Al Gore, Bill McKibben and the color of money: A true religious experience
Guest essay by Paul Driessen and Dennis Mitchell
Some years ago, a telegenic televangelist built quite an empire, before publicly falling from grace and adopting a less opulent life style. But back then he liked big homes and Lear jets with Rolls Royce engines and, even though Dennis’s lab primarily did environmental monitoring, his chief pilot came there because he needed demanding analyses on the methanol fuels he used for extra thrust.
The lab did the analyses uneventfully for several months, until it discovered an unpaid invoice. When Dennis inquired about it, the pilot said, “Sometimes he doesn’t pay certain bills, because the Lord told him people could contribute to the ministry in that fashion.” Dennis told him that was OK, but the next time one of those private jets is taking off and the pilot hits the injection fuel switch, the lab couldn’t guarantee that the analysis on that batch of fuel was accurate. The bill was paid in three days.
Do we hear an “AMEN”?
Speaking of televangelists, here’s an interesting experiment that folks can do at home. Find a video sermon with Jimmy Swaggart and, keeping the sound off, watch his body language for 10 or 15 minutes. Then, queue up your personal copy of An Inconvenient Truth and, also with the sound off, watch 10 to 15 minutes of Al Gore. As Mr. Spock liked to say, “Fascinating!”
Mr. Gore also enjoys big energy-hungry mansions and private jets. After all, why would he worry about the size of his carbon butt print, when he’s trying to save the world from other people’s carbon dioxide “pollution”? We’re supposed to listen to what he says, not observe or criticize what he does.
When the “climate cataclysm” televangelist sold his holdings in Current TV to Aljazeera America, another famous environmentalist and self-made victim, Bill McKibben, made some less than supportive comments. (McKibben successfully converted his white, straight, male, middle-class status into pitiable victimhood, by portraying himself and everyone else as “victims” of fossil fuels and climate change.)
The fossil fuel riches from the backers of this bold new “news” media outlet, the kingdom of Qatar, seemed to offend Mr. McKibben. Who else but obscenely wealthy oil-rich Arabs could afford to pay so much for such a questionable business venture? he wondered. Of course, we presume, profits were not a high priority for the Qataris in this particular deal, though we could be wrong.
All these thoughts and stories came back to us recently, because McKibben now has his own film: Do the Math, the movie version of his previous Rolling Stone article and nationwide tour, all intended to save the planet from the climate Armageddon that computer models and previous movies “prove” is coming.
Viewers don’t have to get very far into the film to spot a worn-out, but proven practice. News anchor Diane Sawyer plays her part perfectly, when she informs the world that 2012 was the hottest year ever in the United States. The claim itself is highly doubtful, since we’re talking about hundredths of a degree, scattered thermometers 80 years ago versus much more widespread and sophisticated measuring devices today, and recent measurements that are contaminated by all kinds of urban, AC and airport heat.
All that is irrelevant to Sawyer and McKibben, of course. Once they get the “hottest year ever” into the chatter, it becomes fact – and not just regional, or even national, but global. Regional temperatures are important, and even have national and international implications – but only if the temperatures have gone up. If they’ve decreased or remained unchanged, they are irrelevant in televangelist climate messages.
(Naturally, that reminds us of the Wall Street types who keep regulators amused and busy, by using similarly clever tactics to describe stock and bond markets, and attract unwary investors.)
That’s the “it’s really very simple” routine on which Do the Math is based.
Mr. McKibben had been in a cozy, if not profitable, journey with Mr. Gore – fighting the evil fossil fuel mountain of cash and its presumed hell-bent destruction of Planet Earth. However, it didn’t take Mr. Bill very long to conveniently see the light (he probably flipped a fossil-fuel-powered switch), revealing the oil-funded opportunity for riches. Now that he has moved far beyond his 350.org organization and become a film maker, Mr. McK salivates, can a Nobel Prize and million-dollar payoff be far behind?
