major cities have been associated with exceptionally severe cold weather, a juxtaposition since dubbed "the Gore Effect."[20][21] Gore is a vocal proponent of carbon neutrality, buying a carbon offset each time he travels by aircraft.[22] Gore and his family drive hybrid vehicles.[23]In An Inconvenient Truth Gore calls for people to conserve energy.

In 2007, Al Gore was the main non-official representative for the United States in the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bali, which is a series of discussions that plans to continue where the Kyoto Protocol left off when it expires in 2012.[24] He used a famousWorld War II poem written by Pastor Martin Niemöller to describe how the international community is eerily accomplishing nothing in the face of the greatest crisis in human history.[25] He ended the speech using his famous tag line: "However, political will is a renewable resource."[26]

During Global Warming Awareness Month, on February 9, 2007,Al Gore and Richard Branson announced the Virgin Earth Challenge, a competition offering a $25 million prize for the first person or organization to produce a viable design that results in the removal of atmospheric greenhouse gases.[27]

A public lecture at University of Toronto on February 21, 2007, on the topic of global warming, led to a crash of the ticket sales website within minutes of opening.[28]

In March 2008, Gore gave a talk via videoconferencing in order to promote this technology as a means, he argued, of fighting global warming.[29]

On 17 July 2008, Gore gave a speech at the DAR Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. in which he called for a move towards replacing a dependence upon "carbon-based fuels" with Green energy by the United States within the next ten years. Gore stated: "When President John F. Kennedy challenged our nation to land a man on the moon and bring him back safely in 10 years, many people doubted we could accomplish that goal. But 8 years and 2 months later, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the surface of the moon."[30][31] Some criticized his plan. According to the BBC, "Robby Diamond, president of a bipartisan think tank called Securing America's Future Energy,[32] said weaning the nation off fossil fuels could not be done in a decade. 'The country is not going to be able to go cold turkey [...] We have a hundred years of infrastructure with trillions of dollars of investment that is not simply going to be made obsolete.' " ^[33]

Repower America[edit source | editbeta]

On July 21, 2008 Al Gore used a speech to challenge the United States to commit to producing all electricity from renewable sources (AERS) like solar and wind power in 10 years .[34][35] Al Gore´s Alliance for Climate Protection has created the Repower America project to promote this goal.

In this speech, Al Gore says that our dangerous over-reliance on carbon-based fuels is at the core of all three of the economic, environmental and national security crises. Our democracy has become sclerotic at a time when these crises require bold policy solutions.[36]

Center for Resource Solutions supports Al Gore's Repower America goal.[37]

Civil disobedience to stop coal plants[edit source | editbeta]

On September 24, 2008 Gore made the following statements in a speech given at the Clinton Global Initiative:

"If you're a young person looking at the future of this planet and looking at what is being done right now, and not done, I believe we have reached the stage where it is time for civil disobedience to prevent the construction of new coal plants that do not have carbon capture and sequestration."[38]

These remarks were similar to ones he'd made the previous year:

“I can’t understand why there aren’t rings of young people blocking bulldozers,” Mr. Gore said, “and preventing them from constructing coal-fired power plants.”[39]

Climate Reality Project[edit source | editbeta]

In March 2010[40] two nonprofit organizations founded by Al Gore, The Alliance for Climate Protection and The Climate Project, joined together, and in July 2011 the combined organization was renamed the Climate Reality Project.[41] In February 2012 the Climate Reality Project organized an expedition to the Antarctic with civic and business leaders, activists and concerned citizens from many countries.[42]

Environmental criticism[edit source | editbeta]

Four main environmental criticisms are regularly leveled at Gore: (1) he has an alleged conflict of interest from his role as both an investor in green-technology companies and as an advocate of taxpayer-funded green-technology subsidies,[43][44] (2) he allegedly makes erroneous scientific claims,[45][46] (3) he consumes excessive amounts of energy,[47] and (4) he allegedlyrefuses to debate others on the subject of global warming.[48]

In reference to Gore's alleged conflict of interest, some critics have labeled Gore a "carbon billionaire." ^[49] In response to these criticisms Gore stated that it is “certainly not true” that he is a “carbon billionaire” and that he is "proud to put my money where my mouth is for the past 30 years. And though that is not the majority of my business activities, I absolutely believe in investing in accordance with my beliefs and my values."[50]Gore was challenged on this topic by Tennessee Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn who asked him: "The legislation that we are discussing here today, is that something that you are going to personally benefit from?”[50] Gore responded by stating: "I believe that the transition to a green economy is good for our economy and good for all of us, and I have invested in it." Gore also added that all earnings from his investments have gone to the Alliance for Climate Protection and that "If you believe that the reason I have been working on this issue for 30 years is because of greed, you don’t know me."[50] Finally, Gore told Blackburn: "Do you think there is something wrong with being active in business in this country [...] I am proud of it. I am proud of it."[51]

Criticisms of Gore's allegedly erroneous scientific statements tend to focus on a British High Court's ruling that Gore's Inconvenient Truth documentary was deemed by the court to have nine significant errors.[45]

Gore has also been the subject of criticism for his personal use of energy, including his use of private jets[citation ^needed] and ownership of multiple very large homes.[52] The Tennessee Center for Policy Research (TCPR) has twice criticized Gore for electricity consumption in his Tennessee home. In February 2007, TCPR stated that its analysis of records from the Nashville Electric Service indicated that the Gore household uses "20 times as much electricity as the average household nationwide."[53][54] In reporting on TCPR's claims, MSNBC'sCountdown With Keith Olbermann noted that the house has twenty rooms and home offices, and that the "green power switch" they chose to install incrsed their electric bill while decreasing their overall carbon pollution.[55] Philosopher A. C. Grayling also defended Al Gore, arguing that Gore's personal lifestyle does nothing to impugn his message and that Gore's critics have committed the ad hominem fallacy.[56]

A few months later, the Associated Press reported on December 13, 2007 that Gore "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 [...] 'Short of tearing it down and starting anew, I don't know how it could have been rated any higher,' said Kim Shinn of the non-profit U.S. Green Building Council, which gave the house its second-highest rating for sustainable design."[57]

Gore was criticized by the TCPR again in June 2008, after the group obtained his public utility bills from the Nashville Electric Service and compared "electricity consumption between the 12 months before June 2007, when it says he installed his new technology, and the year since then."[58][59] According to their analysis, the Gores consumed 10% more energy in the year since their home received its eco-friendly modifications. TCPR also argued that, while the "average American household consumes 11,040 kWh in an entire year," the Gore residence "uses an average of 17,768 kWh per month –1,638 kWh more energy per month than before the renovations."[59] Gore's spokeswoman Kalee Kreider countered the claim by stating that the Gores' "utility bills have gone down 40 percent since the green retrofit." and that "the three-year renovation on the home wasn't complete until November, so it's a bit early to attempt a before-and-after comparison."[60] She also noted that TCPR did not include Gore's gas bill in their analysis (which they had done the previous year) and that the gas "bill has gone down 90 percent [...] And when the Gores do power up, they pay for renewable resources, like wind and solar power or methane gas."[61] Media Matters for America also discussed the fact that "100 percent of the electricity in his home comes from green power" and quoted the Tennessee Valley Authority as stating that "[a]lthough no source of energy is impact-free, renewable resources create less waste and pollution."[62]

Furthermore, organizations such as PETA have criticized Gore for not advocating vegetarianism.[63] Gore responded by stating, "I'm not a vegetarian, but I have cut back sharply on the meat that I eat [...] It's absolutely correct that the growing meat intensity of diets around the world is one of the issues connected to this global crisis - not only because of the CO2 involved, but also because of the water consumed in the process." ^[64]

Some have argued that Gore refuses to debate the topic of global warming. Bjørn Lomborg asked him to debate the topic at a conference in California. Gore replied that he would not, stating that "The scientific community has gone through this chapter and verse. We have long since passed the time when we should pretend this is a ‘on the one hand, on the other hand’ issue,” he said. “It’s not a matter of theory or conjecture, for goodness sake." ^[65]

