Al Gore texts me about his finances

Al Gore seems to have a target on his back. The former vice president is the symbol of “global warming alarmism” to those who want to block the U.S. from taking effective action on climate change.

Whether it’s Bill O’Reilly or the Heartland Institute or a backbench Republican congresswoman or a blog run by a guy who cut his teeth by swift-boating John Kerry, Gore is the bogeyman. They want answers, I tell you! Yeah, we know — he’s a private citizen. But what has he got to hide?

OK, then. I sent him some questions — mostly questions that the right-wing journal Human Events said somebody ought to ask him. I think he was about as candid as one could expect from a private citizen. What do you think?

(For a fuller discussion bogeyman/hero status, check out this week’s Media Mayhem column, by yours truly, on the Mother Nature Network.)

Ken Edelstein: You are a partner in the venture capital firm of Kleiner Perkins and a co-founder of the United Kingdom-based investment firm of Generation Investment Management, each of which stands to gain financially from greenhouse gas regulation. Please describe any other financial interests that you have in any other businesses that stand to profit from greenhouse gas regulation.
Al Gore: As a supporter of “sustainable capitalism” (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122584367114799137.html) I have made long-term investments in “sustainable” companies in Europe, Asia, North America and South America, the vast majority of which are not directly involved with efforts to solve the climate crisis. I have also invested in some companies that have attempted and will continue to help solve the climate crisis.

Ken Edelstein: In October 2008, the New York Times Magazine featured a cover story on how Kleiner Perkins had invested $1 billion in 40 companies that would profit from new environmental and energy laws and regulations. What will be your share of any profits from these ventures? Read more

Heartland ads a last gasp for climate deniers?

This week’s newspaper ad campaign by the Heartland Institute is a last gasp in the losing efforts of climate-change skeptics, argues Mitchell Anderson of DeSmogBlog.

Let’s hope so, but I’ll only believe it when I see it.

Heartland is among the most prominent in a herd of “free-market” think tanks — often funded by the fossil fuel industry — that’s peddled the argument that there’s no scientific consensus on climate change.

Today, the organization wraps up three straight days of full page ads in the Washington Post in which it claims, among other things, that “politicians, environmental advocacy groups, and the media routinely ignore and silence the scientists, economists, and other experts who say global warming isn’t a crisis.”

The ads are designed to influence debate while Congress considers the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill. If they were all you read this week, you’d think that recent studies had poked holes in climate change science. Read more

Freeman Dyson: Patron saint of climate skeptics

Officials at climate-change-skeptical think tanks, including the founder of one, responded earlier this week to my Mother Nature Network column on such think tanks. The column argued that they’re closer to PR organizations than research institutions.

First up was David J. Theroux, founder and president of the Independent Institute, a free-market oriented think tank has published the work of skeptic S. Fred Singer:

You fail to even mention, much less examine, the empirical findings discussed at [last week's Heartland Institute] conference that indicate that climate alarmism is unfounded and has far more to do with environmental religion and interest-group politics than science. Instead, your article is just more dismissive punditry, with the obvious point that while Lord Monckton may not be a scientist, neither are you or Al Gore.

In contrast, here is a new interview with Nobel Prize Laureate physicist Freeman Dyson that actually discusses some of the pertinent matters that you will not address: http://www.e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2151 As for the matter of corporate interests determining the debate, perhaps the following will be useful regarding what is now the eco-corporatist Climate-Industrial Complex: http://www.independent.org/blog/?p=2217 David J. Theroux Pres[i]dent The Independent Institute

Anti-environmental polemicists have been bringing up Dyson a lot recently. Read more

A newspaper finally covers Heartland deniers’ meet

Finally, a mainstream reporter has covered last week’s Heartland Institute climate change skeptics’ conference, but his article doesn’t make the group sound particularly believable.

Scott Harper of the Virginian-Pilot, of Norfolk, Va., in a piece that was published Saturday, focused on the emotion-laden tone of the meeting, which was ostensibly held to display examples of dispassionate science. Read more

Media Mayhem: A plague of ‘think tanks’

I write the Media Mayhem column every week for the Mother Nature Network. Here’s this week’s:

The Goliaths are crazed environmentalists, corrupt scientists and secret socialists, on a mission to manufacture a crisis so they can implement a stealth agenda of government control, toy-sized automobiles and pork-barrel grants — grants the scientists can then use to live off the hard-earned money of taxpayers forever.

Cue evil laugh track: Hah-hah-hah-hah-hah!

The Davids are the few brave souls who dare counter that juggernaut — that hoax — by pointing out that science is a complex endeavor, rife with unfulfilled hypotheses, and whose reputations have suffered because of their independence.

You may not see the debate that way. I sure don’t.

Whatever you and I think, though, the David/Goliath storyline, or something like it, will have more to do with the outcome of Congress’ current climate debate than will another dozen studies firming up the actual consensus that climate change is happening, is caused by humans, and is on a trajectory to lay a big whammy on civilization.

The Davids played their role in a Washington hotel last week at the Heartland Institute’s grandly named Third International Conference on Climate Change.

Read the rest of this column on the Mother Nature Network.

And now a word from the alternate universe …

The conservative Heartland Institute released its “Nongovernmental International Panel of Climate Change” at a press conference today. The name is a play off the U.N.’s “Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,” which documented scientific evidence for global warming in 2007. Pretty witty, huh?

Former University of Virginia professor Fred Singer, a co-author of the report who was described at the conference as “the godfather of global warming realists,” discusses the report here. I gotta warn you, though — for a PR stunt, this clip is kind of a snoozer.

More on the PR and media outfall from this later. If you have any insights or tips, please leave comments here for others.