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SEE INC TRUTH UK CT DIMMOCK

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...Viscount Monckton criticised the judge, who he claimed had been "a Labour [Party] candidate before", and asserted that the Government had "decided that for the sake of retaining what little scientific credibility the office still has, they better admit this were errors and once they admitted them, the judge, even though he wanted to, couldn't find that Gore's film was accurate."^[11]

In July 2009, Gore was interviewed by Heather Ewart of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. In the interview, Gore was questioned about Justice Burton's ruling that there were "nine errors" in the film. Gore commented that "the ruling was in my favour."^[31]

Costs and funding

Dimmock's legal costs were said to be around £200,000.^[32] He was awarded only two-thirds of his costs and is reported to have received a bill of more than £60,000 for the remainder.^[2]

:{:{The question of the lawsuit's funding was raised in September 2007, even before the case had concluded, by a report in The Daily Telegraph which wondered "Where will the money come from?". According to Stewart Dimmock's solicitor, it was "a private matter for him". However, the Telegraph noted that Dimmock was a member of the New Party, a small right-wing party with a record of climate change denial. The party declares that "political opportunism and alarmism have combined in seizing [the IPCC's] conclusions to push forward an agenda of taxation and controls that may ultimately be ineffective in tackling climate change, but will certainly be damaging to our economy and society".^[13]}:

The New Party was reported to be backing Dimmock.^[33] It issued a press release on 1 October 2007 in which it publicised the case and declared, somewhat prematurely, that "it is becoming increasingly unlikely that the film will ever be shown as intended."^[34]

In March 2008, the New Party's manifesto-writer Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley acknowledged he had prompted an unnamed wealthy friend to fund the case and that he had himself been heavily involved in the litigation. The Observer reported at the time that Dimmock's backers were "a powerful network of business interests with close links to the fuel and mining lobbies." The chairman of the New Party, Robert Durward, has been described as "a long-time critic of environmentalists" who established a climate change denial group called the Scientific Alliance. The alliance publicised Dimmock's case on its website and was also involved in advising Channel 4 on the controversial documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle,^[10] which Viscount Monckton is distributing to schools as a riposte to An Inconvenient Truth.^[2]}:

Former Veep Al Gore Is Renting Out His Suburban DC Home for $9,000/month. Not That He Needs the Money. He's Worth $300M

Jeff Vasishta

:{:{February 7, 2025}:

*Benzinga and Yahoo Finance LLC may earn commission or revenue on some items through the links below.

Former vice-president-turned-climate-change activist Al Gore has put his Arlington, Virginia, home up for rent. The asking price is $9,000 per month. Though that number would be considered high anywhere else, it’s hardly out of the ordinary in the sought-after D.C. suburb filled with wealthy politicians, lobbyists, and businessmen. What is out of the ordinary is the former politician’s net worth—$300 million.

Firstly, about the rental. The 6,207 square foot, five bedroom, four bathroom brick, Tudor style home was built in 1937 by the grandfather of Gore's ex-wife, Mary “Tipper” Gore, and has remained in the family since. It was used as the launch pad for Gore’s political career and was the base his family returned to after his loss to George W. Bush in the 2000 election. Though traditional from the exterior, the interior is spacious and stylish with contemporary finishes. However, Gore no longer lives there. He currently resides in a 400-acre farm in Carthage, Tennessee.

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Climate Change And Changing Financial Fortunes

Gore’s climate change activism and investing have proved highly lucrative for Bill Clinton‘s former second in command. According to the Daily Mail, Gore set up Generation Investment Management with former Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) managing director and close friend David W. Blood. The company’s goal was to back eco-friendly companies. Between 2008 and 2011, the firm generated about $218 million in profits to be split among its 26 partners, of which Gore is one.

In 2023, the firm was estimated to be worth $36 billion, thanks to its ownership of large numbers of shares in highly successful companies such as Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSF), Google parent Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG, GOOGL)), Charles Schwab (NYSE:SCHW), and Deere & Co. (NYSE:DE), as well as lesser-known e-bike and e-scooter companies.

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In addition to his role at the company, which pays him a lucrative $2 million a month, Gore is popular on the speaking circuit. He speaks on the perils of climate change and earns $200,000 per speaking engagement.

Real Estate

Gore owns multiple homes across the U.S. These include a condo in the Regis Building in San Francisco, close to the hub of many of his investments, worth around $3 million, a large colonial home in Nashville, valued at $7.5 million, a Mediterranean-style residence in Montecito, California, valued at $13 million, and his Arlington home, worth at least $3 million.

Tech Triumphs

Aside from his Green Investment Management, Gore owns tech behemoths Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Google and, until recently, drew a salary from Apple as a compensation committee member. According to CNN, Gore received $376,894 in 2023 as compensation for serving on Apple’s board, a position he has held since 2003. That total included $275,022 in stock awards. 2024 was his last year as a board director, as Apple does not allow members to hold a position beyond 75. Since 2001, Gore has also been a senior advisor to Google, where he received significant pre-public stock options.

See Also: Unlock the hidden potential of commercial real estate —This platform allows individuals to invest in commercial real estate offering a 12% target yield with a bonus 1% return boost today!*

Like many former presidents and VPs, Gore’s time out of public service was when he made most of his money. His assets at the end of the Clinton administration were between $780,000 and $1.9 million, derived chiefly from his family’s land holdings in Tennessee and stock holdings, according tofinancial disclosure forms revealed through CBS News.