Books, film, television, and live performances[edit source | editbeta]

An Inconvenient Truth[edit source | editbeta]

Main article: An Inconvenient Truth

Gore starred in the documentary film An Inconvenient Truth, released on May 24, 2006. The film documents the evidence for anthropogenicglobal warming and warns of the consequences of people not making immediate changes to their behavior. It is the fourth-highest-grossing documentary in U.S. history.[66]

After An Inconvenient Truth was nominated for an Academy Award, Donna Brazile (Gore's campaign chairwoman from the 2000 campaign) speculated that Gore might announce a possible presidential candidacy for the 2008 election. During a speech on January 31, 2007, atMoravian College, Brazile stated, "Wait till Oscar night, I tell people: 'I'm dating. I haven't fallen in love yet. On Oscar night, if Al Gore has slimmed down 25 or 30 pounds, Lord knows.'"[67] During the award ceremony, Gore and actor Leonardo DiCaprio shared the stage to speak about the "greening" of the ceremony itself. Gore began to give a speech that appeared to be leading up to an announcement that he would run for president. However, background music drowned him out and he was escorted offstage, implying that it was a rehearsed gag,[68][69] which he later acknowledged.[70]

After winning the 2007 Academy Award for Documentary Feature.[71] the Oscar was awarded to director Davis Guggenheim, who asked Gore to join him and other members of the crew on stage. Gore then gave a brief speech, saying, "My fellow Americans, people all over the world, we need to solve the climate crisis. It's not a political issue; it's a moral issue. We have everything we need to get started, with the possible exception of the will to act. That's a renewable resource. Let's renew it."[72]

The official documentary film website is meaningfully called climatecrisis.net ^[73]

Books[edit source | editbeta]

Gore wrote Earth in the Balance (which was published in 1992) while his six-year-old son Albert was recovering from a serious accident. It became the first book written by a sitting Senator to make The New York Times bestseller list since John F. Kennedy's Profiles in Courage.[74]

Gore also published the book An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It, which became a bestseller. In reference to the use of nuclear power to mitigate global warming, Gore has stated, "Nuclear energy is not the panacea for tackling global warming."[75]

Futurama[edit source | editbeta]

Gore's head in a jar as depicted in theFuturama episode "Crimes of the Hot".

Gore appeared in Matt Groening's Futurama as himself and his own head in a jar in episodes related to environmentalism. Gore also reprised the role in the 2007 film, Futurama: Bender's Big Score.[76] In 2000 Gore had offered to appear in the 2000 season finale of Futurama, "Anthology of Interest I". In this episode, Gore led his team of "Vice Presidential Action Rangers" in their goal to protect the space-time continuum.[77] In 2002, Gore appeared in the episode "Crimes of the Hot".[78] In addition, Gore used a short clip from Futurama to explain how global warming works in his presentations as well as in An Inconvenient Truth.[79] An internet promo for An Inconvenient Truth titled A Terrifying Message From Al Gore was also produced by Groening and David X. Cohen, creators of Futurama, starring Gore and Bender (John DiMaggio).[80]

Live Earth[edit source | editbeta]

Main article: Live Earth

On July 7, 2007, Live Earth benefit concerts were held around the world in an effort to raise awareness about climate change. The event was the brainchild of Gore and Kevin Wall of Save Our Selves. On July 21, 2007, Gore announced he was teaming with actress Cameron Diaz for a TV climate contest, 60 Seconds to Save the Earth, to gain people's support in solving the climate crisis.[81]

2007 Nobel Peace Prize and India[edit source | editbeta]

Gore was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, which was shared by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, headed by Rajendra K. Pachauri (Delhi, India).[82] The award was given "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change" on October 12, 2007.[83]

Gore made the following statement after receiving the prize:

I am deeply honored to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. This award is even more meaningful because I have the honor of sharing it with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—the world's pre-eminent scientific body devoted to improving our understanding of the climate crisis—a group whose members have worked tirelessly and selflessly for many years. We face a true planetary emergency. The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity. It is also our greatest opportunity to lift global consciousness to a higher level. My wife, Tipper, and I will donate 100 percent of the proceeds of the award to the Alliance for Climate Protection, abipartisan non-profit organization that is devoted to changing public opinion in the U.S. and around the world about the urgency of solving the climate crisis.[84]

Gore and Pachauri accepted the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 in Oslo, Norway on December 10, 2007.[85][86]

In a talk given during March 2008 in Delhi, Gore argued that India, as a leader in information technology, is in a particularly strong position to also lead the way in climate change.[87][88][89] This talk coincided with the release of two children's books by Gore jointly published with the India Habitat Centre.[90]

Selected honors and awards[edit source | editbeta]

Selected publications[edit source | editbeta]

Books[edit source | editbeta]

Articles, speeches, and introductions[edit source | editbeta]

Glossary[edit source | editbeta]

Al Gore uses the terms:

Further reading[edit source | editbeta]

See also[edit source | editbeta]

Notes

==

Is Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth accurate?

What The Science Says:

Al Gore's film was "broadly accurate" according to an expert witness called when an attempt was made through the courts to prevent the film being shown in schools.

Climate Myth: Al Gore got it wrong

“Al Gore's Oscar-winning documentary on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth, was […] criticised by a high court judge who highlighted what he said were "nine scientific errors" in the film.

Mr Justice Barton yesterday said that while the film was "broadly accurate" in its presentation of climate change, he identified nine significant errors in the film, some of which, he said, had arisen in "the context of alarmism and exaggeration" to support the former US vice-president's views on climate change.”  (The Guardian)

Al Gore, certainly the most vilified proponent of climate change anywhere in the world, earned most of this enmity through the success of a film he presented called An Inconvenient Truth (AIT). The film was a staid presentation of climate science to date, a round-up of research, science and projections, with many cinematic sequences employed to harness the power of the medium.

The majority of the film, covering issues like Himalayan Glaciers, Greenland and Antarctica losing ice, the severity of hurricanes and other weather phenomena, was accurate and represented the science as it stood. Since the release of the film, considerably more evidence has been found in support of the science and projections in the film.

One claim was in error, as was one attribution of a graph. The error was in the claim that climate change had caused the shrinking of Mount Kilimanjaro, although the evidence that the shrinkage was most likely caused by deforestation did not appear until after the film was made. The error of attribution was in reference to a graph of temperature and attributes it mistakenly to a Dr. Thompson, when it was actually a combination of Mann’s hockey stick and CRU surface temperature data.

The Legal Case

The film is also subject to attack on the grounds that Al Gore was prosecuted in the UK and a judge found many errors in the film. This is untrue.

The case, heard in the civil court, was brought by a school governor against the Secretary of State for Education, in an attempt to prevent the film being distributed to schools. Mr. Justice Burton, in his judgement, ordered that teaching notes accompanying the film should be modified to clarify the speculative (and occasionally hyperbolic) presentation of some issues.

Mr. Justice Burton found no errors at all in the science. In his written judgement, the word error appears in quotes each time it is used – nine points formed the entirety of his judgement - indicating that he did not support the assertion the points were erroneous. About the film in general, he said this:

  1. I turn to AIT, the film. The following is clear:

i) It is substantially founded upon scientific research and fact, albeit that the science is used, in the hands of a talented politician and communicator, to make a political statement and to support a political programme.

  1. I have no doubt that Dr Stott, the Defendant's expert, is right when he says that:

"Al Gore's presentation of the causes and likely effects of climate change in the film was broadly accurate."

The judge did identify statements that had political implications he felt needed qualification in the guidance notes for teachers, and ordered that both qualifications on the science and the political implications should be included in the notes. Al Gore was not involved in the case, was not prosecuted, and because the trial was not a criminal case, there was no jury, and no guilty verdict was handed down.

Note: the vilification of Al Gore is best understood in the context of personalisation. When opponents attack something abstract - like science - the public may not associate with the argument. By giving a name and a face and a set of behavioural characteristics - being a rich politician, for example - it is easy to create a fictional enemy through inference and association. Al Gore is a successful politician who presented a film, his training and experience suitable to the task. To invoke Gore is a way to obfuscate about climate science, for which Gore has neither responsibility, claim nor blame.