Actually, it is mind-numbing to see him rehash his Rolling Stone piece, “Global warming’s terrifying new math” – and divine three magic numbers that he says are absolutely critical if we are to save the planet. Here they are, paraphrased as commandments.
Thou shalt not let planetary temperatures go above 2 degrees Celsius of warming.
Thou shalt not burn more than another 565 gigatons of carbon (or you will violate the first commandment).
Thou shalt not allow corporations to burn the 2,795 gigatons worth of CO2 that they now have in reserve.
The 2 degrees (3.5 deg F) presumes that anything higher risks catastrophe for life on earth. It comes from the civic-minded and unimpeachable folks at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. They said so in their 2007 AR4 report. Therefore, it’s still climate chaos gospel, even though their 2013 AR5 report waffled on this point, IPCC bureaucrats massaged the “science” to make sure it corresponded to their politics and previous proclamations, and IPCC reports are replete with errors, stupidity and fraud.
Indeed, the IPCC’s analyses for biological impacts from any climate changes are purely speculative – but obviously quite profitable for Gore, McKibben and IPCC pseudo-scientists. Predictions of doom mean never having to say you’re sorry, even if you’re wrong every time. Just collect your next paycheck.
In reality, numerous scientists disagree with the IPCC on this (and a lot more), and say such moderate warming would probably be beneficial for humans, wildlife and planet. By contrast, 2 degrees C of cooling could be dangerous or even disastrous, especially by reducing growing seasons and arable cropland, and forcing us to plow a lot more temperate zone wildlife habitats to feed hungry people.
The 565 gigatons presumes that this much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will hit a “tipping point,” beyond which global temperatures would climb uncontrollably. There is no evidence whatsoever for this. Heck, the fact that average global temperatures have not budged in 16 years, despite steadily climbing CO2 levels, underscores how wrong and useless IPCC models, predictions and junk science have been.
Finally, according to McKibben, corporations now have enough oil, gas and coal in their reserves to spew 2,795 gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. And they’re planning to burn it all! (This number does not reflect the enormous growth in petroleum reserves, due to recent discoveries and the ability of hydraulic fracturing to unlock another century of oil, natural gas and natural gas liquids that supply over 80% of the energy that makes modern civilizations, living standards and life spans possible.)
All these numbers and statements are presented with such passion that you’re almost convinced they were written by ancient seers on scrolls discovered in a Middle Eastern cave, foretelling a future plot by Romanum Imperium Petroleum. Or perhaps the mystical numbers were handed down on stone tablets – presumably granite, not anything made from nasty carbon-based rocks like limestone or marble!
Mr. McKibben has had no qualms about jumping in bed with the Middle Eastern fossil fuel industry, to fight the evil Western fossil fuel industry. Aljazeera America seems to be the official home for his so-called “documentary,” to rally True Believers to the cause of fighting “carbon pollution.”
Just because his buddies Al Gore and Rajandra Pachauri made tens of millions of dollars off carbon trading schemes, before the EU carbon market collapsed, is no reason people should be suspicious of Mr. McK’s alliances, numbers or intentions. After all, numbers don’t lie, especially when “green” credentials promote “green” alternative energy schemes and bring in so many “greenback” dollars. Do the math.
_________
Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power – Black death. Dennis Mitchell, CPA/QEP, has been professionally involved in environmental and tax compliance, monitoring and education for over 40 years and is an avid student of climate change.
Related articles
- Bill McKibben’s excellent eco-hypocrisy (wattsupwiththat.com)
- McKibben Says “Americans Have Their Heads Stuck In The Sand” And World Has “Too Much Fossil Fuel” To Burn (notrickszone.com)
Oil-producing concerns outside the US are the least supportive of an oil boom inside the US. That’s the logic, which seems to be supported by the math.
Here’s a title and thesis for a good contrarian film: Are They 95% Trustworthy? or Can We Trust Them? It would consist of many exposures of shifty/shady practices by the warmist cabal, especially the IPCC. This would attack them at what is both their strongest (in public perception) and weakest (in actuality) point.