Current Media

Another Gore masterstroke was co-founding Current Mediain 2002. When the company went public six years later, his annual compensation was $1.05 million. Gore also became a partner at pivotal Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. When Current Media was sold to Al Jazeera for $500 million in 2013, Gore personally netted between $70 million and $100 million, according to the Washington Post.

While Gore’s loss in the controversial 2000 election to Bush was personally wrenching, his accountants would contend that it was the best thing that could have happened to their client.

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REF 2

Hey Al Gore, We Want a Refund

by Steven Milloy

October 19, 2007, FoxNews.com

A British judge ruled on the eve of Al Gore co-winning the Nobel Peace Prize that students forced to watch “An Inconvenient Truth” must be warned of the film’s factual errors. But would there be any science at all left in Gore’s “truth” if these errors and their progeny were excised?

Minutes of non-science filler dominate the opening sequence — images of the Gore farm, Earth from space, Gore giving his slideshow and the 2000 election controversy. Gore then links Hurricane Katrina with global warming. But the judge ruled that was erroneous, so the Katrina scenes would wind up on the cutting-room floor.

Another 12 minutes of filler go by — images of Gore in his limo, more Earth photos, a Mark Twain quote, and Gore memories — until about the 16:30 minute mark, when, according to the judge, Al Gore erroneously links receding glaciers — specifically Mt. Kilimanjaro — with global warming.

The Mt. Kilimanjaro error commences an almost 10-minute stretch of problematic footage, the bulk of which contains Gore’s presentation of the crucial issue in the global warming controversy — whether increasing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide drive global temperatures higher. As the judge ruled that the Antarctic ice core data presented in the film “do not establish what Mr. Gore asserts,” this inconvenient untruth also needs to go. [Note to readers: A video debate between Al Gore and climatologists on this point produced by me can be viewed by clicking here.]

After Gore lectures viewers on how global warming is a “moral issue” and how he came to realize this as a result of his son’s 1989 car accident, the next five or so minutes of film would seem to violate the judge’s concern about the film linking specific weather events with global warming. During this clip, Gore again spotlights Hurricane Katrina and other discrete weather events, including how 2005 was the hottest year on record (more on that later).

After still more filler footage about Winston Churchill, the 2000 election, and rising insurance claims from natural disasters, Gore spends about 35 seconds on how the drying of Lake Chad is due to global warming. The judge ruled that this claim wasn’t supported by the scientific evidence.

More filler leads to a 30-second clip about how global warming is causing polar bears to drown because they have to swim greater distances to find sea ice on which to rest. The judge ruled however, that the polar bears in question had actually drowned because of a particularly violent storm.

On the heels of that error, Gore launches into a 3-minute “explanation” of how global warming will shut down the Gulf Stream and send Europe into an ice age. The judge ruled that this was an impossibility.

Two minutes of ominous footage — casting Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush, and Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) in a creepy light and expressing Gore’s frustration with getting his alarmist message out — precede a more-than-9-minute stretch that would need to be cut.

In this lengthy footage, Gore again tries to link global warming with discrete events including coral reef bleaching, the melting of Greenland, catastrophic sea level rise, Antarctic melting and more. But like Hurricane Katrina, these events also shouldn’t be linked with global warming.

Based on the judge’s ruling, the footage that ought to be excised adds up to about 25 minutes or so out of the 98-minute film. What’s left is largely Gore personal drama and cinematic fluff that has nothing to do with the science of climate change.

It should also be pointed out that Gore makes other notable factual misstatements in the film that don’t help his or his film’s credibility.

He says in the film that polio has been “cured,” implying that we can cure “global warming.” While a preventative polio vaccine does exist, there is no “cure” for polio.

Gore attempts to smear his critics by likening them to the tobacco industry. In spotlighting a magazine advertisement proclaiming that “more doctors smoke Camel than any other brand,” he states that the ad was published after the Surgeon General’s 1964 report on smoking and lung cancer. But the ad is actually from 1947 — 17 years before the report.

Gore also says in the film that 2005 is the hottest year on record. But NASA data actually show that 1934 was the hottest year on record in the U.S. — 2005 is not even in the top 10.

Perhaps worse than the film’s errors is their origin. The BBC reported that Gore knew the film presented incorrect information but took no corrective steps because he didn’t want to spotlight any uncertainties in the scientific data that may fuel opponents of global warming alarmism.

“An Inconvenient Truth” grossed about $50 million at the box office and millions more in DVD and book sales. Gore charges as much as $175,000 for an in-person presentation of his slide show that forms the basis for the film.

Considering that a key 25 percent of “An Inconvenient Truth” is not true — and perhaps intentionally so — it seems only fair that Gore offer a refund to moviegoers, DVD/book purchasers and speaking sponsors. Where are the class action lawyers when you need them?

*Steven Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and DemandDebate.com. He is a junk science expert and advocate of free enterprise and an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

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REF 3 MANY GRFX

https://junkscience.com/2022/11/wrong-again-al-gore-nobel-lecture-edition/

Wrong Again: Al Gore Nobel Lecture Edition

At the opening of COP-27, Al Gore said:

We have a credibility problem all of us: We’re talking and we’re starting to act, but we’re not doing enough.

Gore got the first part right — the entire climate alarmist movement has a credibility problem as previously shown here and here. Gore himself has contributed much to this credibility problem over the years beginning with his infamously deceitful movie An Inconvenient Truth (2006). The film was so error-filled that a British judge required in October 2007 that it carry warning labels before being shown to school children.