Basic rebuttal written by GPWayne

http://www.skepticalscience.com/print.php?r=187

==

...

OCT 2007

  1. The Film
  2. I turn to AIT, the film. The following is clear:
  3. > i) It is substantially founded upon scientific research and fact, albeit that the science is used, in the hands of a talented politician and communicator, to make a political statement and to support a political programme.

ii) As Mr Chamberlain persuasively sets out at paragraph 11 of his skeleton:

"The Film advances four main scientific hypotheses, each of which is very well supported by research published in respected, peer-reviewed journals and accords with the latest conclusions of the IPCC:

(1) global average temperatures have been rising significantly over the past half century and are likely to continue to rise ("climate change");

(2) climate change is mainly attributable to man-made emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide ("greenhouse gases");

(3) climate change will, if unchecked, have significant adverse effects on the world and its populations; and

(4) there are measures which individuals and governments can take which will help to reduce climate change or mitigate its effects."

These propositions, Mr Chamberlain submits (and I accept), are supported by a vast quantity of research published in peer-reviewed journals worldwide and by the great majority of the world's climate scientists. Ms Bramman explains, at paragraph 14 of her witness statement, that:

"The position is that the central scientific theme of Al Gore's Film is now accepted by the overwhelming majority of the world's scientific community. That consensus is reflected in the recent report of the IPCC. The role of the IPCC is to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts and options and adaptation and mitigation. Hundreds of experts from all over the world contribute to the preparation of IPCC reports, including the Working Group I report on Climate Change 2007: The physical Science basis of climate change, published on 2 February 2007 and the most recent Mitigation of Climate Change, the Summary for Policy-makers published by Working Group III on 4 May 2007. A copy of both documents are annexed to the Witness Statement of Dr Peter Stott. The weight of scientific evidence set out by the IPCC confirms that most of the global average warming over the last 50 years is now regarded as "very likely" to be attributable to man-made greenhouse gas emissions."

For the purposes of this hearing Mr Downes was prepared to accept that the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report represented the present scientific consensus.

.....

  1. The 'Errors'

1. 'Error' 11: Sea level rise of up to 20 feet (7 metres) will be caused by melting of either West Antarctica or Greenland in the near future.

  1. In scene 21 (the film is carved up for teaching purposes into 32 scenes), in one of the most graphic parts of the film Mr Gore says as follows:
  2. > "If Greenland broke up and melted, or if half of Greenland and half of West Antarctica broke up and melted, this is what would happen to the sea level in Florida. This is what would happen in the San Francisco Bay. A lot of people live in these areas. The Netherlands, the Low Countries: absolutely devastation. The area around Beijing is home to tens of millions of people. Even worse, in the area around Shanghai, there are 40 million people. Worse still, Calcutta, and to the east Bangladesh, the area covered includes 50 million people. Think of the impact of a couple of hundred thousand refugees when they are displaced by an environmental event and then imagine the impact of a 100 million or more. Here is Manhattan. This is the World Trade Center memorial site. After the horrible events of 9/11 we said never again. This is what would happen to Manhattan. They can measure this precisely, just as scientists could predict precisely how much water would breach the levee in New Orleans."
  3. This is distinctly alarmist, and part of Mr Gore's 'wake-up call'. It is common ground that if indeed Greenland melted, it would release this amount of water, but only after, and over, millennia, so that the Armageddon scenario he predicts, insofar as it suggests that sea level rises of 7 metres might occur in the immediate future, is not in line with the scientific consensus.
  4. 2. 'Error' 12: Low lying inhabited Pacific atolls are being inundated because of anthropogenic global warming.
  5. In scene 20, Mr Gore states "that's why the citizens of these Pacific nations have all had to evacuate to New Zealand". There is no evidence of any such evacuation having yet happened.
  6. :{In March 2007, we blogged about the :(style="background-color:#ffffffff"):}:[dire situation of the South Pacific islands Kiribati and Tuvalu:{. The sea is rising due to global warming, and two uninhabited islands nearby have already sunk. Now }:Kiribati is preparing for extinction:{:}:

The leader of the South Pacific island nation of Kiribati laid out an extraordinary plan Monday (Sept. 22) that would scatter his people through the nations of the world as rising sea levels submerge the islands they have called home for centuries.

Rising sea levels are submerging the land. Land not yet submerged is being rendered uninhabitable by salty ground water.

This post is by Sheryl Canter, an online writer and editorial manager at Environmental Defense Fund.

- See more at: http://blogs.edf.org/climate411/2008/10/14/kiribati_evacuating/#sthash.ZcJLaJS1.dpuf ]

---

nyt may2007

Dire climate change predictions may seem like science fiction in many parts of the world. But in the tiny, sea-swept Pacific nation of Tuvalu, the crisis has already arrived.

Tuvalu consists of nine low-lying atolls totaling just 26 square kilometers, or 10 square miles, and in the past few years the "king tides" that peak in February have been rising higher than ever. Waves have washed over the island's main roads; coconut trees stand partly submerged; and small patches of cropland have been rendered unusable because of encroaching saltwater.

The government and many experts already assume the worst:Sometime in the next 50 years, if rising sea-level predictions prove accurate, the entire 11,800-strong population will have to be evacuated.

The ocean could swallow Tuvalu whole, making it the first country to be wiped off the map by global warming.

But in one respect, the Tuvaluans may actually be the lucky ones - at least compared with some of their Pacific island neighbors. The New Zealand government already takes in a quota of Tuvaluans every year, many of whom have found jobs in the strawberry fields and packing plants around Auckland. And it has assured Tuvalu that it will absorb the entire population if the worst comes to pass.

That is a lifeline that many similarly threatened island nations - including Kiribati, Vanuatu, the Marshall Islands, the Cook Islands, Fiji and the Solomon Islands - do not yet have.

While their stories may not be as compelling as Tuvalu's, such nations include atolls that may also vanish. And they depend on vulnerable, low-lying coastal areas for living space, cropland and tourism. For them, even conservative estimates of rising waters look set to make life on once-idyllic islands increasingly nasty, crowded and very, very wet.

"Entire Pacific islands disappearing from inundation is indeed dramatic," said Asterio Takesy, director of the Pacific Regional Environment Program, an intergovernmental organization based in Apia, Samoa. "But a complete loss of livelihoods fromdecreased fisheries, damaged coral reefs, tourism affected by dengue epidemics, and agriculture destroyed because of changing rain patterns - surely these are just as worthy of our attention."

The region already faces a witches' brew of problems that environmentalists say are being worsened by climate change: coastal erosion, saltwater intrusion onto taro cropland and tourist sites, shortages of potable water, anemic economies propped up by foreign aid, disease, dependence on sugar-packed, processed food imports.

And there are health problems like obesity and diabetes exacerbated by such food imports. A recent World Health Organization survey found that the South Pacific was the world's most overweight region.

"We're not dealing with climate change on its own, because we have an expanding population and so greater stress on resources anyway," said Ashvini Fernando, regional climate change coordinator for the World Wildlife Fund South Pacific Program, based in Fiji. "Climate change makes those stresses so much greater."

Some experts warn that, ultimately, these issues will combine to power a wave of emigrants fleeing the Pacific islands. Indeed, there are already signs of flight: according to a study by the Australian government,applications for New Zealand residency from eligible Pacific island nations shot up sharply in 2005 and 2006, compared with 2003.

Some countries' economies already depend on remittances from islanders who have gone abroad to find jobs, and climate change could swell those numbers. Meanwhile, villages have already been evacuated from low-lying areas in Vanuatu and the Carteret Islands of Papua New Guinea.

Ben Namakin, an environmentalist and native of Kiribati, says that, in his homeland,saltwater intrusion is already ruining taro patches and spoiling well water, houses are being flooded, coastlines are receding, and a causeway whose beauty he had appreciated since he was a child collapsed last October.

And, as in many such Pacific island nations, there is little higher, habitable land for people to move to.