It’s always been about the money. I just can’t decide if Gore is Mordecai Jones, (“With a quicksilver tongue, hands of a grifter and a heart of pure larceny” http://www.amazon.com/The-Ballad-Flim-Flam-Man-Owen/dp/1928556051) or Elmer Gantry. Two degree tipping point spelling climate doom? Doesn’t this sort of ignore history, even relatively recent history? Yet they get away with it.
Al Jazeera is just the place for McKibben’s movie. Very few will see it. McKibben is one of those folks I didn’t know about until other folks talked about him. After checking his credentials, I can’t see how much of anything he says can be of much consequence. If he impresses the elite intelligentsia, then it says something about their intellect.
I guess in this day and age, not many people who are knowledgeable about the news are not also knowledgeable about the fact that America’s currency is green. And that is how the “green power” gets its name. Not from any environmental concerns, but about their pursuit of the almighty dollar preaching against sin, while they indulge in it.
After a decade or so of idiots telling the us all we are sinners killing the planet, and the planet refuses to listen by getting cooler it is time for the world to know the truth. The last few winters have not been good in the northern hemisphere, this one coming is not looking any better.
Warming is warming and that has not been happening, how much ice and snow do these fools need before they understand that cooling is not warming, how many deaths both animal and human from the cold does it take understand that cooling is not warming.
How many dollars is a life worth, mongrels all pursuing a faith unsupported by real science, I can only hope that Karma is a real science.
Thanks, Paul and Dennis. That was an enjoyable read.
Regards
Mr. Driessen and Mitchell, thanks for filling in some facts.
You’re right, Al Gore and Jimmy Swaggart… same pulpit tactics.
AGW hype is all about following the money.
Is there not an opportunity in the US to prosecute disgraceful people, the likes of Gore and McKibben, for putting out false information to the nation for personal profit?
With education being so dysfunctional in the US, we no longer have an electorate with basic information necessary to make informed votes. The Republic is in great danger, and will fall if we don’t take back local control. We don’t need social engineering. We do need kids trained to take modern jobs.
Science is full of government funded fraud, and phony mouthpieces spouting pseudo-science propped up by media are supplanting authentic voices. After nearly a century of NEA corruption, generations of Americans can’t tell who is knowledgeable, and who is a huckster.
Such problems are why it is so dangerous to have federal control. If one state decided to debilitate the minds of generations of children, other states with better education standards could supply the needed talent, and parents recognizing the problems in principle could move. However, with federal standards creating nation-wide dysfunction, there is no safe haven.
In almost every arena where the federal government has taken control, the system is failing. Education, banking, farming, health care, environment, energy, water, forestry, trade, commercial regulation, and so on. Maybe they should stop meddling and let states do as the Founders intended. What happened to the 10th amendment? At least some states haven’t forgotten what that was.
“Mr. McKibben has had no qualms about jumping in bed with the Middle Eastern fossil fuel industry, to fight the evil Western fossil fuel industry”
———————————————–
This is the key quote. If you think Al Jazeera isn’t in this for money, I think you are wrong. With the resurgence of western oil industry (led by the US) & new recovery technologies, this oil can & will replace Middle East oil in the marketplace. What better way to prevent this than to convince the west that oil is eveil & have our own politicians shoot Western Industry in the foot, thus reducing competition, by making them think CAGW is real.
Further more, CAGWers would say oil is bad, they would say coal is worse. So, promote CAGW, kill the coal industry ( which we already are seeing in the US), & then we have to use more petroleum for fuel, thus increasing the overall demand for petroleum & again help Middle East Oil.
McKibben is a pawn in this game.
A lot of people don’t know that Al Gore is a failed divinity student so that his tent revival approach to climate change is easily explained. L.Ron Hubbard is supposed to have started Scientology as a money making scheme and I think Al baby is following in his footsteps.
Using a flight of fancy to start an article shreds your credibility. It’s even worse if done deliberately in the hope readers are too ignorant to sort out fact from fiction: we call that that journalism.
