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Author Topic: Al Gore- Selling Out?
Lockman
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Al Gore Sells Out

Was he in it just for the money all along?
Written By: Joseph Bast
Published In: Heartland Perspective
Publication Date: November 21, 2007
Publisher: The Heartland Institute

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On November 12, former vice president Al Gore announced he is joining a venture capital firm that seeks to cash in on global warming alarmism.

Gore resurrected his career by persuading millions of people that a 1 degree warming of the Earth’s temperature over the past century was man-made and portends a global catastrophe. Gore already has used global warming to become a very wealthy man, charging $200,000 and more to give speeches on global warming and steering investments to a firm he partly owns that sells worthless “carbon credits.” He stands to make millions of dollars more in his new position.

It all begs the question: Was Gore in it just for the money all along?

Gore surely knew from the outset that global warming brought together two extremely affluent sectors of American society -- professional environmentalists, who Chronicle of Philanthropy reports raised more than $6 billion in charitable gifts in 2006, and major corporations seeking government subsidies to produce energy from otherwise-unmarketable sources such as wind, solar, and ethanol.

Both sectors were quick to see in global warming a PR tool that could raise billions of dollars from gullible consumers and taxpayers. They filled Gore’s pockets with cash and underwrote, if the value of all the free “earned media” is included, a billion-dollar-a-year media campaign to rescue him from obscurity. Gore never shied away from enriching himself as the campaign went along, as vividly demonstrated by his energy-gorging homes and jet-setting lifestyle.

Being in it only for the money would also explain Gore’s remarkable immunity to criticism and doubt. Gore wasn’t afraid to debate his foes when he was a politician. But as the world’s leading advocate of global warming alarmism, Gore has refused to debate his critics, despite repeated public challenges from a long list of qualified critics and even a million-dollar ad campaign by my organization, The Heartland Institute, asking him to debate.

Apparently, no one inside the Gore camp -- a group that unfortunately includes many journalists -- finds this even the slightest bit odd.

It was also odd that Gore issued no apologies or corrections when prominent scientists pointed out errors in his film, “An Inconvenient Truth,” and book by the same title. The Internet is cluttered with rebuttals from authoritative sources, but nary a word of rebuttal or concession from Gore or evidence that he’s changed his stock presentations to take the facts into account.

The British High Court recently found Gore’s film contained at least nine errors and exaggerations so egregious they contradict the United Nations’ claims on the subject (no mean feat, since the UN anchors the alarmist corner of the global scientific debate). And those errors weren’t trivial. They were exactly the allegations Gore makes that turn global warming from an obscure scientific issue into a potential global crisis: that it is man-made, will cause flooding, is killing wildlife, and so on.

If Gore weren’t in it just for the money, he surely acted is if he were. And now his decision to join a venture capital firm to explicitly profit, enormously, from public concern and public policies that he helped create seems to prove it.

Gore’s cashing in on alarmism is ironic, because he claims repeatedly that anyone who disagrees with him has sold out to oil companies. If funding is a source of bias or makes a source unreliable, then Gore must plainly be the most biased and unreliable voice in the global warming debate.

The claim that global warming “skeptics” are beholden to the oil or coal industries is utterly without merit, as a long list of prominent scholars starting with Richard Lindzen at MIT and John Christy at the University of Alabama in Huntsville attests. Think tanks that have confronted Gore’s lies and exaggerations, including my organization, The Heartland Institute, receive trivial amounts of industry support -- less than 5 percent of our annual budget -- far less than what they spend on the topic, and pennies on the dollar compared to what rent-seeking businesses give to global warming alarmists.

Gore’s opportunism ought to send a cautionary signal to the people he duped along the way to fame and fortune. What a pity that many of them still don’t get it ... won’t ever get it, even as they hand over their hard-earned money to Gore’s business partners and give up their freedoms to Gore’s former political partners.