"I really don't know where they will go," Namakin said in an e-mail interview. "They may move further inland, but the more they do that, they will end up on somebody else's land or reach the ocean on the other side, as the islands are too narrow."

The result could be a resource grab that pushes governments to the breaking point, and a clamor to relocate to developed countries on the Pacific Rim or elsewhere.

"There's going to be an increased demand for migration, as people look for economic opportunities," said Benjamin Preston, an Australian government scientist in marine and atmospheric research. "And as the impact of climate change becomes more severe, that's going to add urgency into the equation."]

  1. 3. 'Error' 18: Shutting down of the "Ocean Conveyor".
  2. In scene 17 he says, "One of the ones they are most worried about where they have spent a lot of time studying the problem is the North Atlantic, where the Gulf Stream comes up and meets the cold wind coming off the Arctic over Greenland and evaporates the heat out of the Gulf Stream and the stream is carried over to western Europe by the prevailing winds and the earth's rotation ... they call it the Ocean Conveyor … At the end of the last ice age … that pump shut off and the heat transfer stopped and Europe went back into an ice age for another 900 or 1000 years. Of course that's not going to happen again, because glaciers of North America are not there. Is there any big chunk of ice anywhere near there? Oh yeah[pointing at Greenland]". According to the IPCC, it is very unlikely that the Ocean Conveyor (known technically as the Meridional Overturning Circulation or thermohaline circulation) will shut down in the future, though it is considered likely that thermohaline circulation may slow down. [ucs 2004How might thermohaline circulation be turned off?
  3. Thermohaline circulation is driven by the sinking of cold, salty water at high latitudes. Fresh water flowing into the North Atlantic Ocean from rainfall or the melting of ice and permafrost can make the ocean water less salty, and therefore less dense. If it becomes "light" enough, it will not sink any more, possibly slowing or shutting down global thermohaline circulation. Indeed, during some of the abrupt events in Earth's past climate, scientists find evidence of large catastrophic flows of fresh water into the North Atlantic from the melting of glaciers and ice caps, and due to flooding from glacier-dammed lakes. Without the large-scale sinking of salty water in the North Atlantic the influx of warm water to replace it from the tropics would not occur, effectively switching off the thermohaline circulation.

Past changes in thermohaline circulation have occurred during periods of relatively rapid climate change, such as transitions in and out of glaciations. Similarly, the rapid warming we are currently experiencing could trigger an abrupt thermohaline shutdown and subsequent regional cooling. While a shutdown of thermohaline circulation is unlikely to occur in the next century, scientists have recently found that freshwater inputs have already caused measurable "freshening" of North Atlantic surface waters over the past 40 years. Human activities may be driving the climate system toward a threshold and thus increasing the chance of abrupt climate changes occurring.]

  1. 4. 'Error' 3: Direct coincidence between rise in CO2 in the atmosphere and in temperature, by reference to two graphs.
  2. In scenes 8 and 9, Mr Gore shows two graphs relating to a period of 650,000 years, one showing rise in CO2 and one showing rise in temperature, and asserts (by ridiculing the opposite view) that they show an exact fit. Although there is general scientific agreement that there is a connection, the two graphs do not establish what Mr Gore asserts.
  3. 5. 'Error' 14: The snows of Kilimanjaro.
  4. Mr Gore asserts in scene 7 that the disappearance of snow on Mt Kilimanjaro is expressly attributable to global warming. It is noteworthy that this is a point that specifically impressed Mr Milliband (see the press release quoted at paragraph 6 above). However, it is common ground that, the scientific consensus is that it cannot be established that the recession of snows on Mt Kilimanjaro is mainly attributable to human-induced climate change.
  5. [http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/climate-change-will-melt-snows-of-kilimanjaro-within-20-years-1813631.html
  7. # Climate change will melt snows of Kilimanjaro 'within 20 years'

Ice on Africa's highest peak is vanishing at fastest rate for 100 years

BY STEVE CONNOR , SCIENCE EDITOR

TUESDAY 03 NOVEMBER 2009

The snows of Mount Kilimanjaro – the highest mountain in Africa – may soon be falling on bare ground following a study showing that its ice cap isdestined to disappear entirely within 20 years, due largely to climate change.

  1. The vast ice fields of Kilimanjaro in Tanzania are melting at a faster pace than at any time over the past 100 years and at this rate they will be gone completely within two decades or even earlier according to one of the world's leading glaciologists.

A team led by Professor Lonnie Thompson of Ohio State University said that the latest assessment of Kilimanjaro's famous ice cap has confirmed that 85 per cent of the ice that covered the mountain in 1912 has been lost, and 26 per cent of the ice that was there in 2000 is now gone.

A series of cores drilled through the ice fields at different points on Kilimanjaro has revealed that the melting observed over the past few decades is unprecedented in nearly 12,000 years. The research also shows that that the current thinning of the ice cap is faster than when a devastating 300-year drought occurred 4,200 years ago, a period when very little snow fell on the mountain.

"The dramatic loss of Kilimanjaro's ice cover has attracted global attention. The three remaining ice fields on the plateau and the slopes are both shrinking laterally and rapidly thinning," the scientists write in a study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"We present additional evidence that the combination of processes driving the current shrinking and thinning of Kilimanjaro's ice fields is unique within an 11,700-year perspective. If current climatological conditions are sustained, the ice fields atop Kilimanjaro and on its flanks will likely disappear within several decades," they say.

If conditions persist, and warmer temperatures continue to melt more ice than falls in the form of snow, then there is a "strong likelihood that the ice field will disappear within a decade or two", the authors conclude.

In 2000, Professor Thompson and his colleagues measured a radioactive signal in the ice cap that was left over from the American atomic tests in 1951 and 1952. That signal was at a depth of 1.6 metres (5.25ft) below the surface of the ice. It has now disappeared because the top 2.5 metres of ice have melted away.

Professor Thompson said that the scientists have also detected elongated bubbles in the surface of the ice field, which occur when the ice melts and refreezes. There is no evidence this melting and refreezing has occurred at any other period going back 11,700 years.

"This is the first time researchers have calculated the volume of ice lost from the mountain's ice fields. If you look at the percentage of volumes lost since 2000 versus the percentage of area lost as the ice fields shrink, the numbers are very close," he said.

Data from the ice cores shows that the summits of both the northern and the southern ice fields have thinned by 1.9 metres and 5.1 metres respectively. The smaller Furtwängler Glacier, which was melting and was water-saturated when it was drilled by Professor Thompson in 2000, has thinned by 50 per cent in the past nine years.

Kilimanjaro is just one of many low-latitude mountains around the world that are losing their glaciers. They include the ice fields on Mount Kenya and the Rwenzori Mountains in Africa, as well as glaciers as far apart as the Alps in Europe, the Andes in South America and the Himalayas in Asia.

"The fact that so many glaciers throughout the tropics and subtropics are showing similar responses suggests an underlying common cause," Professor Thompson said.

"The increase of Earth's surface temperatures, couple with even greater increases in the mid- to upper-tropical troposphere as documented in recent decades, would at least partially explain the observed widespread similarity in glacier behaviour," he said.

Changes in the local vegetation around Kilimanjaro, which has lost much of it forests, may have affected the cloudiness and amount of snow that falls on the mountain. However, the scientists believe that warmer global temperatures have had a bigger impact on the rate at which its glaciers are melting.

Large numbers of people rely on mountain glaciers for a regular supply of water or hydroelectric power throughout the year. In Peru, for instance, the Quelccaya Ice Cap has shrunk by nearly a quarter in the past 50 years and, if it disappears completely, many people will be badly affected by the lack of hydroelectric power, crop irrigation and drinking water.

"What we're doing is cashing in on a bank account that was built over thousands of years but isn't being replenished. Once it's gone, it will be difficult to re-form," Professor Thompson said in 2001 in his earlier glaciers study.]