I’ve flown Learjet models 23, 24, 25, 35 and 45. The 20 series airplanes are powered by CJ610s; the 30s and 45s by TFE731s. Neither engine’s provenance has anything to do with Rolls Royce, a company which makes excellent engines which I’ve used in A300s and B757s, although they’re slow to start.
Neither engine uses methanol injection, in any phase of flight.
Maybe this cute anecdote can attributed to hypoxia, because the author fabricated it out of thin air.
Do I hear an “AMEN”?
hansong:
You conclude your post at October 28, 2013 at 6:22 am by asking
No. It was a yawn.
Richard
What hansong writes, October 28, 6:22 am, strikes me as rather sensible really. I may be wrong on some of these details but to my knowledge jet engine fuel is a version of kerosene. I’m not certain but I believe that kerosene does not readily evaporate – an important characteristic, I would think, for an aircraft. Methanol, on the other hand, evaporates quite readily and burns without a flame – don’t crash that jet. And alcohol has a lower heat content which is why mileage suffers with its use. A jet aircraft is not a ‘nitro fueled’ (methanol + nitromethane) drag race car and the author seems to be confusing the two.
As far as the Rolls Royce engine is concerned that’s a non-issue. The automobile and aircraft engine operations were distinct divisions in the company. An aircraft designer may just as readily have chosen a Pratt & Whitney engine over an RR. The name was irrelevant. Which is why some World War II fighter pilots preferred P-51 Mustangs with Allison engines over the Rolls’. I’d love to get my hands on V-12 Rolls Royce Merlin though – saw one once in a tractor pull, wow!
Hate to say it but I believe the first paragraph in this article is on the wrong footing. It hurts credibility.
Interesting but the first two paragraphs need a rewrite
Good science would require that we know what the optimum levels of CO2 are and the optimum temperature. Strangely, no advocate of AGW seems interested in researching these issues.
Gore compared with Swaggart?
No contest. Give me Swaggart any day. He is a fine musician with a lovely,deft touch on the ivories, and very tasteful styling. Atheist old me will listen to him do a gospel song anytime. Swaggart has real talent.
Whereas Gore …?
“@hansong”
I took it more as Al Gorey. Allegory: Evangelic Huckster selling a product demonizing the same thing he needs to do the demonizing and has been and expects to be ‘rewarded’ for it..vs reality of the demonized product being the item which actually does “God’s work”. Don’t do the Devil’s work?
Tom J says:
October 28, 2013 at 7:04 am
As far as the Rolls Royce engine is concerned that’s a non-issue. The automobile and aircraft engine operations were distinct divisions in the company. An aircraft designer may just as readily have chosen a Pratt & Whitney engine over an RR. The name was irrelevant. Which is why some World War II fighter pilots preferred P-51 Mustangs with Allison engines over the Rolls’. I’d love to get my hands on V-12 Rolls Royce Merlin though – saw one once in a tractor pull, wow!
I can’t believe any pilot would prefer a P-51 with an Allison engine, they had limited high altitude capability, the R-R Merlin replaced it and transformed the performance of the Mustang. The Merlin engine is widely regarded as the finest piston engine ever made!
hansong says:
October 28, 2013 at 6:22 am
Using a flight of fancy to start an article shreds your credibility. It’s even worse if done deliberately in the hope readers are too ignorant to sort out fact from fiction: we call that that journalism.
I’ve flown Learjet models 23, 24, 25, 35 and 45. The 20 series airplanes are powered by CJ610s; the 30s and 45s by TFE731s. Neither engine’s provenance has anything to do with Rolls Royce, a company which makes excellent engines which I’ve used in A300s and B757s, although they’re slow to start.
Neither engine uses methanol injection, in any phase of flight.
Maybe this cute anecdote can attributed to hypoxia, because the author fabricated it out of thin air.
Do I hear an “AMEN”?
