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Al Gore’s Global Warming Desperation

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Photo Credit: FrontPageMag

Photo Credit: FrontPageMag

Those who are wondering why Al Gore chose to publicly resurface in a Washington Post interview last Thursday with that paper’s ever-pliable Journalist founder Ezra Klein only need to look in three places.

First, there’s the recently revealed empirical evidence that the “global warming” movement’s claim that climate change is causing increased extreme weather events isn’t true. Second, there’s a new summary of historical research which blows up the movement’s infamous core “hockey stick” chart forecasting unprecedented, accelerating warming. Finally, there’s a new report due to arrive in a month from an increasingly desperate United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

In late September, the IPCC, laughably described by the wire service AFP as “an expert body set up in 1988 to provide neutral advice on global warming and its impacts,” will release its next set of “scientific data” to advocate for a worldwide carbon-tax regime. Gore’s mission is clearly to start greasing the skids for the IPCC’s next round of hysteria.

Gore told WaPo’s Klein that the earth is already suffering the negative consequences of failing to act against “global warming.” He claims that “every extreme weather event now has a component of global warming in it,” and that “the appearance of more extreme and more frequent weather events has had a very profound impact on public opinion in countries throughout the world.”

There’s no doubt that the worldwide press’s emphasis on “extreme weather events” has been greater. Virtually every such occurrence will cause one or more journalists, politicians or both to claim it as definitive or presumptive “proof” of the existence of “global warming” and the urgent need to combat it.

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Al Gore Explains Why he’s Optimistic about Stopping Global Warming

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Photo Credit: Recyclebank

Photo Credit: Recyclebank

Ezra Klein: In 2005, when “An Inconvenient Truth” came out, I remember that the hope was we could keep the carbon load in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million, and the fear was we would hit 400ppm. Now we’ve hit 400ppm and people are hoping to avoid 450ppm. This seems to be getting out of hand, and fast.

Al Gore: We have already crossed the 400 parts per million mark. We crossed it earlier this year. The question now is how high it will go before we begin bending the curve. But in spite of the continued released of 90 million tons of global warming pollution every day into the atmosphere, as if it’s an open sewer, we are now seeing the approach of a global political tipping point.

The appearance of more extreme and more frequent weather events has had a very profound impact on public opinion in countries throughout the world. You mentioned my movie back in the day. The single most common criticism from skeptics when the film came out focused on the animation showing ocean water flowing into the World Trade Center memorial site. Skeptics called that demagogic and absurd and irresponsible. It happened last October 29th, years ahead of schedule, and the impact of that and many, many other similar events here and around the world has really begun to create a profound shift.

A second factor is the sharp and unexpectedly steep decrease in prices for electricity produced from wind and solar and the demand destruction for fossil fuel energy from new efficiency improvements. The difference between 32 degrees fahrenheit and 33 degrees fahrenheit seems larger than just one degree. It’s the difference between water and ice. And by analogy there’s a similar difference between renewable electricity that’s more expensive than electricity from coal and renewable electricity that’s less expensive. And in quite a few countries in the world and some parts of the United States we’ve crossed that threshold and in the next few years we’re going to see that crossed in nations and regions containing most of the world’s population.

Another way to think about this is that back when mobile telephones first appeared, the market projections for how quickly they would increase market share turned out to be not just wrong but way wrong. This is a point made by Dave Roberts at Grist, but the projections made 5-10 years ago for the installation of solar and wind technologies were, similarly, not just wrong but way wrong. We’ve seen a dramatic increase that’s far more rapid than anybody projected and it’s accelerating — not just in the United States but even more rapidly in developing countries.

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Biden: Al Gore ‘Was Elected President of the United States’

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Photo Credit: AP

Vice President Joe Biden praised former Vice President Al Gore at a Washington fundraiser for U.S. Senate candidate Rep. Ed Markey after stating that Gore actually won the 2000 presidential election.

