Good for Him

[Big Train]

PT Barnum would be proud...

Al Gore could become world's first carbon billionaire - Telegraph

Last year Mr Gore's venture capital firm loaned a small California firm $75m to develop energy-saving technology.

The company, Silver Spring Networks, produces hardware and software to make the electricity grid more efficient.

The deal appeared to pay off in a big way last week, when the Energy Department announced $3.4 billion in smart grid grants, the New York Times reports. Of the total, more than $560 million went to utilities with which Silver Spring has contracts.

The move means that venture capital company Kleiner Perkins and its partners, including Mr Gore, could recoup their investment many times over in coming years.

Few people have been as vocal about the urgency of global warming and the need to reinvent the way the world produces and consumes energy as Mr Gore. And few have put as much money behind their advocacy and are as well positioned to profit from this green transformation, if and when it comes.

Critics, mostly on the political right and among global warming sceptics, say Mr. Gore is poised to become the world's first "carbon billionaire," profiteering from government policies he supports that would direct billions of dollars to the business ventures he has invested in.

Representative Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, has claimed that Mr Gore stood to benefit personally from the energy and climate policies he was urging Congress to adopt.

Mr Gore had said that he is simply putting his money where his mouth is.

"Do you think there is something wrong with being active in business in this country?" Mr. Gore said. "I am proud of it. I am proud of it."

[Satan]

A bit hypocritical of you there, Mr. "buy biofuel stocks"?

[Big Train]

How So?

I'm congratulating him on his becoming a billionaire like a true capitalist.

If I'm criticizing him it's because he did it by scaring the public about things they shouldn't be concerned with (i.e. Climate Change) vs. things they should be (i.e. national security, the US economy, air quality).

[Satan]

How in the name of all that is unholy do you separate air quality from climate change?

[Big Train]

Well, if hot and cold and cleanliness are the same thing to you, I guess you couldn't see it.

[Satan]

I'm the Devil. Who knows hot better than me?

But if you read Dante, then you will know that a frozen realm exists even here in Hell. And not only in my air conditioned office.

[Big Train]

Well you should appreciate his work, since it is from the same playbook Cheney is accused of using.

[ELVIS]

algore is a joke and a liar...

[ZahZoo]

algore is a joke and a liar...

Add rich to that too...

[ELVIS]

Who cares ??

So he got tons of money from bulls**tting the gullible public...

[FORD]

Just think where this country might be today if we had the President who was actually elected on November 7, 2000 for 8 years.

Not in the middle of the second BCE Great Depression, that's for goddamn sure.

[ELVIS]

No...

It would be worse...

[FORD]

Yeah, he wouldn't have given a 2 trillion dollar surplus to the "defense" contractors and billionaires, wouldn't have blown up the World Trade Center as an excuse to start two illegal wars, or destroyed the economy, and he obviously wouldn't have destroyed environmental regulations and enabled corporate polluters to do whatever the fuck they please.

God what a terrible fucking world that would be.

[ELVIS]

All of that would have occured no matter who the puppet was...

[ULTRAMAN VH]

Junk Science: The oracle of climate disaster has a new book out on global warming that should be on the fiction list. He asks us to commit economic suicide while he rakes in millions from his green investments.

'Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis," Al Gore's sequel to his 2006 tome "An Inconvenient Truth," came out Tuesday. Printed on recycled paper using low-VOC (volatile organic compound) ink, it will undoubtedly be a best-seller and on the desk of every attendee at next month's climate change conference in Copenhagen.

In a press release announcing the book, the Oscar- and Nobel Prize-winning former vice president writes: "Now that the need for urgent action is even clearer with the alarming new findings of the last three years, it is time for a comprehensive global plan that actually solves the climate crisis. 'Our Choice' will answer that call."

The book's cover depicts one of the hurricanes Gore still claims are increasing in frequency and intensity. What has happened in the past three years is that such claims have been thoroughly debunked as the earth has cooled, possibly for decades hence.

For example, a recent study by researchers at Florida State University determined that the 2007 and 2008 hurricane seasons had the least tropical activity in the Northern Hemisphere in 30 years.

Ryan Maue, co-author of the report released in November 2008 on "Global Tropical Cyclone Activity," used a measurement called accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) that combines a storm's duration and its wind speed in six-hour intervals. The years 2007 and 2008 had among the lowest ACE measurements since reliable global satellite data were first available three decades ago.

In a New York Times puff piece the same day Gore's book was released, "Gore's Dual Role: Advocate And Investor," it's described just how profitable saving the earth can be. Considering the accuracy of Gore's climate data, his role would be better described as "storyteller and profiteer."

In November 2007, Gore joined the investment firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. The following May the firm announced a $500 million investment in maturing green technology firms called the Green Growth Fund.

The group then announced an additional $700 million to be invested the next three years in green-tech startup firms. But there will be no return on these investments if the green technology business, uh, cools down. The hype and interest must be maintained. Climate change skeptics must be denounced as "deniers."

Financial disclosure documents released before the 2000 election put the Gore family's net worth at $1 million to $2 million.

A mere nine years later, estimates put his net worth at about $100 million. Gore's spokeswoman wouldn't give a current figure for his net worth, but, according to the Times, "the scale of his wealth is evident in a single investment of $35 million in Capricorn Equity Group," a Palo Alto, Calif., firm that directs clients to conservation investments, namely environmentally correct products.

Last year, Gore was the star witness at the hearings on cap-and trade-legislation in front of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., asked how a man dedicated to saving the planet could get so wealthy so quickly.

Blackburn noted that Kleiner Perkins at last count had "about $1 billion dollars invested in 40 companies that are going to benefit from cap-and-trade legislation that we are discussing here today."

Gore replied he was only being a good businessman in a capitalist economy, that he was putting his money where his mouth was.

Perhaps, but at the same time he is advocating policies based on junk science that, while he enriches himself, will devastate the American economy, causing huge losses in jobs, economic growth and GDP.

The American consumer and taxpayer are on the wrong end of his green Ponzi scheme. Somewhere, Bernie Madoff is smiling