Al Gore: Media Didn’t Do Enough on Global Warming

by Christopher C. Horner

As the anniversary of his Waterloo — ClimateGate — unfolds this week, Al Gore is back and in classic form. In yesterday’s HuffPo, he fulminates on his hobbyhorse, right from the title: The Media Has Failed in Covering the Climate Crisis.

Busted clock, meet correct time; blind pig, meet acorn. Gore is right. If not exactly as he intends, yet again (for example, as the UK High Court admonished him for fudging about, there is indeed a link between carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and temperature…the opposite of the one he claims that everyone not paid to lie by oil companies knows to be the case). The media haven’t said nearly enough about the UK High Court pantsing his movie with some pretty tough language from a guy wearing a powered wig, for one. Then there’s the strange U.S. media allergy to exploring, vs. trying to wave away, ClimateGate.

But consider also when Gore appeared on 60 Minutes a couple of years ago. After boasting that he was the recipient of a huge bag of money to re-brand as the ‘climate crisis’ what we had just gotten used to calling ‘climate change’ (which had already been rebranded from global cooling, then global warming and before that, I believe, weather), Lesley Stahl asked of his “huge, new $300 million advertising campaign“, “how are you paying for this?”.

Unaccustomed to challenge, this man who keeps the media away from him so he doesn’t have to answer such silly questions trotted out some weasel-wording about passing through profits from his movie to his new endeavor, which stumbling harkened back to his “no controlling legal authority” days (still lacking the dexterity of “I never inhaled” by Bill “Bring More of Those Funny Brownies!” Clinton).

So read his statements yourself in the transcript linked above; I am not aware that his implication that none of it went to him but to an ad campaign (which he ran) has been substantiated, or how much of that money he donated to the new group he heads then paid him for heading it, erasing all difference from any distinction that might exist. All of which is odd for a guy so hell-bent insisting that everyone is motivated by where they get their money. Presumably, like with his lifestyle demands, he means everyone else.

Anyway, after the obvious weaselly nature of Gore’s dodge made for an uncomfortable moment with the seemingly unconvinced Stahl – whose visage and body language (I watched the show, gleefully chortling at this particular moment) must have telegraphed the dreaded request for clarification – Tipper intervened, telling their brazen inquisitor with whom they were not amused that they not only gave their share of AIT’s profits, but the Nobel Prize money and matched it.

Stahl accepted that and moved on. A quick back of the envelope calculation (or follow-up question…I kid!) would have revealed that all of this chaff still left Gore around a few hundred million short of the $300 large he bragged of using for his agitprop. Awww! Close enough to an answer, between us friends!

No one else has ever pressed for answers to these questions that Gore’s own trademark rhetoric makes clear are extremely important to judging his claims and arguments. So, yes, the media have fallen down on this issue. They start a discussion about the influence on the debate by support by certain interests and then, suddenly, lose all interest in the topic. Right when it becomes inescapable that the alarmists have received spectacular sums, from someone(s) who see great utility in imposing the global warming agenda on us.

Which interests might those be? Would the White House call it “foreign money”? Because we know they think it is, until you open your books and prove it isn’t.

Remember, too, that Gore claims ExxonMobil, which since the beginning of time contributed something like $12 million to groups part of whose portfolio included the climate issue, bought the debate.

I guess as a career politician, Gore is uniquely talented at wasting other peoples’ money. And we see again how much more efficient the private sector is. Hooray for us.

Now, as Gore implores, if we could only get the media to do their job.


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Posted Nov 20th 2010 at 9:01 am in Environment, Media Criticism, energy | 74 Comments