Despite the court ruling, the Nobel Peace Prize committee awarded Gore and the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) its 2007 award. Gore accepted his Nobel Peace Prize in December 2007 and delivered his “Nobel Lecture” in which he made a number of apocalyptic claims. Now, 15 years later, as the climate alarmist community meets in Egypt at COP-27, its an appropriate time to examine Gore’s apocalyptic views mentioned in his Nobel Lecture with reality to date.

:{[]

Present Temperature

Gore statement:

The earth has a fever. And the fever is rising.

2022 Reality:

Per the World Meteorological Organization, the average global temperature in 2020 was 58.8°F vs. a fever which is a body temperature in excess of 98.6°F or so. So no “fever.”

Future Temperature

Gore Statement:

“Svante Arrhenius calculated that the Earth’s average temperature would increase by many degrees if we doubled the amount of [carbon dioxide] in the atmosphere.”

2022 Reality:

We’re only about 50 percent of the way toward doubling the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, but let’s consider where we are and what the future may hold.

At the present level of CO2 — i.e., 50 percent of the way to doubling the pre-industrial level — the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that we have experienced about 1.1°C of global warming since 1850-1900. A doubling of CO2 from the pre-industrial level would then by simple extrapolation indicate a future average temperature of 2.2°C.

The New York Times reports that by 2100, when the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will more than double the pre-industrial level of CO2, the alarmist-projected amount of global warming is estimated to be 2.1°C to 2.9°C greater than the pre-industrial temperature.

While these estimated temperatures are certainly “degrees” above the pre-industrial average temperature, they are certainly not “many degrees” above it.

Global temperature as its relates to atmospheric CO2 is a controversial topic and merits discussion beyond the scope of this effort, but suffice it to say that even IPCC calculations contradict Gore’s claim of “many degrees” of warming from a doubling of atmospheric CO2.

2. Polar Ice Cap

Gore Statement:

Last September 21, as the Northern Hemisphere tilted away from the sun, scientists reported with unprecedented distress that the North Polar ice cap is ‘falling off a cliff.’ One study estimated that it could be completely gone during summer in less than 22 years. Another new study, to be presented by U.S. Navy researchers later this week, warns it could happen in as little as 7 years. Seven years from now.

SEE DOOMSDAY GLACIER UPDATE

2022 Reality:

The Arctic ice cap has never “fallen off a cliff,” not in 2014 or as predicted or now in 2022. Per data from the Intergovernmental European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT), the Arctic hit an annual summertime low of about 4 million square kilometers of ice in 2012. In 2022, the annual summertime minimum had increased by about 25% to over 5 million square kilometers of sea ice. Not only is 5 million square kilometers of sea ice far different from ice-free, as Gore predicted, the annual minimum Arctic sea ice isn’t trending toward ice-free by 2030 either.

3. Drought and Melting Glaciers

Gore Statement:

In the last few months, it has been harder and harder to misinterpret the signs that our world is spinning out of kilter. Major cities in North and South America, Asia and Australia are nearly out of water due to massive droughts and melting glaciers.

2022 Reality:

There are no major cities anywhere in the world that are nearly out of water for any reason.

Droughts have always occurred and will continue to occur. No ongoing drought is unprecedented and none can be tied to manmade emissions of greenhouse gases. For example, the ongoing drought in the Western US is comparable to a drought that occurred in the 1500s, per a February 2022 study in the journal Nature Climate Change.

That megadroughts in the Western US are not unprecedented was even known at the time Al Gore delivered his Nobel Lecture as evidence by the chart below printed in Cook, Edward R., et al. “North American drought: reconstructions, causes, and consequences.” Earth-Science Reviews 81.1 (2007): 93-134. The chart shows that the recent natural history of the American West includes megadroughts lasting as long as 200 years. These droughts occurred well before industrial use of fossil fuels and during a period of comparable warmth.

As to Gore’s claim of melting glaciers, many glaciers have been receding since the end of a period called the Little Ice Age, which lasted from the 1300s to the 1800s. The coldest point of the Little Ice Age is thought to have occurred around the middle 1600s and the Northern Hemisphere has been warming ever since. This warming pre-dates the industrial age by 200 years. But glacier recession is more complicated than mere warming.

First, a recent of temperatures in the Alps reports that there is no significant wintertime warming in the Alps since the 1970s.

Next and as the US Geological Survey points out, glaciers can also recede due to sunshine (think of what a clearing sky does to snow after a snowfall even in below freezing temperatures) and sublimation (why dry air in freezers shrink ice cubes).

It is estimated that the Alps, for example, receive 200 more hours of sunshine annually now than they did at the end of the 19th century.

There is also the curious reality and inconvenient truth that receding glaciers in keep revealing recent human activity that could only have occurred when there was less ice.

Finally and contrary to the notion that global warming is causing some massive disappearance of snow, data show that wintertime Northern Hemisphere snow cover has been increasing since the 1960s.

4. Agriculture

Gore Statement:

Desperate farmers are losing their livelihoods.

2022 Reality:

While farming has always been a risky occupation, the implication of Gore’s statement is that agriculture is at risk from global warming. Is it?