  1. 6. 'Error' 16: Lake Chad etc
  2. The drying up of Lake Chad is used as a prime example of a catastrophic result of global warming. However, it is generally accepted that the evidence remains insufficient to establish such an attribution. It is apparently considered to be far more likely to result from other factors, such as population increase and over-grazing, and regional climate variability.[Feb. 28, 2012 — Lake Chad used to be one of the biggest lakes in the world, but itsvolume has been reduced to a tenth of what it was in the 1960s.The way this lake has dried up has become a symbol of climate change in action. It's true that the lake's water level has always changed, but this hasn't diminished the major changes to the lifestyle of the inhabitants of the lake's shoreline. Yet, as demonstrated by a French-Nigerian team including the IRD1, lake dwellers have made the best of these changes to their environment.Formerly fishermen or herdsmen, they have become farmers,often growing for export. The land that was part of the lake has made it possible for them to develop highly productive crops such as corn, rice and cowpea. In the valley of the Komadugu Yobe River in Niger, they have even commenced the intensive farming of peppers, which is highly lucrative although risky.][nasa 2007? Lake Chad, once the 6th largest lake in the world, has shrunk to 1/10 of its size 35 years ago, from 25,000 km2 in the 1960s to 500 km2 today. The lake’s depth is very shallow and responds dramatically to changes to water inflow and outflow. It was originally 7m deep in the 1960s and now averages only 1.5m deep. These changes in size are mainly due to a changing climate and the reduction of inflow by the major rivers that feed the lake. Lake Chad is part of the Conventional Basin which is part of the Lake Chad Basin in Northern Central Africa. The Conventional Basin consists of the four countries in direct contact with Lake Chad: Nigeria, Niger, Chad, and Cameroon; and covers a total land area of 427,500 km2 or roughly the size of Zimbabwe. More than 11 million people live in the Conventional Basin working to farm, raise livestock, mine, and fish. These people are among the most vulnerable to food scarcity in all of Africa. The diminishing volume of Lake Chad has serious effects on the political, social, and economic stability of the neighboring people. Efforts to replenish Lake Chad include damming a nearby river and channeling the water into the lake. 
  3. 7. 'Error' 8: Hurricane Katrina.
  4. In scene 12 Hurricane Katrina and the consequent devastation in New Orleans is ascribed to global warming. It is common ground that there is insufficient evidence to show that.
  5. [SANDY]
  6. 8. 'Error' 15: Death of polar bears.
  7. In scene 16, by reference to a dramatic graphic of a polar bear desperately swimming through the water looking for ice, Mr Gore says: "A new scientific study shows that for the first time they are finding polar bears that have actually drowned swimming long distances up to 60 miles to find the ice. They did not find that before." The only scientific study that either side before me can find is one which indicates that four polar bears have recently been found drowned because of a storm. That is not to say that there may not in the future be drowning-related deaths of polar bears if the trend of regression of pack-ice and/or longer open water continues, but it plainly does not support Mr Gore's description.
  8. 9. 'Error' 13: Coral reefs.
  9. In scene 19, Mr Gore says: "Coral reefs all over the world because of global warming and other factors are bleaching and they end up like this. All the fish species that depend on the coral reef are also in jeopardy as a result. Overall specie loss is now occurring at a rate 1000 times greater than the natural background rate." The actual scientific view, as recorded in the IPCC report, is that, if the temperature were to rise by 1-3 degrees Centigrade, there would be increased coral bleaching and widespread coral mortality, unless corals could adopt or acclimatise, but that separating the impacts of climate change-related stresses from other stresses, such as over-fishing and polluting, is difficult.
  10. [

CORAL REEFS UNDER RAPID CLIMATE CHANGE AND OCEAN ACIDIFICATION

Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is expected to exceed 500 parts per million and global temperatures to rise by at least 2°C by 2050 to 2100, values that significantly exceed those of at least the past 420,000 years during which most extant marine More

:{Science 14 December 2007: :{}:

Vol. 318 no. 5857 pp. 1737-1742DOI:10.1126/science.1152509]

}:

==

---

short segment in frontline:

The film went on to gross nearly $50 million worldwide and win two Academy Awards. Gore would share the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with a U.N. panel in recognition of their work to draw attention to what the commission called “the greatest challenge we’ve ever faced.”

“The climate crisis is not a political issue,” Gore said in a statement after the prize was announced. “It is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity.”

In little time, it seemed as though the film had succeeded in galvanizing the general public around the need to address the threat of global warming, re-energizing the environmental movement and making Gore the cause’s public face, its celebrity icon.

And so when the backlash against climate change gained traction, it was in some ways manifested in a personal backlash against the former Democratic politician who had long irked the right, as illustrated in the above clip from tonight’s broadcast Climate of Doubt.

“Al Gore was the perfect proponent and leader of the global warming alarmists because he’s a very politically divisive and controversial,” Myron Ebell, director of the Center for Energy and Environment, told FRONTLINE correspondent John Hockenberry. “He was a wonderful target for our side.”

Personalizing the attacks on Gore were part of an approach that was embraced andamplified by friendly media, and part of a broad strategy to undermine public acceptance of a global scientific consensus.

Tonight, FRONTLINE explores the inner workings of the movement that changed the political debate around climate change. How did it happen? And who’s behind it? We hope you’ll watch.

hannity jet scam; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IelDNR6qy5E&feature=youtu.be

 ---

PR comments at aspen:

The tobacco giants financed a multimillion-dollar campaign to attack volumes of research involving tens of thousands of people that as early as the 1960s demonstrated conclusively that people die from cigarettes. As a result, tobacco interests succeeded for several decades in convincing many Americans and their politicians to oppose anti-smoking legislation. It’s not hyperbole to say that the delay in banning smoking where people congregate wound up costing tens of thousands more people their lives during those years.

But the dishonest PR initiatives aren’t confined to tobacco and the health insurance industry.

Just ask Al Gore, who says he’s “fed up” with the climate change BS that’s being sold by the petroleum, steel and utility interests and bought by too many Americans and their politicians. Gore dropped in on an Aspen Institute media forum earlier this month and he accused corporate kingpins of putting profit above society.

The former vice president said that it wasn’t that long ago when the tobacco lobby “succeeded in delaying the implementation of the surgeon general’s report for 40 years - 40 years! It was evil, evil, evil.”

Gore said that the tobacco model of manipulating the media “was transported whole cloth into the climate debate.”

http://m.apnews.com/ap/db_8545/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=CZHzcszz

---

CEI’s latest ad campaign attempts to reach the younger generation by using old video footage of a Wendy’s hamburger commercial in which elderly women lament that a burger lacks meat. “Where’s the beef?” they ask. In CEI’s version, three younger women order a burger and a man wearing an Al Gore mask heats the burger in a microwave labeled Al Gore’s Global Warming Machine. He then wraps the burger up with a picture of the earth and hands it to her, saying, “Careful now; this is very hot.” When the young woman opens the package, she says: “This isn’t very warm.” The ad ends with the same young woman asking, “Where’s the warming?” and splices of a song from the Long-Island hip-hop group 857 titled “Where’s the Beef?” (Click here to watch the video.)

---

UK ruling: 2007 vs now?

By Sally Peck

12:01AM BST 11 Oct 2007

Al Gore's environmental documentary An Inconvenient Truth contains nine key scientific errors, a High Court judge ruled yesterday.

The judge declined to ban the Academy Award-winning film from British schools, but ruled that it can only be shown with guidance notes to prevent political indoctrination.

In the documentary, directed by Davis Guggenheim, the former US vice president and environmental activist calls on people to fight global warming because "humanity is sitting on a ticking time bomb".

But Judge Michael Burton ruled yesterday that errors had arisen "in the context of alarmism and exaggeration" in order to support Mr Gore's thesis on global warming.

His criticism followed an unsuccessful attempt by Stewart Dimmock, a Kent school governor, to block the Government's plan to screen the documentary in more than 3,500 secondary schools in England and Wales.

Related Articles

14 Mar 2009

The father of two claimed An Inconvenient Truth included "serious scientific inaccuracies, political propaganda and sentimental mush".

The film's distributor, Paramount, warns in its synopsis of the film: "If the vast majority of the world's scientists are right, we have just ten years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet into a tail-spin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves beyond anything we have ever experienced."

But the judge ruled that the "apocalyptic vision" presented in the film was politically partisan and thus not an impartial scientific analysis of climate change.

