Gore to Turn Up Heat as Snow, Ice Hit Washington
Here we go again. Whether he’s promoting his Live Earth concert or out on the stump for some new global warming awareness program, when Al Gore speaks, the media drop everything and listen.
“Al Gore, sexy man. The thinking girl's thoroughbred,” Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan wrote for The Washington Post on Dec. 12, 2007. “It has definitely been this guy’s year. ‘It’s only taken me 30 years,’ Gore joked, backstage at the Nobel Peace Prize Concert, where a roomful of actors and singers waited their turn to make small talk with the man who, on this cold Scandinavian night, was clearly The Man.”
Gore will likely receive that same style of rock star treatment in the lead up to the former vice president’s scheduled testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations committee on Jan. 28 in
Gore’s testimony is expected to include questions about the upcoming 2009 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) conference in
Media Still ♥ Al Gore
The love affair the media has had with Gore has been well documented by the Business & Media Institute time and time again.
ABC’s Bill Blakemore, a global warming alarmist with his own reporting, lavished praise on Gore, his writing and his movie on the “World Newser” blog on May 17, 2005. He even included Gore among great writers (with some of those great writers’ names misspelled):
“The greatest writers - Shakespeare, Emily Dickenson [sic], Edgar Allen Poe [sic], Robert Frost, Dante - are found in the biographies to have focused the most of their time and mental energies as adults on their craft - writing. Their great clarity and insight does not come by accident. The Italian scholar Italo Calvino added that all great literature has one additional quality: lightness. Such art has a self- levitating quality; it provides its own field of gravity -- one of the reasons we value it. Former vice president Al Gore is the central actor in the non-fiction 96- minute long movie opening later this month entitled ‘An Inconvenient Truth.’”
Another example includes the July 14, 2006 issue of Entertainment Weekly, which called Gore “cool” for his global warming activism. Or how about the Dec. 12, 2007 Style section of The Washington Post, which labeled Gore as the tall, “adorable,” “sexy,” “very hot Nobel Peace Prize winner,” … “The Man.” And, in March 2008, CBS’s “60 Minutes” Lesley Stahl lobbed a few softballs at Gore on the eve of launching a $300 million global warming propaganda campaign, which he downplayed global warming skeptics.
“I think that those people are in such a tiny, tiny minority now with their point of view,” Gore said. “They’re almost like the ones who still believe that the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in
More recently, at the Obama inauguration, ABC “Good Morning America” weatherman Sam Champion hyped Gore’s “Green Inaugural Ball” very glowingly.
“And, you’re going to be surprised by some of the great ideas they actually had in this piece,” Champion said. “You know, speaking of change, this president has been talking a lot about a new direction in energy, a new direction in environment. And that's one of the reasons why there was a first-ever, first-ever, green ball in the middle of all the fancy balls in
Green Hypocrisy
On several occasions, Gore has been called for his do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do mannerism. As Tom Nelson, a blogger that follows the global warming debate closely has pointed out – Gore may want you to change your light bulbs, but he has made a tremendous carbon footprint with his recent and imminent globe-trotting travels. Some of the notable carbon-belching destinations include:
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December 11, 2008--Poland
November 14, 2008--Seoul, South Korea
October 15, 2008--Stockholm
October 13, 2008--Aalsmeer, Netherlands
September 25, 2008--London
May 19, 2008--Israel
April 15, 2008--Geneva
April 8, 2008--Iceland
April 7, 2008--Faroe Islands
Gore has also been criticized for his mansion in the Belle Meade area of
And, as a May 2006 article in Wired magazine by Karen Breslau pointed out, the Gores flew an estimated 1 million miles in 2005, which they supposedly compensated for by purchasing carbon credits.
“Last year, for example, Gore and Tipper atoned for their estimated 1 million miles in global air travel by giving money to an Indian solar electric company and a Bulgarian hydroelectric project,”
The Push for a
Many in the media have long pointed to the
“So the 100-year march trying to accelerate the decarbonization of energy systems has made another step along the road,” Revkin wrote. “The next big step will come in
The committee Gore is set to testify before is the same one that will be working toward an international carbon emission treaty, according the chairman, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., just weeks ago.
Both Kerry and the newly confirmed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have indicated they would push to have a treaty in place coming out of
“Before turning to Sen. Lugar, let me just say one thing about global climate change,” Kerry said at
Kerry urged
“And the consequences of our inaction grow more serious by the day,” Kerry said. “In
Kerry also offered a peek into what his Senate chairmanship would have in store when it comes to dealing with this issue.
“This committee will be deeply involved in crafting a solution that the world can agree to and that the Senate can ratify,” Kerry continued. “And as we proceed the lesson of
In opening remarks at her confirmation hearing on Jan. 13,
“You Mr. Chairman [Kerry] were among the very first in a growing chorus from both parties to recognize that climate change is an unambiguous security threat,”
“President-elect Obama has said
Although there are no formal proposals on the table for
One analysis of that bill by CRA International, a business consulting firm, predicts the Lieberman-Warner bill could cost $4 trillion to $6 trillion over the next 40 years, according to an editorial in the Nov. 11, 2007 Washington Times.
Gore’s Last Visit to Capitol Hill
The last time Al Gore visited the U.S. Capitol, he was greeted with a standing ovation, according to a March 21, 2007 post on The New York Times Web site. Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., the ranking Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, challenged Gore to practice what he preached about lowering carbon output without using carbon offsets or so called “green energy” credits.
According to a March 21, 2007 ABCNews.com story, Gore ignored Inhofe. But Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., the chairwoman of the committee fired back at Inhofe.
“You’re not making the rules,” Boxer said. “You don't do this anymore. Elections have consequences.”
Pushback
There has been some pushback from those who don’t subscribe to Gore’s cherished theory of anthropogenic climate change.
The Weather Channel founder John Coleman told an audience at The Heartland Institute’s International Conference on Climate Change on March 3, 2008 his strategy for exposing what he called “the fraud of global warming.” He advocated suing those who sell carbon credits, which would force global warming alarmists to give a more honest account of the policies they propose.
“[I] have a feeling this is the opening,” Coleman said. “If the lawyers will take the case – sue the people who sell carbon credits. That includes Al Gore. That lawsuit would get so much publicity, so much media attention. And as the experts went to the witness stand and testified, I feel like that could become the vehicle to finally put some light on the fraud of global warming.”
A report released by the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee Dec. 22, 2008 revealed more than 650 prominent scientists questioning the hype surrounding Gore’s global warming claims.