Joseph Bast (jbast*heartland.org) is president of The Heartland Institute, a national nonprofit organization based in Chicago, and publisher of Environment & Climate News.
The Heartland Institute | 19 South LaSalle Street #903 | Chicago, IL 60603 | phone 312/377-4000 | fax 312/377-5000
http://www.heartland.org | webmaster*heartland.org

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Let's Go METS!!!

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bdgee
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lockman, you are proving once again a right wing Party line dufus.

According to the pitiful excuse for the "logic' in that blurb you posted, if the owner of a printing firm converts to Christianity, and thereafter is offered a contract to print bibles, he must refuse that business or he is "selling out".

You have about as much honest concern for the well being and political health of the United States as does a city that dumps raw sewage into a stream does for the health of the people 20 miles down stream whose only source of water is that same river.

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Munchkin Man
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quote:
Originally posted by bdgee:
According to the pitiful excuse for the "logic' in that blurb you posted, if the owner of a printing firm converts to Christianity, and thereafter is offered a contract to print bibles, he must refuse that business or he is "selling out".

Wow!

Bronze this post!

You have finally written something that makes logical sense to the Munchkin Man!

Congratulations!

Munchkin Man

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The Bigfoot
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quote:
...and major corporations seeking government subsidies to produce energy from otherwise-unmarketable sources such as wind, solar, and ethanol.
I liked this section best. Just enough truth to distort the fiction. Yes, ethanol is subsidized to create a market for the fuel but solar and wind are already competitive on their own.
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bdgee
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"You have finally written something that makes logical sense to the Munchkin Man!"

Then, unless you misread, it must be horribly flawed.

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bdgee
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Big,

Sources that do not burn fossil fuels in the producing energy are essentially limitless, so long as the Sun doesn't go into its end phases, which for the next few millions of years isn't due.

As you point out, "solar and wind are already competitive on their own." I point out that such things as ethanol, bio-diesel, biomass, etc, can only, at best, be temporary and stop gap solutions, as they still depend on burning a copycat substitute for fossil fuel and that burning and subsequet releasing of CO2 and pollutants will remain the greatest force causing global warming. In places other than the U.S., such techniques as geothermal and tidal production of energy, which are free from that defect have been shown to be competitive in cost with fossil fuel production.

One of the big stumbling blocks is that the public remains naive to anything that doesn't duplicate the techniques put together by Edison a century ago (in order that he might make a profit producing electricity) and leave in the hands of the powerful energy giants the control of energy production in North America (that includes Canada and Mexico, of course).

One of the really enormous savings that is possible is to develop a future in which there need be on an "electrical grid", thus making an "electrical grid" a thing of the past. (Imagine the dip in electricity cost if the copper needed for transmission lines was eliminated? Imagine the dip in the cost of copper!!) But that will mean not depending on the giant corporations that now control our energy production and diminishing their greatest source of income. And they, with their vast lobbying efforts and willingness to pay for the help of government officials with favors and even under the table cash, have a heap more influence than the engineers and scientist that can develop more modern, cheaper, and more efficient methods of energy production. Thus it is in those giant corporations interest to "misinform" the public and spread falsehoods about the techniques and the cost of alternative energy. Anyone that thinks they have not pulled out all the stops on such a mis-education program is a fool.

One of the most glaring failings of the press is hard at work again in this season of primaries and caucuses. That is its failure to inversigate the very details of the knowledge about energy production of the various candidates. We need information about their actual understanding and knowledge of alternative energy possibilities, not just some glorious sounding "policy " statement from the financial judgments of some committee of economists with equal ignorance of the possibilities and necessities.

Leading the world in the face of global warming and maintaining status as a non-third world country will depend less and less on military might and more and more on understanding and utilizing innovative new efficient and totally fossil fuel independent sources of energy.

We, with leaders that can and will participate in the research and development necessary, can be the world leader in fossil fuel independent energy, not just in it's production, but in the market for the machinery and techniques that will make it possible. (It a chance for a far better future for our people than a lifetime of flipping burgers, which is what most of the new "jobs" our economy is producing now. We have to develop something that creats the funds to buy those burgers!)