The New York Times [reported](http://xn--agriculture%20gore%20statement:%20desperate%20farmers%20are%20losing%20their%20livelihoods-gf51d.xn--%20%202022%20reality-2z2l:%20While%20farming%20has%20always%20been%20a%20risky%20occupation,%20the%20implication%20of%20Gore%E2%80%99s%20statement%20is%20that%20agriculture%20is%20at%20risk%20from%20global%20warming.%20Is%20it/?%20%20The%20New%20York%20Times%20reported%20in%20June%202022%20that%20global%20production%20of%20primary%20grains%20increased%2052%%20between%202000-2020.%20That%20record%209.3%20billion%20metric%20tons%20works%20out%20to%201.20%20metric%20tons%20per%20person%20as%20compared%20with%201.0%20metric%20tons%20per%20person%20in%202000.) in June 2022 that global production of primary grains increased 52% between 2000-2020. That record 9.3 billion metric tons works out to 1.20 metric tons per person as compared with 1.0 metric tons per person in 2000.

Moreover, research credits warming and better weather for the increased in corn production.

And whatever slight warming is occurring is expanding crop growing zones.

5. Climate refugees

Gore statement:

Peoples in the frozen Arctic and on low-lying Pacific islands are planning evacuations of places they have long called home. Unprecedented wildfires have forced a half million people from their homes in one country and caused a national emergency that almost brought down the government in another. Climate refugees have migrated into areas already inhabited by people with different cultures, religions, and traditions, increasing the potential for conflict… Millions have been displaced by massive flooding in South Asia, Mexico, and 18 countries in Africa.

2022 Reality:

First let’s address, Gore’s claim of “unprecedented wildfires.” A 2016 study published by the Royal Society reports, “global area burned appears to have overall declined over past decades, and there is increasing evidence that there is less fire in the global landscape today than centuries ago.”

As to climate refugees, Gore’s claim is pretty vague though completely alarmist. A December 2019 study in Nature Climate Change pointed out that the subject of climate migration is not well-researched and there are lot of misleading claims and myths regarding it, some of which have no doubt been perpetuated by Al Gore himself.

6. Hurricanes and Typhoons

Gore statement:

Stronger storms in the Pacific and Atlantic have threatened whole cities.

2022 Reality:

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration measures global tropical storm activity in terms of the Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) index. Meteorologist Ryan Maue concludes there is a downward trend on the ACE index since 1989, which is the opposite of what Gore’s claim implies.

7. Deaths from Extreme Heat

Gore statement:

As temperature extremes have increased, tens of thousands have lost their lives.

2022 Reality:

First, extreme temperatures have not increased. In the US where we have the best data, heat waves have declined in frequency and intensity over the past 100 years, per the most recent US National Climate Assessment graph below.

Not surprisingly, research also shows that US heat wave deaths declined between 1975-2018.

8. Deforestation and Species Extinction

Gore statement:

We are recklessly burning and clearing our forests and driving more and more species into extinction. The very web of life on which we depend is being ripped and frayed.

2022 Reality:

Thanks to slight warming and more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the Earth is greener (i.e., more vegetation, including trees) than ever, according to NASA. “The greening represents an increase in plants and trees equivalent in area to two times the continental United States, reports NASA.

As to forest fires causing extinction, research reports the opposite.

More generally, there is no evidence that global warming has led to the extinction of a single species, despite what the Australian government has proclaimed, as reported by Scientific American.

Unfortunately for the Australian government’s claim, though, Australia’s coasts and islands have been expanding in size. So if the rodent actually is extinct, it is unlikely to have been due to sea-level rise.

Conclusion

In the 15 years since Gore accepted his Nobel Peace prize, not a single apocalyptic climate prediction has come true. “We have a credibility problem,” he said at the opening of COP-27. Indeed, he does.

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Marc Morano

Weekly update ⋅ January 30, 2026

Climate change takes a back seat at Davos | Fox Business Video

Fox Business

ClimateDepot.com executive editor Marc Morano argues that President Donald Trump has 'obliterated' the 'climate agenda' on 'The Bottom Line.'

Climate change takes a back seat at Davos | Fox Business Video

dagen mac brian --- PROVEN SOLID TECH;

fos fule save eur from winter?

trump oblit climate aGENDA, DROP IN RANKA; NO NET ZERO, SOLAR WIND CANNOT DO AI LOAD; ; CLIMATE HUB NS LIMOSINE; 250 ACTYIONS IN US AND GLOBALLY; GORE REDUCED TO HECKLING; ATTACKED GATES AT COP 30; ROLL INTO HEALTH, PUT VALUE ON RESOURCES/NATURE TEKE CONTROL? GORE FRUSTRATED, CANNOT SAY ICE MELTING; EGO OF FAILE POL DAGEN: CHINA EXPRT GRN TECH BUT NOT MENTION COAL PWR; DO NOT CARE AOUT MO NATRUE OR OWN PPL; LUTNICK SET STRAIGHT

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6 24

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book

The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change — Al Gore

eow

forecast in the visionary tradition of Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock and John Naisbitt’s Megatrends. In The Future, Gore identifies the emerging forces that are reshaping our world: Ever-increasing economic globalization, Worldwide digital communications, The balance of global political, economic, and military power is shifting, A deeply flawed economic compass, genomic, biotechnology, neuroscience, and life sciences revolutions, and the radical disruption of the relationship between human beings and the earth’s ecosystems

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Tomasky

June 12, 2023

OLD PLAYBOOK

Inside the GOP’s Latest Desperate Attempt to Smear Joe Biden

How low will Republicans go?

Trump arrives at a Waffle House with Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene in Columbus, Georgia, on Saturday.