The “fight of fancy” may be the choice of aircraft type by a non-expert rather than the water/meth injection. The more common turbo-prop business aircraft some years ago such as the F28 or F27 with Rolls Royce Dart engines were water meth injected. The injection was just prior to the combustion chambers and allowed take off in marginal conditions due to high temperatures or short runway.
So the change just needs to remove Lear Jet and replace it with business aircraft
Not only is it highly doubtful, it’s a complete fiction, since there is no global temperature.
hansong, good pick up. You have done a youmans job of exemplifying the point of the article. If only the ‘experts’ would examine something that really matters (AGW) with something that doesn’t (simple analogy) in the same way you have the entire attempt to manipulate the American people through ‘global warming’ would be over.
Sadly it seems that following the money and power provides insight into the reason. Is this really hard to fathom to anyone who has a modicum of understanding of human nature?
Richards in Vancouver says:
October 28, 2013 at 7:17 am
“Atheist old me will listen to him do a gospel song anytime. Swaggart has real talent.”
Amen. Even after Swaggart fell, I tuned in once to find the most potent female singer I’ve ever heard belting it out in his choir and was stunned to see that she was white! I didn’t know “they” could do that. Because of my circumstances, I used to watch Swaggart and Jimmy and Tammy Faye Baker, who could also sing very well, just to see them huckstering. It was a riot to see the latter two sell their time-shares at Heritage theme Park: first they were selling them for $1500 then $1000 then $500. Obviously, they were in trouble, and their scam did get them into more trouble. May the same fate befall Al Gore. Amen
Regardless of the make of the jet in the article, the term “Lear Jet” has taken a broader meaning in the general populace. For example, “Lear Jet Liberal” in the Urban Dictionary means:
A supposed environmental activist who, with typical liberal hypocrisy, tells everyone else to ride their bike to cut down on pollution or to switch energy saving light bulbs all the while they fly around in private jets and have houses with huge electric bills.
Al Gore proved himself to be a Lear Jet Liberal after his movie “An Inconvenient Truth” when it was discovered that he owns a private jet and his mansion in Tennessee uses as much energy in August alone as most other people do all year.
I have always tried to figure out the difference between the professional evangelists and the leaders of the Global Warming Cult.
Both try and extract the maximum number of dollars from our pockets.
Both are utterly unaccountable in their outrageous statements.
Both try and scare us for our wicked ways and offer themselves as our only hope for salvation.
Both like to tell parables and twist facts for their own ends.
Both live outrageously opulent lifestyles – extreme examples include Patchauri and Gore.
Both are allergic to taxes.
What’s a guy whose family got rich from Occidental Petroleum supposed to do? Burn oil and cash of course. This is what to do when you have a planetary emergency.Let the little people reduce their co2 ‘footprint’ so you can increase yours.
Here is Gore in action.
Here is Bill McKibben doing the math from up high and yonder.
I saw on the TV news here in Norway that McKibben is in Oslo today to cash in a cool sum of 100000 US$ as he won the Sophie prize for the great work he is doing spewing out his gospel. One of the previous prize winners was another cool guy called James Hansen.
Here is Al Gore and family. (Taking tobacco lobby cash, slave owning ancestors, alcoholism, big oil riches).
There was a time when McKibben was actually a productive working environmentalist who wrote compelling if not entirely accurate or realistic treatises for major magazines. Here’s one of his efforts from 1995: An Explosion of Green
In this piece the bogeyman is the timber harvesting companies. He does, however, recognize that the eastern half the US is becoming forested again and it’s happening rapidly. Unfortunately, he doesn’t seem to recognize that the reason for all this reforestation and restoration of habitat has to do with the discovery and development of our two most important natural energy resources: petroleum and coal.
Big Oil has now replaced Big Timber as the bogeyman among environmentalists and they are using fraudulent climate science as the lever to destroy them in the same way they used clear-cutting and other admittedly dubious timber harvesting practices, to severely reduce in size the timber industry in the US.
Forget the oil, gas and coal.
