Stange juxtaposition of Al Gore related stories today.
SU to vote on funding Gore, others to speak | Washington University, St Louis
The College Democrats will be appealing for almost $145,000 to pay Al Gore to speak on campus. That is equal to the amount used to fund the eight main speakers last year, including news anchor Soledad O’Brien, PostSecret founder Frank Warren, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales and journalist Nicholas Kristof.
If passed, it would be SU Treasury’s first time allocating more than $100,000 toward one speaker. Last year, it rejected the College Democrats’ appeal for $127,000 to bring TV comedy personality Bill Maher to campus.
Al Gore in 24-hour broadcast to convert climate skeptics
(Reuters) – Former President Al Gore will renew his 30-year campaign to convince skeptics of the link between climate change and extreme weather events this week in a 24-hour global multi-media event.
“24 Hours of Reality” will broadcast a presentation by Al Gore every hour for 24 hours across 24 different time zones from Wednesday to Thursday, with the aim of convincing climate change deniers and driving action against global warming among households, schools and businesses.
…
“There will be 200 new slides arguing the connection between more extreme weather and climate change,” Trewin Restorick, chief executive of the event’s UK partner Global Action Plan, told Reuters on Monday.
“There will be a full-on assault on climate skeptics, exploring where they get their funding from.”
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I dunno, trying to convince people by attacking them while at the same time commanding exorbitant speaking fees for your opinion that most of the American public doesn’t see you as an expert in any more, according to this recent Rasmussen poll, doesn’t seem like a plan to “win the future”. It seems more like a plan that will speak to the faithful, bolster Oreskes style stereotypes, and deepen division even more. If Al can’t argue the science anymore (not that he was very good at it in the first place) then I think that this attempt to smear will be seen as desperation.
One thing we probably won’t see from Mr. Gore will be comparative sums between his funding and that of skeptics.
Calling people deniers sure isn’t a good way to start converting them. Perhaps we’ll need to count how many times that offensive word is used in the Gore-a-thon.
h/t to Tom Nelson
You should check the new Gore videos, from his Climate Reality project:
http://ecotretas.blogspot.com/2011/09/more-climate-nazism.html
Ecotretas
It’s going to be some very interesting 24 hours. Having debunked the Cape Verde and Rio de Janeiro arguments, I just can’t wait to see what more will he be saying in those 200 slides…
“There will be a full-on assault on climate skeptics, exploring where they get their funding from.”
I’m sure there will be a lot of interested sceptics wishing to know the answer to this too – so they can hopefully get a piece of this apparently huge pie. And while Gore’s at it, he can explain where the missing hotspot is too (maybe it’s in the pie).
Ohhh
I believe you should check his new videos… I’ve replied in one comment, but it seems to have been spammed, because of the title on my blog. I believe it will be seen directly below:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q60fA9btksc&w=384&h=246]
Why would anyone watch the has been himself. His snake oil sold well in the past but the world has moved on to worry about jobs and how to pay for the government excess’s worldwide.
Death throws of a dinosaur? As a believer I must bang the drum and dengrate the non believers whilst holding out the hat for donations. Sounds like a revivalist meeting to me.
$145k for Al Gore and $127k for Maher at Wash U? Please remind me, why we are outraged at CEO bonuses?
Who ends up paying these ridiculous speaker fees? The parents and the students themselves, no doubt (and the taxpayers when the students default on their loans). Should we wonder at the extravagant cost of college these days?
Among all these student groups, is there not one wag who will have the guts to say, “OK, but let’s invite The Goracle only if he will agree to a 90-minute debate with Lord Monckton”?
/Mr Lynn
If Al Gore doesn’t get $145,000, Gaia will call him home.
Message fatigue will set in…. ‘Turn off that pesky ad will you!’
Where do I apply to get my “climate sceptic funding”?
I urge everyone to go find the nearest Climate Reality event/festivus/bongparty by entering your zip code here-
http://forms.climaterealityproject.org/page/event/search_simple
The goal of the events? “For 24 hours, we will all live in reality.” That explains a lot. Where are you the rest of the time?