“This man was elected president of the United States of America,” Biden said, according to the media pool report. “No, no, no. He was elected president of the United States of America. But for the good of the nation, when the bad decision, in my view, was made, he did the right thing for the nation.”

Biden, a potential 2016 presidential candidate himself, complimented Gore’s acceptance of the Supreme Court decision to halt recounts in Florida, a decision which effectively gave the election to his Republican George W. Bush.

“I can’t think of very many who would put his country first like that, at a really, really, really difficult time,” he said, according to Yahoo News. “There’s an awful lot of folks Al and I both know who have run for president and still haven’t gotten over it.”

Before turning his attention to Markey, Biden remarked that history would favor Gore over Bush.

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Al Gore Says Now Is The Time For A Carbon Tax

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller

Former Vice President Al Gore published a blog post on his website entitled “‘The time has come’ for a carbon tax,” which includes excerpts from an editorial from the Financial Times which endorses a carbon tax.

“Taxes are always a regrettable necessity, but some are less regrettable than others,” the FT editorial reads. “A tax that strengthens energy security and cuts pollution, while minimising the damage done to employment and investment, is one of the least regrettable of all.”

“Yet a carbon tax, which has all those characteristics, is struggling to find support from the US administration or in Congress,” the editorial continues. “It deserves much wider enthusiasm.”

President Obama has made addressing climate change a top priority for his second term, promising to use his executive authority to act on the issue if Congress failed to pass act on it first. However, the administration has repeatedly said it is not planning to propose a carbon tax.

Congressional Democrats have recently been pushing legislation that would put a price on carbon dioxide emissions in order to raise revenues and address global warming.

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Al Gore Calls The NRA ‘A Complete Fraud’, But Al-Jazeera Is ‘High-Quality, Honest-To-Goodness News’

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Photo Credit: SXSW.com

Austin, Texas is playing host to stars in the worlds of film, music, technology and politics as the annual South By Southwest Conferences (SXSW) kicked off this weekend. Saturday’s keynote speech featured former Vice President Al Gore and Walter Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal. The official title of the event was “Al Gore on The Future.” Coincidentally, “The Future” is also the title of Gore’s latest book. (currently ranked #326 on Amazon.com).

In the well attended session, Gore actually stayed true to his recycling mantra and actually revisited a theme from 2012′s keynote session with Sean Parker. In that session, Gore was talking about the risks to American democracy and told Parker and the crowd, “Our democracy has been hijacked.”

Fast forward to Saturday afternoon, March 8, 2013. Gore and Mossberg on the stage in front of a full house at the Austin Convention Center. Mr. Gore told the crowd, “Our country is in very serious trouble. But that does not mean I am optimistic.” Then the former Vice President shifted focused to the topic of money and politics and trotted out last year’s catchphrase, “Our democracy has been hijacked.”

Watch video here:

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Gore’s Group Says Obama EPA Pick Will Fight Global Warming (+video)

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Photo Credit: dantekgeekMinutes after President Obama announced that his pick to run the EPA would be the agency’s greenhouse gas foe Gina McCarthy, former Vice President Al Gore’s climate change group heralded the pick, an indication that global warming foes are expecting her to step up the administration’s green fuel effort.

“EPA is on the frontlines of climate action. It is more important than ever that President Obama and the new EPA administrator continue to enforce laws cutting climate pollution,” said Climate Reality Project CEO Maggie Fox. “Ms. McCarthy is an ideal candidate to continue the crucial work of promoting regulatory and market-based solutions to solve the climate crisis.”

Gore is the co-founder of the project and his videos are featured on their website. The group said that it is “dedicated to unleashing a global cultural movement demanding action on the climate crisis.”

See video:

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Gore, Current Silent As Cleric Affirms Death Penalty For Leaving Islam On Al-Jazeera

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Photo Credit: Mark LennihanAides to former Democratic Vice President Al Gore have failed to respond to a recent Al-Jazeera TV broadcast, in which a top imam affirmed the death penalty for anyone who quits Islam.