If you get your news on planet Earth, you agree with me that the biggest news story of last week was the federal indictment of Donald Trump.

If, however, you get your news on planet Wingnuttia, you have been led to believe that while the Trump matter was certainly news, the bigger deal by several orders of magnitude was the “proof” that emerged last week that Joe Biden took a $5 million bribe from Ukraine and that Representative Jamie Raskin lied about it. You’ve also been told that the timing of the Trump indictment was no mere coincidence—it was handed down precisely to distract America from the “fact” of Biden’s corruption.

If all this is unfamiliar to you, don’t worry. There is no such proof. Raskin, one of the most honorable public servants in America, who couldn’t lie if you tortured him, did not utter a falsehood.

It’s all right out of the playbook the right wing has been using for the last 30 years. They just make up stuff about Democratic presidents and presidential candidates. It has failed more often than it’s worked. But it’s worked often enough that we need to pay some attention to it and understand what’s going on here.

You probably caught wind of the fact that House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer subpoenaed FBI Director Christopher Wray back in May. He did this after Senator Charles Grassley received a whistleblower complaint charging that the bureau was in possession of a document that revealed an alleged criminal scheme involving the Biden family and a foreign country.

Comer wanted the document. The FBI refused, citing the need to protect source confidentiality. But under political pressure, the FBI agreed to brief Comer and Raskin, the committee’s ranking Democrat, and show them a partially redacted version of the memo. Then all members of the Oversight Committee were allowed to read it.

Here’s the long and short of it. It involves Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company on whose board Hunter Biden sat. The confidential source was told by the head of Burisma that he paid bribes of $5 million each to Joe and Hunter Biden.These were basically Rudy Giuliani’s old scotch-fueled rumors.

This all dates, by the way, to June 2020. This is a useful fact to keep in mind, for two reasons. One, it means that all of this is three years old; two, it means that Donald Trump was president and Bill Barr his still-loyal attorney general, when this document, an FD-1023 in FBI-speak, was logged.

Naturally, the Justice Department set out to look into it. Barr appointed Scott Brady, then the U.S. attorney for western Pennsylvania, to look into Giuliani’s claims.

As Raskin explained several times on cable news last week, the FBI has three levels or phases of investigation: assessment, preliminary investigation, and full investigation. Obviously, assessment means that the bureau looks at the charges and decides whether the evidence is sufficient to move forward to a preliminary investigation.

In this case, the charges didn’t even move beyond the assessment phase. Brady did little, at least that we know of. The only thing he ever did with respect to this matter that made the papers was that he held one four-hour meeting with Giuliani. But he brought no charges, and now he’s back in private life.

So, yes, as Raskin said last week, Barr’s Justice Department did drop the matter. However, the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney for Delaware, David Weiss, was conducting a separate, parallel investigation of Hunter Biden, and the Justice Department sent the Giuliani allegations to Weiss. When Barr took issue with Raskin’s description of events last week, he was referring to that. So in theory, the “Justice Department” (which does include the U.S. attorney offices) is still looking into the allegations, but Weiss’s probe is known to be centered around possible tax evasion and gun charges against Hunter.

Raskin said in a statement: “If William Barr has a problem with [my] characterization, his problem is not with me but with the FBI, Mr. Brady, and other high-level officials reporting to him in his own Justice Department who signed off on closing down Mr. Brady’s probe.” His statement also included information about the meeting he and Comer had with the FBI last Monday. They were told, he said, that “in August 2020, [the] assessment was closed after a determination was made that there were no more investigative steps to be taken and the evidence collected did not meet FBI’s standard for opening a preliminary or full-scale investigation.”

So that’s where things stand. These are three-year-old allegations that have never been proven. Even Comer and Grassley admit that these are just allegations—although Comer (and this will give you a sense of his conception of justice) also said that the information in the document “has not been disproven.” Other Republican committee members—notably extremist Marjorie Taylor Greene and biography-enhancer Anna Paulina Luna—read the FD-1023 and pronounced Biden guilty on the spot.

Is it possible that Biden took a $5 million bribe? Sure, anything’s possible. But which is more likely: that Biden, who has been in the public eye for half a century without a single episode of financial scandal to his name, took a bribe (after, by the way, he was out of public life and finally making some serious jack on the lecture and book circuit, meaning that money was the last thing he needed); or that the right wing, which has peddled fiction after fiction about top-ranking Democrats, is lying?

This is what they do. They told 50 lies about Bill Clinton. None of them have been proven. He made no money from Whitewater. He did not protest the Vietnam War in front of the Kremlin. Yes, he had that affair, and he lied about that. But he did not obstruct justice. The zealous Mr. Starr would have found out if he had.

They lied about Al Gore, who never said he “invented” the internet. They lied about John Kerry’s military record—just ghastly, wholly fabricated assertions about a man who held a degree from Yale and could have found 500 ways to get out of military service but went to the Army recruiter’s office and demanded he be sent to the front lines in Vietnam. (By the way: Gore too graduated from Harvard and went immediately to a recruitment office in New Jersey to enlist to make absolutely sure that he would get no senator’s son breaks, while George W. Bush hid out in the Texas Air National Guard.)

They lied repeatedly about Barack Obama, who was not born in Kenya and did not smoke crack with his gay lover and was not a Communist Muslim terrorist sympathizer. They lied nonstop for 30 years about Hillary Clinton. Lying about her was an industry that at one time rivaled the gross domestic product of small nations. She sometimes didn’t help her own cause in the way she handled things, but remember this point, always: The number of “her emails” that were classified was … zero. Did you get that? Zero.