I was shocked to find that Anthony would have to travel to San Fran to attend the nearest event. What happened to the Gaia-caring Chico crowds?
I tried zips for most of my extended family, and discovered that extensive fossil fuel combustion would be involved in any of them attending one of the events.
The Climate Reality website even suggests- “Pick a faraway place or a city near you.”
Is cognitive dissonance part of their reality?
In all fairness $55k of that go towards carbon allowances to offset shipping his tubby self to campus.
I was interested in the “If You Could Ask a Climate scientist One Question….” post over at Climate Progress recently as I wondered what folks would ask. I found the comment in the post
by Icarus says:September 10, 2011 at 11:26 am of interest-
“I would ask this: Hansen’s 1981 projections are matching reality pretty well so far that lead me to – Dr. Hansen’s 1981 Projections compared to Obervations-
http://images.sodahead.com/profiles/0/0/2/1/6/9/7/0/5/1981cfobs-46485264070.jpeg …………..”
I hadn’t seen this graph before. As it’s been a bit over 30 years since it was first published, maybe Al Gore will be presenting an updated version of the graph at his upcoming event.
I assume Dr. Hansen’s estimates (projections/scinarios/etc.) of the growth of fossil fuel usage was a little low compared to what has happened in the last thirty years. It seems to me that if we want to evaluate the 1981 projections we need to look into his implied CO2 sensitivity value used to generate the graph for each of the fossil fuel usage time points by scinario. Maybe Dr. Hansen would be willing to update the fossil fuel usage values from his original estimates ( we have 30 years data now) to the real thing without modifing the original CO2 sensitivity value. Then we could tell is the projections are matching reality well or not.
He won’t debate anybody of note which proves he’s an intellectual coward. Now he’s lowered himself (if that’s possible) to producing slanderous propaganda.
The only good in what he’s doing is, ironically, the actual harm he’s doing to what has clearly become a messianic political movement based on incomplete and often shoddy science.
Does the $145K go to purchase carbon offsets?
Meanwhile, air mass Thursday morning in the plains may challenge some all time coldest so early with end of growing season freeze as far south as Iowa. Another slap in Al’s face from mother nature who reminds him time and time again that he is in la la land about human influence on the weather and climate. You cant make this stuff up. Every time the guy has some kind of event, cold air comes.
Just looking at this disgusting individual makes me want to go up to him and dump a bucket of snake oil on his finely pressed suit.
A word about the funding of Global Action Plan (GAP), Gore’s UK partner:
According to their 2009/10 accounts (available on the UK charities commission website), this so-called charity received 35% of its £3.3M funding from the UK government: Always glad to receive help brainwashing young people into feeling good about paying ever higher green taxes.
Another 26% of their funding came from carbon traders Bank of America.
No vested interests there then!
More details here http://fakecharities.org/2011/02/charity-1026148/
“Former President Al Gore”?
Did I miss something?
Another “bloviator”, John Kenneth (I’m more Keynsien than Keynes…) Galbraith used to charge $7000 a 1/2 hour lecture during his prime of the 1980’s. I found out that his lecture schedule included about 30 personal appearances in 1983. That works out to $210,000 in 1983 monies. Adjusted to $450,000 now. (His Harvard Salary was a mere $70K a year, or $140 now. He oft times would note that he was at best “slightly” upper middle class.)
I guess bloviating amoung the mindless is not such a mindless thing to do income wise. Where’s my GRAVY TRAIN? I can bloviate too!
From the Reuter’s link…
“There will be a full-on assault on climate skeptics, exploring where they get their funding from.”
Assault? That’ll help change their minds! [LOL!]
Fool’s names, like fool’s faces, often appear in public places. The irony I enjoy here is the greatest fool of all taking money from lesser, but useful, fools.
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I cannot be the first to suppose that Gore thinks the rest of us must be funded because he is funded. He must also think that we are a bunch of misguided fakes because he knows he is one.
Peter Bocking once pointed out that if you lit Gore’s hair on fire he would provide enough heat and light for a small English village.