Since time immemorial, organic detritus, from dead whales downwards, has been sinking to the bottom of the oceans where it has undergone bacterial decomposition, producing methane. At the temperature and pressure at the seabed, this methane forms methane hydrate.
There is estimated to be at least an order of magnitude more than all the oil, gas and coal put together, and that estimate is in all likelihood conservative.
Amongst others, the USA, Japan and South Korea are currently working on exploiting this resource, and all the hand-wringing and whining from the Greens will not prevent them from utilising it.
How about the Lockwood Minimum?
Tom J,
A friend of mine has a Merlin in his front office and he fires it up once a year.
If you are ever the East side of the pond I’ll show it to you.
For the Merlin enthusiasts among us, a little treat.
Don’t miss the photo page, and do enjoy the writing.
Prepare to yearn.
The Meteor Bentley.
Phil. on October 28, 2013 at 7:33 am
I’m not qualified nor inclined to disagree with you but I remember reading a book on piston aero engines where the author, I believe his last name was Gunston, wrote that he enjoyed flying the P51 more so with the Allison than what he called, “The crackling Merlin.” I wish I could give you the exact title but I believe it was either ‘Piston Aero Engines’ or ’50 Years of Piston Aero Engines’ with a subtitle of, ‘And Still a Power to be Reckoned With.’
Having said that I will state that the V-12 Merlin, descended from the Rolls Royce Kestrel, demonstrated that one could get a lot of power out of a small engine at a time when the Germans and Italians were just making them bigger. And a Merlin, highly supercharged, and running on special high octane fuel, either has held for a long time, or continues to hold the world’s all time record for b.m.e.p. developed in the cylinder. It’s also amazing to think of that engine, with roughly a 5-5.5″ bore, and 6″ stroke, spinning as high as 3,500 rpm. Consider that the P51s with those V12 engines came close to the speed and altitude of modern jetliners. And that was 70 years ago. As an aside, it was calculated that each one of those 12 short exhaust pipes sticking out the sides of the cowling, in combination delivered up to an additional 50hp in propulsive thrust.
IMO the best aero engines of WWII were Pratt & Whitney radials, capable of sustaining enormous damage & still working, even with whole cylinders shot off. One cut in a liquid-cooled engine line would put it out of business. For high altitude bombers & fighters, LC engines were at less of a disadvantage. For low-level interception & ground attack, however, they sucked, which is why the RAF wanted to replace the Typhoon’s Napier Sabre LC engine with the radial Bristol Centaurus in the Tempest, but too few were available.
Had the Allison V-1710 ever been properly aspirated, it would not have needed replacement by the Merlin. Those in use now produce high power to weight ratios.
Tom J says:
October 28, 2013 at 10:36 am
http://www.amazon.com/P-51-Mustang-Classic-War-Planes/dp/0861015061
Oldseadog on October 28, 2013 at 10:04 am
Thank you for your offer but I suspect I’ll never be getting to the East side of the Pond. As a token of my gratitude allow me to link this YouTube channel:
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pEbDlNeMtLM&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DpEbDlNeMtLM
I’m not real computer savvy and I’m working from an iPhone so I hope it comes up for you. It’s a Bristol Hercules demonstration by Johan Christensson at a Swedish air show and it should be at the top of the channel. It’s about 4 1/2 minutes long. The engine smokes a lot (like all radial engines do) when first started and the operator takes a while to warm it up. But when he does, whew does that engine spin! Even from a little iPhone screen with a little speaker it’s still pretty exciting. At least to me. Hope you may enjoy it.
To Bill McKibbon and all of the climate alarmist “community” (h/t Lewandowsky): you should model the recent behavior of Eric Holthaus, the crying weatherman. Eric has forsworn air travel, air conditioning, promised us all to get a vasectomy, and generally give up modern life.
http://weaselzippers.us/2013/09/28/weatherman-gets-vasectomy-after-crying-over-climate-changea/
Can you all at LEAST do these little things to prove your piety? But don’t go all Kazinsky on us, when you’re living out in the Montana wilderness. And don’t be hypocrite like Eric, who cried, then tweeted, and then boarded his airplane.