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Lockman
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quote:
Originally posted by bdgee:
Big,


One of the most glaring failings of the press is hard at work again in this season of primaries and caucuses. That is its failure to inversigate the very details of the knowledge about energy production of the various candidates. We need information about their actual understanding and knowledge of alternative energy possibilities, not just some glorious sounding "policy " statement from the financial judgments of some committee of economists with equal ignorance of the possibilities and necessities.

Leading the world in the face of global warming and maintaining status as a non-third world country will depend less and less on military might and more and more on understanding and utilizing innovative new efficient and totally fossil fuel independent sources of energy.

We, with leaders that can and will participate in the research and development necessary, can be the world leader in fossil fuel independent energy, not just in it's production, but in the market for the machinery and techniques that will make it possible. (It a chance for a far better future for our people than a lifetime of flipping burgers, which is what most of the new "jobs" our economy is producing now. We have to develop something that creats the funds to buy those burgers!)

Now these are ideas and statements I agree with.

Who is this person or people who will emerge as leaders with the stomach to turn their backs on big government and big corporations.

I fail to see any of our present day candidates or elected officals willing to take the chances necessary.

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Let's Go METS!!!

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bdgee
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lockman,

Who knows??????

Until the candidates are faced with a reality that forces them to pay attention to things that are important instead of political bs to scare the emotional bejabers out of the public, they are, reasonably, going to spend their efforts and thinking on the trivia presented to them by the press, crap like directed and mandated prayer in public schools, illegal aliens, "we have to fight them there so we don't have to fight them here", drunk drivers, etc.

It isn't that those are not worth concern, but they aren't worth the time or effort of a president and the Congress, because they will never be solved. The importance and the proposed solutions for them all depend on political leanings and beliefs, which change with the weather or the calender or the latest flatulence of Fat Rush, The Doper or all of the above and what John Doe had for breakfast, not on reality.

I think a lot of the problem is that the "press" is mostly made up of people that "chose journalism" as an advocatioon and profession at the very advanced emotional age of 11 or 12, well before they had enough experience and education to be makeing any lifetime decisions. (Many of the others chose it after discovering physics and solid geometry require a lot of serious work and can't be smoozed.) Then, signed up for the long haul, they proceeded to fill their remaining curricula with journalism and literature courses and everything else but mathematics and science and they simply are too ignorant to investigate or question developments that aren't both classical and old hat journalism.

Too bad we aren't allowed to vote on journalist. That might give us a right and an opportunity to query the experience and education of them, so as to vote against the real intellectual slackers.

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T e x
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sumpin to that...always thought "majoring" in journalism was kinda goofy...Very few journalists write about journalism.

The good news is, anyone can start a paper or **** etc. The bad news is anyone start a paper or **** etc.

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Nashoba Holba Chepulechi
Adventures in microcapitalism...

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bdgee
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Gotta disagree, Tex. 'tain't true that anyone can start a paper. Most folks don't have even a glimmer of the money that is required.
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T e x
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just sayin'... you don't have win an election, pass any exams, get any licenses, etc...

all ya really *must* do is sell ads...Even schoolkids could sell ads for, say, 6 weeks, then work on production for 6 weeks and publish an 11 x 17 folded (4 pp). that they deliver to the neighborhood, 4 times a year. Voila...a quarterly [Smile]

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Nashoba Holba Chepulechi
Adventures in microcapitalism...

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bdgee
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I see....
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T e x
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btw, not being sarcastic...

remember, I founded a technical journal that had a 2-year run. Even with a printing press, dark room and shear-cutter in my house, I still spent more than 50 grand out of my pocket. So *your* point is well taken, also. The deal was, back then there was no ad base. The only way I lasted as long as I did was it was cutting edge enough to charge $75 subscriptions...

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Nashoba Holba Chepulechi
Adventures in microcapitalism...

Posts: 21062 | From: Fort Worth | Registered: Apr 2005  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
   

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