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UnfrozenCavemanMD says:
September 12, 2011 at 7:15 am
If Al Gore doesn’t get $145,000, Gaia will call him home.
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Humor and/or satire can be very sharp at times! 🙂
I think the folks here are reading this wrong.
When Al Gore says:
“There will be a full-on assault on climate skeptics, exploring where they get their funding from.”
He’ll point out that being a skeptic won’t pay the bills, but there is plenty of money on their side of the fence and he will offer bribes to (hopefully soon) ex-skeptics.
“There will be 200 new slides arguing the connection between more extreme weather and climate change,”
New Slides????…. AWESOME!!!!!!!! Consider me converted!!!!!!
/sarc
It would be better if they had 200 peer reviewed papers based on actual observation to present to bolster their case… But hey, I ask too much.
Where do I submit copies of my tax returns as evidence? I’ll even let them audit me. Maybe when they see I get no funding at all from any climate skeptics slush fund, they’ll finally come to their senses. However, I seriously doubt they ever will.
The gall of these “holier-than-thou” Gaia/Carbon worshipers is beyond the pale.
“There will be a full-on assault on climate skeptics, exploring where they get their funding from.”
No doubt the Chinese will be providing the bike pedalling throng of human dynamos needed to power the spread of the Prophet’s ‘given truth’? Oh-oh, Chico State and Jimmy Hoffa Jr., eat your hearts out, you’ve likely just been undone once again by those non-unionized Teaparty s.o.b.s and “Big Industry”! [Karl Marx]
“Former President Al Gore”?
President of what? The Barbie Doll Club?
Oh dear. A bore-a-thon to miss, methinks.
As for the ‘funding of sceptics’ how many are still waiting for their cheques from ‘Big oil’ etc?
$145,000!!!
We have found the real motivation behind Mr Gore’s cause!!!
There’s been a major typo. Surely it should read 24 Hours of Surreality?
Where is the outrage from Wash U. Alums like there was for Bristol Palin? Our LinkedIn group (Wash U Alumni Association) went ballistic over Bristol Palin speaking. At least she was a real single mother as opposed to Al Gore’s creditials in climatology. And she was not asking $145k.
/WUinStL LA 83
“There will be 200 new slides arguing the connection between more extreme weather and climate change,”
Is that more weather which is classed as extreme or more extreme classification of weather.
Obviously the funds will go to help get the word out.
Yep. That’s the problem with Climate Reality folks. They actually DO think they can prove their claims by “assaulting” those that disagree.
On the plus side, assault is preferable to the “Big Red Button”.
It would be great if Comedy Central played eps of South Park to counter “24H of Reality”.
5.05 – Terrance & Phillip – Behind the Blow (Earth Day)
9.08 – Two Days Before The Day After Tomorrow
10.06 – Manbearpig (Al Gore)
Apparently Greenpeace has been keeping a funding database since at least 2004:
http://www.exxonsecrets.org/maps.php
I wonder how much they spent to create that.
There are those words again, extreme weather and climate change.
Gore is shoring up his falling base of believers and co conspirators realizing he can’t convert skeptics and non believers he chooses to denigrate them.
The Rebirth of Mothra is on satellite. By the way it also has a global warming or environmental message but at least they advertise the movie as science fiction.
Al Gore, I mocked you once as the re-incarnation of the Xhosa Prophetess Nongqawuse, but now you’re going to go on TV and convert people to your religion? Are you serial?
http://aconservativeteacher.blogspot.com/2009/07/is-al-gore-re-incarnation-of-xhosa.html
Hmmmmmm … well, come January 2013, Joe Biden will be available … he can join Al’s traveling roadshow and together they can bore their audiences to tears.
Keeping track of his Denier Shtick would require watching it. No thanks.
“One thing we probably won’t see from Mr. Gore will be comparative sums between his funding and that of skeptics” Are you kidding we don’t even see from Gore an understanding that the temperature at the center of the earth isn’t millions of degrees.
Exxon associates gave Obama $42,100 during the 2008 campaign… Wonder if he’ll be on the list of bad people?