Per Strandberg (@LittleIceAge) says:
October 28, 2013 at 9:00 am
“I saw on the TV news here in Norway that McKibben is in Oslo today to cash in a cool sum of 100000 US$ as he won the Sophie prize for the great work he is doing spewing out his gospel. One of the previous prize winners was another cool guy called James Hansen.”
All of Europe is one big corrupt rats nest.
Here’s the book I referred to earlier (10:36 am) and a link to it:
The Development of Piston Aero Engines: From the Wrights to Microlights : A Century of Evolution and Still a Power to Be Reckoned With
by Bill Gunston
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1852605995
milodonharlani
October 28, 2013 at 10:43am
Thanks for the link. Bill Gunston’s written quite a few books. Knowledgeable guy.
That would mean 564.999 gigs is just fine eh? What a tool McFibben is. Totally plucked those figures out his A.
For you RR Merlin fans, here’s one in a car. Awesome!:
Hmmm … The allegation that Gore has made millions out of climate alarmism is often put, but I have yet to read anything specific about this. Does anyone know of any credible source/analysis of this?
Don’t quite get the allegation(?) about McKibben feathering his nest. The authors provide no evidence of him actually making any personal money out of his various (wacky, I concede) activities.
This reads more like a bit of a loose rant, to be honest…
Here’s an article, for Bloomberg, on how Gore got his money – maybe as much as $USA200milion.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-06/gore-is-romney-rich-with-200-million-after-bush-defeat.html
Seems he has lost, rather than made, money on carbon credits, `green investments’, etc.
Most of his cash came from share options in Apple, equity in part-green-part-traditional investment funds and selling a pay TV network to the Qataris.
Uhm, apart from the hypocrisy of blathering on about the need for carbon reductions whilst living a very high life himself, so what that Gore got himself very rich?
Sure, he is a crashing bore, but his wealth seems to have been built in a fairly straightforward way.
Tom J says:
October 28, 2013 at 1:58 pm
Bill Gunston is a colleague of my brother, an aviation historian.
re: “Mr. Gore also enjoys big energy-hungry mansions and private jets. After all, why would he worry about the size of his carbon butt print, when he’s trying to save the world from other people’s carbon dioxide “pollution”? We’re supposed to listen to what he says, not observe or criticize what he does.”
I’m no fan of Al Gore, but he’s innocent of this charge of having a large carbon buttprint.
Al uses only carbon-free electricity. He has 33 solar panels on his roof, seven deep geothermal wells under his driveway, LED lights and highest-grade energy-saving windows, max insulation, and a hybrid plug-in car.
He doesn’t have a jet, and buys carbon sequestration to match his air travel emissions.
The guy is practicing what he’s preaching, and living carbon neutral.
Only because he can Seth. All the lying and cheating Gore’s done, his solar panels, geothermal wells et al don’t make the sun shine out his A. His complete misunderstanding (misappropriation) of CO2 and its role in the biosphere isn’t a Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card. Hansen will likewise have to answer some inconvenient questions.
I get it. Gore and others are the Bishops of Climate Bling.
Count the cash and hide the data is their motto. It’s harder to hide the fraud research in medical studies that are not reproducible.—–
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hiltzik-20131027,0,1228881.column#axzz2j7KJsAIj
You are one funny guy, TBear. I guess you may be saying in a tongue-in-cheek way that he made it the old-fashioned way (i.e. via “the world’s oldest profession”), the one that has been around for a very long time … or was that what he did to ‘customers’? Either way, TBear, you have shed more light on this aspect that I ever could … (/mild sarcasm)
.
I’m curious what ‘sack cloth and ashes’ indulgence he ‘bought’ to offset the tidy sum he received from the sale of his ‘channel’ to a carbon-based fuels affiliated group … any idea?
Mind you, I’m not judging, just score -er- record-keeping (keeping records) or ‘books’ on affairs Algore …
.