Don’t take this from Hillary. It was affirmed in 2019 by Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo’s State Department. (The probe did find that information that department officials considered to be classified wound up in many of her email exchanges, but the number of documents included in her emails that were marked classified was zero.)

Do Democrats lie about Republicans sometimes? I suppose so. But not like this; not this systematically. Lying is core to Republican presidential campaigns. Their positions—give more money to rich people, stop all abortions, take transgender children away from sympathetic parents, ban books, destroy the planet—aren’t popular, and they know this, so they have to make voters hate the Democrat. And corruption is all-purpose. Everyone can be troubled by it, whatever their ideology.

It’s especially useful to them now, with their party being led by the most corrupt person ever to occupy the White House by far. In a week when we learned that Trump admitted in 2021 that he could no longer declassify documents, blowing a huge hole in the case for his defense, Republicans were particularly desperate to dirty up Joe Biden. Comer and Jim Jordan will keep pushing not-yet-disproven narratives, repackaging old allegations as new. The mainstream media—and even, it must be admitted, this magazine, under conservative editors in the 1990s—has a pretty sorry record of falling for this stuff since Clinton’s time. Some Democrats, too, used to give these lies credence. I hope people have learned by now that there’s only one response to all this: Fight.

Michael Tomasky @mtomasky

Michael Tomasky is the editor of The New Republic

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Reaction to Balling's views on global warming

In the December 1995 issue of Harper's Magazine, Ross Gelbspan described Balling and other global warming skeptics as "extraordinarily adept at draining the [global warming] issue of all sense of crisis."^[25] Climate of Extremes was reviewed in Foreign Affairs by Richard N. Cooper, who concluded that "Even if the authors have cherry-picked their scientific papers, this book is a useful antidote to the heavy dose of hype to which the public is regularly subjected."^[23] By contrast, The Satanic Gases, another Balling-Michaels collaboration which was published in 2000, received a scathing review fromAmerican Scientist.Reviewer John Firor argued that the book "does not fulfill" its claim (on the dust jacket) that global warming predictions are "simply wrong", that Michaels and Balling criticized the Kyoto Protocol without having read it, and that they quoted a well-known scientist out of context.^[26] After Balling wrote an article for TCS Daily harshly criticizing An Inconvenient Truth as scientifically inaccurate,^[27] his article was itself criticized as inaccurate by Judd Legum, who said that the article used "misleading scientific arguments." Legum's critique was endorsed by geochemist Eric Steig, a contributor to RealClimate, who said that "All those points are accurate," and that "Some of them could probably have been stronger; that is, Balling is even more wrong that Legum indicates."^[28]^

https://www.salon.com/2020/07/14/trump-is-trying-to-do-to-anthony-fauci-what-the-right-did-to-al-gore--but-its-not-working/

It s no exaggeration to say that Republicans bought themselves yearsof getting away with ignoring and denying climate science by calling former Vice President Al Gore mean names. Beginning in the '80s, Gore, with his earnestly nerdy persona, had become the face of a growing movement to raise the alarm about the rapidly warming planet and the horrors humanity would face if more wasn't done to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. To discredit the entire idea of climate change theory, the right focused not on the science, but on discrediting Gore as a messenger.

Needless to say, the efforts to demonize Gore — and, by association, climate-change theory — were a veritable dictionary of logical fallacies. One common tactic was to call Gore fat, as if there were any relationship between Gore's waistline and the accuracy of climate science. He was also painted as a hyperbolic and opportunistic liar, with conservatives insisting falsely that Gore had claimed he "invented" the internet, with the implication being he was also making up climate change.

This notion that Gore was hysterical got lodged into the public imagination, so much so that as late as 2006, "South Park" offered an episode in which Gore was presented as what my colleague Matthew Rozsa called "an attention-seeking loser who tried to convince the world of the existence of a fictional monster that was 'half man, half bear and half pig.'" The episode was an effort to discredit "An Inconvenient Truth," Gore's 2006 documentary about climate change.

"South Park" creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone finally admitted in 2018 that Gore was right and they were wrong. Too little too late: In the 12 years since, Republican hostility to doing anything about climate change has hardened into a fact of life, so immovable that few Republicans even have to bother justifying themselves by claiming to be climate-change skeptics.

Now Donald Trump is in office — elected on a wave of the same "stick it to the liberals" energy that Gore endured for decades — and there's a new inconvenient truth that bedevils Republicans and their loathing for the very idea of the government intervening on the behalf of the public good: The coronavirus pandemic.

The parameters of the current situation aren't mysterious. This virus is washing across the country, infecting millions and killing, as of Tuesday morning's data, at least 135,000 Americans and probably significantly more. Trump, out of a combination of laziness and a faith in his magical powers of gaslighting, believes that if we simply pretend the virus isn't there, kids will go back to school, people will go back to work, the economy will rebound and he'll win the election. He and his cronies are dusting off the climate denial handbook in an effort to confuse the public about science just long enough to drag Trump across the finish line in November.

Their new Al Gore is Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who has served under every president since the '80s and has become a trusted figure for coronavirus information, amid the sea of denialism emanating from Trump's White House.

Trump quite clearly hopes he can do to Fauci what Republicans — and "South Park" — were able to do to Gore, in other words to paint him as a hysterical, attention-seeking busybody who can't be trusted. Along the way, of course, the president would like to cast doubts on every aspect of scientific or medical knowledge about the coronavirus that is currently killing Americans.