It is, he ruled, a "political film".

The nine alleged errors in the film

  1. Mr Gore claims that a sea-level rise of up to 20 feet would be caused by melting of either West Antarctica or Greenland "in the near future". The judge said: "This is distinctly alarmist and part of Mr Gore's "wake-up call". He agreed that if Greenland melted it would release this amount of water - "but only after, and over, millennia"."The Armageddon scenario he predicts, insofar as it suggests that sea level rises of seven metres might occur in the immediate future, is not in line with the scientific consensus."
  2. The film claims that low-lying inhabited Pacific atolls "are being inundated because of anthropogenic global warming" but the judge ruled there was no evidence of any evacuation having yet happened.
  3. The documentary speaks of global warming "shutting down the Ocean Conveyor" - the process by which the Gulf Stream is carried over the North Atlantic to western Europe. Citing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the judge said that it was "very unlikely" that the Ocean Conveyor, also known as the Meridional Overturning Circulation, would shut down in the future, though it might slow down.
  4. Mr Gore claims that two graphs, one plotting a rise in C02 and the other the rise in temperature over a period of 650,000 years, showed "an exact fit". The judge said that, although there was general scientific agreement that there was a connection, "the two graphs do not establish what Mr Gore asserts".
  5. Mr Gore says the disappearance of snow on Mt Kilimanjaro was directly attributable to global warming, but the judge ruled thatit scientists have not established that the recession of snow on Mt Kilimanjaro is primarily attributable to human-induced climate change.
  6. The film contendsthat the drying up of Lake Chad is a prime example of a catastrophic result of global warming but thejudge saidthere was insufficient evidence, and that "it is apparently considered to be far more likely to result from other factors, such as population increase and over-grazing, and regional climate variability."
  7. Mr Gore blames Hurricane Katrina and the consequent devastation in New Orleans on global warming, but the judge ruled there was "insufficient evidence to show that".
  8. Mr Gore cites a scientific study that shows, for the first time, that polar bears were being found after drowning from "swimming long distances - up to 60 miles - to find the ice" The judge said: "The only scientific study that either side before me can find is one which indicates that four polar bears have recently been found drowned because of a storm."That was not to say there might not in future be drowning-related deaths of bears if the trend of regression of pack ice continued - "but it plainly does not support Mr Gore's description".
  9. Mr Gore saidthat coral reefs all over the world were being bleached because of global warming and other factors. Again citing the IPCC, the judge agreedthat, if temperatures were to rise by 1-3 degrees centigrade, there would be increased coral bleaching and mortality, unless the coral could adapt. However, he ruled that separating the impacts of stresses due to climate change from other stresses, such as over-fishing, and pollution was difficult.

A Government spokesman said he would not make any further comment on the case today.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/3310137/Al-Gores-nine-Inconvenient-Untruths.html

---

penguin army

---

usa today op ed?

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2006-08-09-gore-green_x.htm

Peter Schweizer is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and author ofDo As I Say (Not As I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy.

---

hannity response http://www.newshounds.us/2007/02/20/carbon_hog_sean_hannitys_pathetic_attempt_to_smear_al_gore.php

---

media matters

cf 2013 gp, quite a lot of $

Coverage by several media outlets of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research's (TCPR) criticism of former Vice President Al Gore's home energy bills omitted some or all of the steps that Gore has reportedly taken to reduce the effect of his home energy usage. These steps were reported by MSNBC host Keith Olbermann, CNN financial correspondent Ali Velshi, and a February 27 article in The Tennessean of Nashville. On the February 27 edition of MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Olbermann said that TCPR's criticism "omits" that Gore's home includes "home offices for himself and his wife, as well as a guest house and special security measures," and that the Gores' use of "renewable sources" from the "Green Power Switch" program "actually costs more for the Gores." Olbermann further reported that, according to Green Power Switch, "some smaller homes consume energy in the same range of usage as does the one on the Gores' property." On the February 27 edition of CNN's American Morning, Velshi also noted that Gore's purchase of "green power" increased Gore's utility costs.

From The Tennessean:

Gore purchased 108 blocks of "green power" for each of the past three months, according to a summary of the bills.

That's a total of $432 a month Gore paid extra for solar or other renewable energy sources.

The weblog Think Progress also reported that Gore's office said "Gore's family ... sign[ed] up for 100 percent green power through Green Power Switch" and "purchas[ed] carbon offsets to offset the family's carbon footprint."

Additionally, a February 27 Associated Press article, questioned TCPR's assertion that the Gores used more than 220,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity in 2006. The AP reported that "according to bills [it] reviewed," "[t]he Gores used about 191,000 kilowatt hours in 2006," while TCPR "said that Gore used nearly 221,000 kilowatt hours." The AP reported that TCPR president Jason "Drew" Johnson "said his group got its figures from Nashville Electric Service. But company spokeswoman Laurie Parker said the utility never received a request from the policy center and never gave it any information."

In contrast, a CNN report on Lou Dobbs Tonight that aired several hours after Velshi's report, as well as reports by Fox News, MSNBC, CNN Headline News, the Los Angeles Times, and National Public Radio, as well as a New York Post editorial and an editorial and a separate column in The Washington Times, omitted some or all of the actions reportedly taken by the Gores; none of them raised the question in the AP report about the accuracy of TCPR's figures, including several that aired or were published after the AP article:

From 7 a.m. ET hour of the February 27 edition of CNN's American Morning:

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN (co-host): Al Gore is firing back this morning, on critics who say that he is not practicing what he was preaching in his documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. The day after Gore took home an Oscar for that movie, critics are charging that Gore's mansion in Nashville devours over 20 times the national average in kilowatt-hours. The average electric bill is 1,200 bucks a month! A thousand dollars a month for the gas bill.

Spokeswoman says that Al Gore told -- rather a spokeswoman for Al Gore told CNN that the Gores make up for all of that. "The Gores purchase," she said, "all their power through the local Green Power Switch program. It's 100 percent renewable power and they are in the midst of a renovation, which includes installing solar-powered panels on their home, which will enable them to use less power."

[...]

VELSHI: And we've been reporting this morning that Al Gore's big house is partially green. Gore produced bills that showed that he purchased 108 blocks of green power for each of the past 3 months. It's worth about 432 bucks a month extra that he paid for to use solar or other energy sources coming into his house.

One group says that that's about the equivalent of recycling two and a half million aluminum cans, or more than a quarter million pounds of newspapers. So, it might be a trend that folks want to take advantage of, Soledad.

From the February 27 edition of MSNBC's Tucker:

CARLSON: Al Gore has never lived in the White House, at least not yet, but he's got some pretty nice digs anyway. His family home in the Nashville area sprawls for 10,000 square feet, and according to the Nashville Tennessean, it costs the Gores about 1,200 bucks a month in electricity. That's quite a big carbon footprint, needless to say. Well, Gore defends his prodigious energy consumption with the fact that Mr. Gore pays for, quote, "offsets," which fund the production of renewable energy, like solar power. Here to discuss the meaning of this story is the president of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Fred Smith.Fred, welcome.

SMITH: Hi, Tucker. We're back to the Middle Ages in indulgences, aren't we?

CARLSON: Yeah, I mean, here -- here's the thing. I don't typically go into how people live their private lives. I like to keep that -- kind of out of politics, but the nature of this global warming debate is almost by definition personal. The idea is -- and Gore said it out loud the other day. He said, "It's not political. It's moral." The way you behave in your off-hours, your private life at home, could determine the future of the Earth. So, the personal is political, according to the rules he set out, and so I think it's very relevant that this guy is living like a king, at the expense of our planet. Am I missing something?

SMITH: No, you're not. And, in fact, if he stayed at home, he'd actually use even less energy. Flying around the world in jet travel is not exactly what you would call a green lifestyle. But remember, as you point out in your beginning, he is now expiating for his evil consumptive ways by buyingindulgences.

From the February 27 edition of CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight:

PILGRIM: Let's -- let's move on to another personality in this whole issue: Hollywood and Al Gore. They just loved each other, and it was a very, very interesting night.