Gore sold his Current TV network to Al-Jazeera, which now plans to extend its broadcast into the United States this summer, according to Ashok Sinha, vice president of corporate communications at Current TV/Al-Jazeera America.

Gore reportedly sold Current TV for $500 million and endorsed Al-Jazeera’s news programs.

Western critics of Islam highlighted a recent broadcast of the network’s regular “Shariah and Life” show, which has an estimated audience of 60 million viewers worldwide. The show’s host is Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a prominent Sunni Islamic cleric.

He declared that Islam’s mandated death-penalty for apostasy has kept Islam alive since the 1400s. “If they had gotten rid of the apostasy punishment Islam wouldn’t exist today,” Qaradawi said on the show.

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An Inconvenient Truth: More Polar Bears Alive Today Than 40 Years Ago

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Photo Credit: AP/Dan JolingAuthor Zac Unger was originally drawn to the arctic circle to write a “mournful elegy” about how Global Warming was decimating the polar bear populations. He was surprised to find that the polar bears were not in such dire straits after all.

“There are far more polar bears alive today than there were 40 years ago,” Unger told NPR in an interview about his new book, “Never Look a Polar Bear in The Eye.” “There are about 25,000 polar bears alive today worldwide. In 1973, there was a global hunting ban. So once hunting was dramatically reduced, the population exploded.”

“This is not to say that global warming is not real or is not a problem for the polar bears,” Unger added. “But polar bear populations are large, and the truth is that we can’t look at it as a monolithic population that is all going one way or another.”

According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, there are an estimated 20,000 to 25,000 polar bears worldwide, living in Canada, Greenland, the northern Russian coast, islands of the Norwegian coast, and the northwest Alaskan coast.

Polar bears became a focal point for environmentalists after former Vice President Al Gore featured them in his 2006 global warming documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth.” The bears were classified as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act to in May 2008 because their habitat was being threatened by global warming.

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Glenn Beck Tried to Buy Al Gore’s Current TV but Sold to Al Jazeera Instead

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photo credit: gage skidmore

Before Al-Jazeera, there was Glenn Beck.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Glenn Beck’s media company, The Blaze, approached Current Media about a sale last year, but was told in the words of one source that “the legacy of who the network goes to is important to us and we are sensitive to networks not aligned with our point of view.”

The Blaze “reached out to them to buy it,” a source familiar with the talks told POLITICO. “They would have replaced Current programming with The Blaze programming, but were told on initial calls that [Current] wouldn’t sell to someone they weren’t ideologically in line with.”

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Al Gore and Partners Sell Current TV . . . to Al Jazeera

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photo credit: mooks262

Al Jazeera, the pan-Arab news giant, has long tried to convince Americans that it is a legitimate news organization, not a parrot of Middle Eastern propaganda or something more sinister.

It just bought itself 40 million more chances to make its case.

Al Jazeera on Wednesday announced a deal to take over Current TV, the low-rated cable channel that was founded by Al Gore, a former vice president, and his business partners seven years ago. Al Jazeera plans to shut Current and start an English-language channel, which will be available in more than 40 million homes, with newscasts emanating from both New York and Doha, Qatar.

For Al Jazeera, which is financed by the government of Qatar, the acquisition is a coming of age moment. A decade ago, Al Jazeera’s flagship Arabic-language channel was reviled by American politicians for showing videotapes from Al Qaeda members and sympathizers. Now the news operation is buying an American channel, having convinced Mr. Gore and the other owners of Current that it has the journalistic muscle and the money to compete head-to-head with CNN and other news channels in the United States.

Al Jazeera did not disclose the purchase price, but people with direct knowledge of the deal pegged it at around $500 million, indicating a $100 million payout for Mr. Gore, who owned 20 percent of Current. Mr. Gore and his partners were eager to complete the deal by Dec. 31, lest it be subject to higher tax rates that took effect on Jan. 1, according to several people who insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. But the deal was not signed until Wednesday.

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