Over the weekend, the White House unveiled an all-hands-on-deck strategy to discredit Fauci, ironically by highlighting past statements where, working off limited information about a brand-new virus, Fauci was overly optimistic about the country's ability to stave off the coronavirus. Of course the "he was wrong then, he could be wrong now" tactic being used by the White House contradicts itself, since the premise that he must be wrong now is based on saying he was wrong then about the stuff he's right about now. He is Schrodinger's Fauci: Somehow both right and wrong, and wrong because of how right he is.

These are the same people who managed to convince huge swaths of the nation that climate change isn't real because Gore is fat. So let's just say it's reasonable to conclude that their arguments don't have to make sense to be accepted.

This time around, however, there's every reason these efforts to convince the public not to believe in the coronavirus won't work nearly as well as they did when applied to climate change.

And let's be clear about the goal of Trump and his allies: They absolutely, undeniably want to convince people to believe the coronavirus is a hoax. While putting out talking points trying to undermine Fauci's authority, Trump retweeted game-show host Chuck Woolery's claiming that "Everyone is lying" about the coronavirus to keep "the economy from coming back, which is about the election."

The implication here — don't trust a medical expert with decades worth of specialized knowledge about infectious diseases; trust a Trump-loving TV personality! — isn't exactly subtle.

Fox News, which has been amplifying and encouraging Trump in his mission to spread the belief that coronavirus is a hoax, doubled down on Monday night, with prime-time hosts telling audiences there is no need for preventive measureslike face masks and social distancing.

These tactics worked so with climate change because that's a slow-moving phenomenon, in relation to the average person's life span. When Gore first started warning the public about climate change, the concept seemed abstract and far off. It was easy enough for conservatives to point to the fact that snowstorms still happen every winter to suggest this proved that Gore's warnings were hysteria. It's just a lot harder to believe in a problem that isn't visible. In recent years, as the extreme weather events we've been warned about — shocking summer heatwaves, raging wildfires, terrible hurricanes, ice-free winters — become more common, we don't here nearly as much blithe climate-change denialism as Gore faced in the first few decades of his activism on this issue.

The coronavirus, on the other hand, is neither abstract nor far away. Pandemic news continues to be all-consuming, and not just on a national scale, but on local news stations and in social media forums, especially as the new virus hotspots are not concentrated in "coastal elite" areas but in states like Texas, Arizona and Florida. Governors in states that have failed to contain the virus, usually under pressure from Trump not to enforce any restrictions on public spaces and businesses, have seen their approval ratings plummet. It took decades before Americans started to experience the effects of climate change directly, but this virus has rampaged through our country for the last four months, and seems to be getting worse, not better.

Rather than convince the public to disbelieve Dr. Fauci, Trump's attacks on the doctor have only served as a reminder of what most Americans already know: Trump is a shameless liar who will say or do anything, no matter who it hurts, if he thinks he can gain a temporary advantage. It's not just Trump's critics who know this. Trump supporters know it as well. Mostly, they voted for him because they liked the way his trollish disregard for the truth aggravated liberals. But they also aren't going to his rallies in big numbers, because they understand, on some level, that he doesn't care about them and is willing to see them die rather than admit he's wrong about the coronavirus.

What that means for the election remains to be seen, but if Trump somehow wins in November, it will be despite his attacks on Dr. Fauci. Climate change was easy to ignore for many years, because it seemed like a future problem for future people. But the coronavirus is sweeping the country as we speak, something anyone among us could get tomorrow. When your house is on fire, no amount of "Al Gore is fat" jokes will convince you to pretend everything is actually OK.

AMANDA MARCOTTE

Amanda Marcotte is a politics writer for Salon who covers American politics, feminism and culture. Her new book, "Troll Nation: How The Right Became Trump-Worshipping Monsters Set On Rat-F*cking Liberals, America, and Truth Itself" is out now. She can be followed on Twitter @AmandaMarcotte.

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.

Committee Scrutinizes Motive of “Green 20”

May 18, 2016

Press Release

Washington, D.C. –Today, 13 Science, Space, and Technology Committee Republicans sent letters to 17 state attorneys general and eight environmental activist organizations. The letters request documents related to the groups’ coordinated efforts to deprive companies, nonprofit organizations, scientists and scholars of their First Amendment rights and their ability to fund and conduct scientific research free from intimidation and threats of prosecution.

Americans are entitled to express their views on matters of science and public policy even if certain groups disagree.

“On March 29, 2016, you and other state attorneys general – the self-proclaimed ‘Green 20’ – announced that you were cooperating on an unprecedented effort against those who have questioned the causes, magnitude, or best ways to address climate change,” the letter states. “The Committee is concerned that these efforts to silence speech are based on political theater rather than legal or scientific arguments, and that they run counter to an attorney general’s duty to serve ‘as the guardian of the legal rights of the citizens’ and to ‘assert, protect, and defend the rights of the people.’”

Former Vice President Al Gore spoke at the March 29 press conference and addressed the need to prosecute fossil fuel energy companies for engaging in fraud. Gore and the Green 20’s efforts are part of a larger strategy to achieve the president’s sweeping, job-killing climate change agenda.

Reports show 14 green-tech firms that Gore invested in benefited from over $2.5 billion in loans, grants and tax breaks as part of the administration’s push to fund U.S. renewable energy industry with taxpayer funds.