But today, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research says that Gore's own home uses 20 times the national average for power. This is after collecting an Oscar for his global warming documentary, An Inconvenient Truth.

JOE MADISON (talk show radio host): Yeah, and I drove over here in an Escalade that you guys had pick me up.

And, you know, somebody said, well, he's flip-flopping, because he's now going to put solar panels on. Well, this is a good flip-flop. I'm glad he's going to do that, but, come on, we can all be hypocrites, too.

PETER BOYLES (radio host): Do you remember --

SIMONE: He's doing it because he got caught.

MADISON: Now, it wasn't my Escalade, by the way.

BOYLES: But you remember -- you remember, during the big debates on civil rights and the debates on bussing, and then they found that most of these people who are voting on bussing, oh, yeah, let's -- they have their children in private schools. And hypocrisy, in politicians, well, there's something brand new.

SIMONE: Here's the new term. This is what our listeners are calling it: Gulfstream liberals. They used to have limousine liberals. These guys that fly around in private jets and preach that you shouldn't waste gas are Gulfstream liberals.

You know what's interesting, the president of the United States put in solar power, thermal heating in the White House a few years ago. His ranch in Texas -- completely green: solar power, thermal heating. That truck he drives around in is hydrogen, so -- and he never -- he never gets any credit for that.

MADISON: Well, let's give Gore a little credit for -- because at least he said, "I'll change it. I will put solar power."

SIMONE: He got caught!

MADISON: And I think give him credit for -- well, fine, but you know, Bush got caught and he's still in Iraq.

From the February 27 edition of CNN Headline News' Glenn Beck:

BECK [video clip]:Al Gore, what a fraud. I may have a bigger carbon footprint than Al Gore. I'm not sure. I want to see my carbon footprint. And if it's not big enough, I'm going to expand it.

I'm going to go out and smoke coal cigarettes today, just to piss Al Gore off. But I'll show you his carbon footprint, and it will astound you, how a guy who's telling me to use a fluorescent light bulb has a huge carbon footprint.

BECK: Now, turns out that Al Gore is a big hypocrite on this, according to, at least, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research. His 20-room house, pool house devoured nearly 221,000 kilowatt-hours in 2006. I don't know how many I really spent until this morning. I looked it up. That's more than 20 times the national average. Gore's average monthly electric bill was about $1,300. That means that the Gores paid almost $30,000 in gas and electric in 2006.

Well, lucky for Al Gore, his Oscar goody bag included 100,000 free pounds of greenhouse gas reductions from TerraPass. The press release says that this is enough to balance out the average year in the life of an Academy Award presenter. For example, 100,000 pounds is the total amount of carbon dioxide created by 20,000 miles of driving, 40,000 miles on a commercial airline, and 20 hours in a private jet, and a large house in Los Angeles.

From the February 27 edition of MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann:

OLBERMANN: So, is our third story tonight outrageous hypocrisy, a minor embarrassment, or a demonstration of a different kind of windpower? First, that allegedly nonpartisan think tank, which just happens to have gotten its story picked up by the notorious Drudge Report today, is called the Tennessee Center for Policy Research. Twenty-seven-year-old President Jason "Drew" Johnson, hailing from the same American Enterprise Institute that takes money from big oil, cheerleads the war in Iraq, and consistently -- and now to pretty consistent laughter -- downplays global warming.

That said, even a partisan think tank can get the facts straight. So, the facts: last year, Gore's Tennessee property consumed almost 221,000 kilowatt-hours, 20 times the national average. It cost him more than $16,300. But Johnson's press release, calling on Gore to walk the walk when it comes to home energy use, omits several other key facts. The former vice president's home has 20 rooms, including home offices for himself and his wife, as well as a guest house and special security measures.

Furthermore, the Gores buy energy produced from renewable sources, such as wind and solar. Tonight, Countdown confirmed with the local utility officials that their program, called the Green Power Switch, actually costs more for the Gores -- four dollars for every 150 kilowatt hours. Meaning, by our calculations, our math here, that the Gores actually chose to increase their electric bill by $5,893, more than 50 percent, in order to minimize carbon pollution.

The utility is also telling us that some smaller homes consume energy in the same range of usage as does the one on the Gores' property.

From the February 27 edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes:

HANNITY: Seems the truth keeps getting more inconvenient for former Vice President Al Gore. A new report from the Tennessee Center for Policy Research shows that the Gore household consumes at least 20 times more energy than the national average.

The report flies in the face of Gore's message about the need to reduce energy emissions, and it also questions whether the former vice president and his legion of Hollywood stars are legitimately leading by example.

[...]

HANNITY: If Al Gore is going to carry this message, doesn't he need to walk the walk? And do you have the courage to say, when he travels around in private jets, when he's using this type of energy 20 times the national average, that he's a hypocrite?

[...]

HANNITY: He needs those three or four homes,the eight bathrooms, the 20-room mansion. He needs the Gulfstream to live his life, because he's Al Gore. But the rest of us, we're going to get lectured by him about our SUV use? And you don't see that hypocrisy? That is pure, Class A hypocritical living. Why can't you just acknowledge that?

BEGLEY: I don't want to -- I'd like to learn more about the multiple homes. I'd like to learn more about this. I'd like to hear his response to all this before I comment. But I can I tell you it's possible to live very simply. I live on very little, and I take public transportation. I ride my --

HANNITY: I'm praising you. You're not a hypocrite, Ed. And I read you ride your bike to different Hollywood events, I read recently.

BEGLEY: Right.

HANNITY: You know, but Al Gore -- for example, the average American home consumes 10,656 kilowatt hours. In just the month of August alone, he used twice the national average, and that's only one of his homes. And I'm just --

BEGLEY: I want to talk to --

HANNITY: Go ahead.

BEGLEY: I'd like to talk to him and see his response to this study before I comment on it. I will come back on and I'll give you a fair comment.

COLMES: Actually, I'll give you his response, Ed and Rachelle [Begley] and Drew. It's Alan Colmes. Drew, I don't think you're telling the whole story. Gore, for example, bought 108 blocks of green power feeds for the past three months. That's the equivalent, by the way, according to the National Electric Service, of 2.48 million aluminum cans. Did you collect -- I wonder if you collected that over the last few months.

JOHNSON: The question isn't whether I collected it --

COLMES: What's that?

JOHNSON: The question isn't, "Did I collect it?" I'm not going around telling people that they need to change the light bulbs in their house --

COLMES: But you're not telling the whole story about what Al Gore is doing. You're not acknowledging --

JOHNSON: No, the truth of the matter is --

COLMES: -- that he's doing carbon trade-offs and he's doing a number of things that he --

HANNITY: That's a joke.

COLMES: No, it's not a joke. He's actually -- you're not telling the whole story.

[...]

COLMES: By the way, he's purchasing all his power through a Green Power Switch program. It's 100 percent renewable power. Why aren't you telling that part of the story? All you're doing is attacking Al Gore.

JOHNSON: This power switch program -- he's been a member of this power switch program for three months.

From the February 28 Washington Times "Inside Politics" column:

Gore's utility bills

Back home in Tennessee, safely ensconced in his suburban Nashville home, former Vice President Al Gore is no doubt basking in the Oscar awarded to "An Inconvenient Truth," the documentary he inspired and in which he starred. But a local free-market think tank is trying to make that very home emblematic of what it deems Mr. Gore's environmental hypocrisy, ABC News reports.

Armed with Mr. Gore's utility bills for the past two years, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research charged Monday that the gas and electric bills for the former vice president's 20-room home and pool house devoured nearly 221,000 kilowatt-hours last year, more than 20 times the national average of 10,656 kilowatt-hours.

"If this were any other person with $30,000-a-year in utility bills, I wouldn't care," says the center's 27-year-old president, Drew Johnson. "But he tells other people how to live, and he's not following his own rules."

Kalee Kreider, a spokeswoman for the Gores, did not dispute the center's figures, taken as they were from public records. But she pointed out that both Al and Tipper Gore work out of their home, and she argued that "the bottom line is that every family has a different carbon footprint. And what Vice President Gore has asked is for families to calculate that footprint and take steps to reduce and offset it."