Politicians never want to convert the opposition. Al is simply lying about that (like everything else). Politicians want the opposition to continue talking so they can raise more funds. If the opposition disappears, the impetus to raise money disappears.
Always maintain the issue, never solve the problem.
142 thousand dollars to watch a presentation = ablity to watch it free sometime during that 24 hours.
How many here are willing to bet that your local school will schedule an assembly, gathering all their sheep together to see one of these “preentations”?
Maybe you would get credit for a “creative writing” course…
Re: Al Gore in 24-hour broadcast to convert climate skeptics
“There will be a full-on assault on climate skeptics, exploring where they get their funding from.”
I guess this means Al Gore will be examining the “science of the ad hominem” and the “science of fund raising,” two sub-fields of political science.
Al Gore is like the police captain in Casablanca when shutting down Ric’s bar. “I’m shocked, SHOCKED!, that gambling is going on here.” “Your winnings, sir.”
Al Gore: “I’m shocked, SHOCKED!, that climate sceptics are well-funded.”
University: “Your earnings on your $145,000 plate dinner, sir.”
Al Gore: “Oh, thank you very much.”
How are skeptics supposed to watch this ? Why would they want to watch it ?
My Opinion of Al Gore:
Elmer Gantry:
Reuters now has “Former Vice President”
I’m going to demonstrate where Mr Watts’ funding comes from by making a donation on the 14th.
REPLY: Thanks, but I’d rather you didn’t. Save it for an upcoming project. – Anthony
How else is Al going to pay for his lavish lifestyle?
This is the last comment at Climate Reality Host a Watch Party page.
“Jan Moore
September 11th
Does anyone respond to questions here?”
The weather Gods seem all set to mock Al’s big day :
http://www.real-science.com/uncategorized/massive-cold-blast-greets-al-gores-24-hours#comments
With TS storm Maria currently getting ripped to shreds by wind shear, and no new tropical cyclone formation expected in the next 48 hours, the entire Atlantic Basin may be bereft of activity on Wednesday – right at the peak of the hurricane season.
Somebody “up there” trying to tell Al something?
24 hours of “reality”? Yes, but their version of it, a malleable and plastic reality where every feature has been vetted for being correct in every liberal way. Notice the tone of voice: if only we could have 24 hours of people agreeing with us, then we could bring about a NEW reality. One where human activity is killing the earth, and one in which the elites are free to destroy any liberty and impose any tax they please so that Utopia might finally come to earth.
This IS a religion. It is Gnosticism in new clothes. And according to R.T. Allen, in his article, From Flew, Marx and Gnosticism, (Philosophy Vol 68, No 263, Jan, 1993, pp. 94-98), the thread goes from Gnosticism, to Hegel to Marx. That accounts for the involvement of socialists of all stripes in this evil stew.
“Joe Bastardi says:
September 12, 2011 at 7:45 am
Meanwhile, air mass Thursday morning in the plains may challenge some all time coldest so early with end of growing season freeze as far south as Iowa. Another slap in Al’s face from mother nature who reminds him time and time again that he is in la la land about human influence on the weather and climate. You cant make this stuff up. Every time the guy has some kind of event, cold air comes.”
Yes Joe, it’s called the ADSO- the Algorerythm Deep Southern Oscillation. A strange law indeed where the more he talks about AGW the more mother nature shows she has other plans. But you can bet your sweet bippy on it every time.
“I’m going to demonstrate where Mr Watts’ funding comes from by making a donation on the 14th.
REPLY: Thanks, but I’d rather you didn’t. Save it for an upcoming project. – Anthony”
Ooh, exciting. But you’ll never get to be a billionaire like Al Gore, he’d have asked for two donations, one on the 14th and one for the new project.
On some occasions I have noted that what people shout about is more appropriately applied to themselves.
Consider ‘skeptics are like racists’ and then consider ‘alarmists are like racists’. The second statement is much more appropriate : they do not want to be in the same rooms as a skeptic; they want them excluded from any organisation, publication or public body; they want them thrown out of their jobs, or even their country; and in exteme cases to be ‘liquidated’!
Similarly ‘alarmists are the ones with money and need investigating’. I think you can supply your own arguments to support that statement.