In testimony before the Committee, scientists projected the cost of the administration’s carbon dioxide regulations at $39 billion to American consumers and businesses annually. However, senior administration officials themselves have admitted that these regulations will have a negligible effect on global temperatures.

Since the March 29 press conference, members of the Green 20 have rapidly expanded their legal actions against those who question the administration’s climate change agenda. These legal actions include subpoenas for documents, communications and research that would capture the work of more than 100 academic institutions, scientists and nonprofit organizations.

The Committee has a responsibility to protect the First Amendment prerogatives of academic institutions, scientists and nonprofit organizations and will continue to do so.

The letter(s) to the attorneys general can be found HERE.

The letter(s) to environmental organizations can be found HERE.

Issues:

Chilling Scientific Debate

114th Congress

ref tag https://web.archive.org/web/20180122041625/https://science.house.gov/issues/chilling-scientific-debate

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BS forbes attack?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2013/11/03/blood-and-gore-making-a-killing-on-anti-carbon-investment-hype/

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https://www.ecowatch.com/al-gore-trump-2460923593.html

http://www.ecowatch.com/gore-sequel-truth-to-power-2209223662.html

When An Inconvenient Truth was released more than 10 years ago, the most criticized scene of Al Gore's climate change documentary was the flooding of downtown New York City from sea level rise and storm surge.

Well, as the former vice president explains in the first official clip of An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, that prediction came true.

vid]

The new film, which premiered last week at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, is a follow-up to the groundbreaking 2006 documentary. It follows Gore's efforts around the world to influence international climate policy and galvanize support for the climate change movement.

The overall message is more hopeful compared to its predecessor, emphasizing how solutions for climate change are already at hand.

"It has much more emphasis on the solutions," as Gore explains in the clip below. "Compared to 10 years ago, the solutions are widely available now and are in many cases cheaper than continuing to burn dirty fuel that causes the problem in the first place."

vid]

The response to the new film has been positive so far. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the screening was met by two standing ovations.

"Now we are undergoing a time of challenge, but we are going to prevail," Gore told the crowd during a Q&A after the screening. "I'm not going to give all the evidence of why I'm so confident. Always remember that the will to act is a renewable resource."

"We will win," Gore added. "No one person can stop this movement. We want this movie to recruit others."

The original Oscar-winning film sparked a major environmental movement, prompting millions around the world to start asking questions about our warming planet. While a lot of progress has been made, from advances in climate science to the renewable energy boom, there's still a lot of work to be done—especially since Donald Trump, a notorious climate denier, is now the most powerful person in the world. Incidentally, Gore unveiled the clip on the same day of the presidential inauguration.

Gore made headlines last month when he met with Trump and his daughter Ivanka to discuss climate change. When asked by an audience member what he got from the Trump talks, Gore responded, "We will know soon enough. It's not the last conversation. A lot of people started out as climate-change denialists. Whether he will change remains to be seen."

"He was receptive to some of what I had to say, and I appreciated that," Gore also told The Hollywood Reporter in a later interview. "Candidate Trump made a number of statements and wrote a bunch of tweets that caused concern, but he also has other statements that at least give rise to the possibility that he and his team will take a fresh look at the reality of what we're facing here."

An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, directed by Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk, comes to theaters July 28. To coincide with the film's release, publishing company Rodale Books will also release a companion book of the same name.

dapl 1st amend protectors

http://www.ecowatch.com/al-gore-dakota-access-pipeline-2064996220.html

“This is about facts, and science, and transparency,” said Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, who spoke at a press conference alongside New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, former Vice President Al Gore and seven other Attorneys General.

“Fossil fuel companies that deceived investors and consumers about the dangers of climate change should be, must be held accountable,” Healey continued, saying there is a “troubling disconnect between what Exxon knew, what industry folks knew and the company and industry chose to share with investors and the American public.”

The coalition of Attorneys General from 16 states and the U.S. Virgin Islands was convened by Schneiderman, who in November announced a state investigation into Exxon after reporting revealed that the oil giant had for decades known and suppressed evidence about the dangers that fossil fuels posed to the environment and then purposely disseminated false information in order to boost its profits.

California has also launched an investigation and on Tuesday Healey and U.S. Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude Earl Walker confirmed their states have as well. Schneiderman said that additional states were pursuing similar action and that the purpose of the coalition is to work together in this “common interest.”

pope sierra club 8/15

So, looking back, am I glad that George Mitchell beat Robert Byrd in 1990 by one vote that the Sierra Club (I was then leading) lost?

Not really. Because the defeat of the Byrd amendment changed a lot of the American political landscape. Without it, Al Gore would, almost certainly, have won the election of 2000—and other pathways to a better future would have opened.

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6/15

interesting triangulation and bogeyman:

Lindsey Graham probably won’t be getting any money from the billionaire Koch brothers either. He’s acknowledged that all the climate denial going on in the GOP might not be healthy for them.

“I think there will be a political problem for the Republican Party going into 2016 if we don’t define what we are for the environment,” he said late last year. “I don’t know what the environmental policy of the Republican Party is.”

As for his own position, he said he accepts that humans are driving climate change but rejects cap-and-trade as a solution and claims that Al Gore has turned it into a “religion.”

“I’m for finding oil and gas that we own,” he said on Fox News last month. “I’m for clean coal, I’m for natural gas, but I would like a lower carbon economy over time. Clean up the air and create jobs in the process.”

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