From The Washington Times' February 28 editorial, "Al Gore's glass house":

How "inconvenient." Former Vice President Al Gore, preacher-in-chief of the carbon-footprint gospel, himself owns a mansion which burns through more electricity in a month than the average American family uses in a year. You didn't hear that Sunday night, of course. Mr. Gore's Oscar acceptance speech for "An Inconvenient Truth" instead claimed that climate change is a "moral issue." Mr. Gore apparently thinks he should be exempted personally from his own carbon morality.

Gas and electricity for Mr. Gore's 20-room Nashville manse cost nearly $30,000 last year, the free-market Tennessee Center for Policy Research reported in a post-Oscar release. Heating and powering the pool house alone cost Mr. Gore $544 a month. The estate's total 2006 power consumption was almost 221,000 kilowatt-hours. The average American household uses less than 11,000. But then, average folks weren't busy inventing the Internet.

From a February 28 Los Angeles Times article:

Noncommercial aircraft and other carbon-related indulgences have caused politicians considerable turbulence recently.

A conservative group has condemned Al Gore for racking up an average monthly electricity bill of $1,200 at his Nashville mansion last year while championing the anti-global warming cause. A Gore spokeswoman said the former vice president invests in renewable energy to offset his electricity use.

As part of an ethics push, the House and Senate are toughening restrictions on lawmakers who fly private jets, though exceptions for members and spouses who own planes are under consideration.

From the February 28 edition of NPR's All Things Considered:

MELISSA BLOCK: On Sunday night, when the movie An Inconvenient Truth won an Oscar, its star, Al Gore, took the stage with this message about global warming.

GORE: People all over the world, we need to solve the climate crisis. It's not a political issue. It's a moral issue. We have everything we need to get started with the possible exception of the will to act, and that's a renewable resource. Let's renew it.

BLOCK: Not so fast, according to a press release from a group called the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, which calls itself a libertarian think tank. The center called up the Nashville Electric Service and asked about the bills for the Gores' 10,000-square-foot home.

JAMES "DREW" JOHNSON: The average American uses about 11,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity per year, but Al Gore devoured 221,000 kilowatt-hours.

BLOCK: That's Drew Johnson, president of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research.

JOHNSON: It sort of raises the question, "Is he doing the sorts of thing that he's asking us to do?"

BLOCK: In last couple of days, the center's research has gotten a lot of attention. And in response, Al Gore's office said the Gore family does a lot to reduce its carbon imprint, such as making renovations that include solar panels and purchasing carbon offsets. But how do carbon offsets work? We asked Mark Trexler. He's president of Trexler Climate and Energy Services. That's a climate-change consulting firm.

From the March 1 New York Post editorial:

How big is Al Gore's carbon footprint?

Pretty hefty.

Gore grabbed an Oscar Sunday night for his global-warming horror flick, "An Inconvenient Truth" - and took the opportunity to lecture America about its duty to Go Green and stay there.

Now a Tennessee think tank has revealed an inconvenient truth of its own -- about what Gore actually practices, as opposed to what he endlessly preaches.

The Tennessee Center for Policy Research, using public records, calculated the Gores' energy use for the past two years at their new 20-room, 10,000-square-foot home in suburban Nashville.

In all, the main house and the pool house used an average 18,414 kilowatt-hours (KWH) of power a month last year; that's 14 percent more the 16,200 monthly KWH they devoured in 2005.

Thus does the carbon footprint -- the amount of greenhouse gas generated to keep Gore in kilowatts -- grow.

[...]

Take your typical 800-square-foot, one-bedroom Manhattan pad: You could fit 12 1/2 of theminside the Gores' abode.

A spokeswoman for Gore didn't dispute the figures, but insisted the former Second Family purchases enough energy from renewable sources to offset their sizable carbon footprint.

No doubt.

But that's just another way of saying that the rich truly are different.

Gore, a Kyoto Protocol advocate, has enough socked away so he won't miss a meal should that treaty ever be adopted -- and wreck the U.S. economy.

http://mediamatters.org/research/2007/03/01/reports-on-criticism-of-gore-omitted-steps-he-r/138162

---

usatoday

By Peter Schweizer

Correction: In this column that appeared Aug. 10 on the Forum Page, writer Peter Schweizer inaccurately stated that former vice president Al Gore receives royalties from a zinc mine on his property in Tennessee despite his environmental advocacy. He no longer does, as the mine was closed in 2003.

Al Gore has spoken: The world must embrace a "carbon-neutral lifestyle." To do otherwise, he says, will result in a cataclysmic catastrophe. "Humanity is sitting on a ticking time bomb," warns the website for his film, An Inconvenient Truth. "We have just 10 years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet into a tailspin."

ON DEADLINE: Your thoughts?

Graciously, Gore tells consumers how to change their lives to curb their carbon-gobbling ways: Switch to compact fluorescent light bulbs, use a clothesline, drive a hybrid, use renewable energy, dramatically cut back on consumption. Better still, responsible global citizens can follow Gore's example, because, as he readily points out in his speeches, he lives a "carbon-neutral lifestyle." But if Al Gore is the world's role model for ecology, the planet is doomed.

For someone who says the sky is falling, he does very little. He says he recycles and drives a hybrid. And he claims he uses renewable energy credits to offset the pollution he produces when using a private jet to promote his film. (In reality, Paramount Classics, the film's distributor, pays this.)

Public records reveal that as Gore lectures Americans on excessive consumption, he and his wife Tipper live in two properties: a 10,000-square-foot, 20-room, eight-bathroom home in Nashville, and a 4,000-square-foot home in Arlington, Va. (He also has a third home in Carthage, Tenn.) For someone rallying the planet to pursue a path of extreme personal sacrifice, Gore requires little from himself.

Then there is the troubling matter of his energy use. In the Washington, D.C., area, utility companies offer wind energy as an alternative to traditional energy. In Nashville, similar programs exist. Utility customers must simply pay a few extra pennies per kilowatt hour, and they can continue living their carbon-neutral lifestyles knowing that they are supporting wind energy. Plenty of businesses and institutions have signed up. Even the Bush administration is using green energy for some federal office buildings,as are thousands of area residents.

But according to public records, there is no evidence that Gore has signed up to use green energy in either of his large residences. When contacted Wednesday, Gore's office confirmed as much but said the Gores were looking into making the switch at both homes. Talk about inconvenient truths.

Gore is not alone. Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean has said, "Global warming is happening, and it threatens our very existence." The DNC website applauds the fact that Gore has "tried to move people to act." Yet, astoundingly, Gore's persuasive powers have failed to convince his own party: The DNC has not signed up to pay an additional two pennies a kilowatt hour to go green. For that matter, neither has the Republican National Committee.

Maybe our very existence isn't threatened.

Gore has held these apocalyptic views about the environment for some time. So why, then, didn't Gore dump his family's large stock holdings inOccidental (Oxy) Petroleum? As executor of his family's trust, over the years Gore has controlled hundreds of thousands of dollars in Oxy stock. Oxy has been mired in controversy over oil drilling in ecologically sensitive areas.

Living carbon-neutral apparently doesn't mean living oil-stock free. Nor does it necessarily mean giving up a mining royalty either.

Humanity might be "sitting on a ticking time bomb," but Gore's home in Carthage is sitting on a zinc mine. Gore receives $20,000 a year in royalties from Pasminco Zinc, which operates a zinc concession on his property. Tennessee has cited the company for adding large quantities of barium, iron and zinc to the nearby Caney Fork River.

The issue here is not simply Gore's hypocrisy; it's a question of credibility. If he genuinely believes the apocalyptic vision he has put forth and calls for radical changes in the way other people live, why hasn't he made any radical change in his life? Giving up the zinc mine or one of his homes is not asking much, given that he wants the rest of us to radically change our lives.

Peter Schweizer is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and author ofDo As I Say (Not As I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy.

| Posted 8/9/2006 9:57 PM ET |

| --- |

| Updated 12/7/2006 5:45 PM ET |