I think Al Gore perfectly represents the alarmist cause. He has made huge amounts of money from it, and while exhorting OTHER [lesser] people to reduce their quality of life I read that he lives in a large fossil fueled mansion and roams the world in his fleet of private jets!
$145k? Well it DOES get expensive paying for all that fuel to shove his guzzling jet plane across the country and to keep his fleet of limos idling and air-conditioned during his speeches….
“There will be a full-on assault on climate skeptics, exploring where they get their funding from.”
Hmmm….. now here’s a contest that I’d like to see engaged. If the Gorecle thinks he can ‘explore where they get their funding from’, what about the pro-alarmist warmists? Well, we know about the gazillions of dollars of guvmint money the warmist ‘scientists’ are supping at the public trough and we now can now explain $145,000…… but what about the rest? If Senator Inhofe was correct when he stated a number of years ago that 1) Kyoto represents an attempt by certain elements within the international community to restrain U.S. interests; and 2) Kyoto is an economic weapon designed to undermine the global competitiveness and economic superiority of the United States…..then who is the main funder behind these efforts? Connecting the dots isn’t really that hard.
Apparently Greenpeace has been keeping a funding database since at least 2004:
http://www.exxonsecrets.org/maps.php
I wonder how much they spent to create that.
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Pure unadulterated RUBBISH. Guilt by association.
I’m actually surprised I’m not on the list.
Of course, I’m just a lonely, isolated, 58 year old almost IMPOVERISHED Engineer. Gosh, I wish I could get some of that $$$ from Exon. Where do I sign up?
Max
So, there seems to be more compelling evidence for the Gore Effect than AGW?
$145,000 is absolutely worth it. Can you imagine the savings on air conditioning? St Louis could be cold for a month.
Ask Mr Gore if he will accept “Carbon Credits” as payment …. I doubt it.
CraigR – Sept 12, 2011 at 8.35 pm. You must remember he has invested millions in them, and they are falling in value. I mean Italy gives them away free.
Michael D Smith, air conditioners off, aren’t they the type that can also pump warm air into the room too, at great expense. LOL.
Who would be mad enough to pay this man 145k to speak rubbish, and junk science?
anticlimactic says:
You are right on the money; Shakespeare said it best – ” The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”
Dinosaurs can’t throw. They can suffer throes, tho’. ;p
n. Severe spasms of pain
My Schadenfreude is rampant!
WWJD? Imagine if he charged $140K for His Father’s word.
@Eric Gisin September 12, 2011 at 9:23 am: “It would be great if Comedy Central played eps of South Park to counter “24H of Reality”.”
Eric, ask and ye shall receive:
5.05 – Terrance & Phillip – Behind the Blow (Earth Day)
http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s05e05-terrance-and-phillip-behind-the-blow
9.08 – Two Days Before The Day After Tomorrow
http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s09e08-two-days-before-the-day-after-tomorrow
10.06 – Manbearpig (Al Gore)
http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s10e06-manbearpig
TK says:
September 12, 2011 at 8:44 am
“Former President Al Gore”?
President of what? The Barbie Doll Club?
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Wasn’t he prez of the “Sex Poodles of America” org?
Bill Sticker says:
September 12, 2011 at 8:48 am
Oh dear. A bore-a-thon to miss, methinks.
As for the ‘funding of sceptics’ how many are still waiting for their cheques from ‘Big oil’ etc?
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The last statement I got from big oil was for just under $200.00.
But, I had to send them a check.
Did I do that backwards?
WUWT?
TimO says:
September 12, 2011 at 4:59 pm
$145k? Well it DOES get expensive paying for all that fuel to shove his guzzling jet plane across the country and to keep his fleet of limos idling and air-conditioned during his speeches….
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Algore doesn’t leave the SUVs with the AC running.
Where ever Algore goes you need a heater.
I notice that Gore approaches science pretty much the same way he approaches politics.
Apparently he believes he will prove his theory by convincing enough lay persons. Yeah, right Al.
I’ll give my opinion for a mere $120,000 plus expenses.
Line up on the left, please.