No Press, No Fee. Thanks.

Not that Gore dodges the press and media on his presentation, but that it took El Reg this long to figure out that the likes of Gore and Clinton are in politics for the *money*.

How much has Bill Clinton made since leaving office? And if the rumors are true, then if Hillary gets elected, watch Bill get a seat on the Supreme Court....

But enough about those two. Lets talk about Al Gore. Mr. Environment. After being outed that "Mr. Green"'s home in TN wasted tons of electricity and wasn't as green as it could be. "Mr. Green" spent a small fortune fixing up the place. For the average home owner, it would take years to recoup said investment. But not Al. He made back the money in terms of his "credibility".

Want to beat Al? Just ignore him. As long as he and his company see money to be made from a simple minded public, he'll be touting his agenda.

Sure it makes sense not to pollute the environment. Sure it makes sense to look for clean energy and recyclable products. But as to "global warming"... Can any of us stop the shift of the Earth's magnetic poles?

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/earth_poles_040407.html

So long and thanks for all the fish!

Why the pathos? Are you just miffed at the snub?

You can, and do, question the green/blue/red credentials of all+dog and you are free to continue to do so. No one is stopping you and, by dint of intellectual effort you may even add to the debate

What benefit is there in skewering a political with your presumably rapier-like incisive technical questioning? Does it further the debate? of course not. That would come from, say, an in depth interview with a few suitably clued-up technicals of a variety of views.

You dont need to shirtfront someone to challenge their ideas. You arent denied a soapbox on which to stand and challenge or question.

No, the most you could expect is an opportunity to harpoon a green whale in front of your peers - or at least get a few glancing shots in - and i think that is where the real rub is.

This isnt about the debate or truth or freedom of the press. This isnt about voices silenced. This is about a missed opportunity to stand up in front of your fellow press-passers and shape like a hard man among, what we can only assume will be a group of similarly shaping hard men.

And even if you do get a few good shots in on Big Green Al - even if your journalistic dreams of having him burst into tears and recant all his views in the withering firestorm of your intellectual onslaught all come true to rapturous applause from all looking on - you still havent advanced the debate one iota. The facts, on both sides, is where the push and the shove need to be - and not the "My scientist versus your scientist" sort of push and shove. Science doesnt work that way, no matter how much lay folk try to use them thus. This isnt a law court where you just need to line up a herd of experts to validate your opinions more loudly and with more apparent expertness than your opposition.

This is the real world and it isnt nearly so simple as that.

Lets not make it worse by getting obsessed by personalities eh?

I'm sure the descendants of the dinosaurs would love to tell Mr Gore to shut his mouth and let the Earth get back to palaeozoic levels of heat and atmospheric gases...

I can remember when "scientific proof" meant repeating a process and getting the same results over and over again, not just a bunch of shouty people drowning out the arguements of anyone who disagrees with them.

So when exactly did the global warming "scientists" reset the Earth? I must have missed that day, uh ,year, um...

Paris, cos I think she's as qualified to talk about "global warming" (as purely a human-caused issue) as the majority of the green lobby. And she's much easier on the eyes!

The site I looked at just before this Al Gore one , was about Urinals that are to be installed in the Airbus 380

Somehow the two seem to go together very well.

Beaten to the punch!

And I'd almost forgotten about the earth's magnetic polar shifting issue.

We're doomed, I tell you, doomed!

Sorry, droped into eco-warrior/global warmer/carbon nazi lingo there.

Won't happen again.

AlGore won't debate with anyone critical, and seems intent on banning reporting. Bad strategy for getting his message out (and monetizing the climate scare), good strategy for the rest of us.

Paris, because she's smart enough to know when she's being sold a porky.

Maybe he has news on man-bear-pig (half man, half bear and half pig)

In case you missed it the USGS released their new Bakken oil field estimate.

http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2008/3021/pdf/FS08-3021_508.pdf

USGS says 3.65 billion barrels... F50, the one I usually use, 50% chance of finding 3622 million barrels undiscovered oil. So at most 43 days worth of oil (assuming infinite oil price, and zero energy cost to recover).

So the green lobby are right - going green does make economic sense!

If you're in the government or one of the favoured lobby groups sucking on one of its teats, of course.

Mine's the one full of rocks. I'm going to boost the economy by smashing some windows.

could kick Al Gore's ass so quickly that he wouldn't be required to exhale any CO2.

Mine's the green straight jacket, thank you...

Nice of these big powerful Americans to fly all over the world and tell us we have to stop flying all over the world. But it's ok because we're nothing important and we're not preaching green politics.

People row boats around the world, even walk and cycle around it. This is what Mr Gore should do if he's serious about green politics.

We need a name for these politcally correct pseudo-green folk.

I vote for eco-nazi.

We need more name calling. Only by constructing the most superior epithet can we demonstrate the superiority of our viewpoints!

It is about time we wrenched this argument from rationalists and the "weigh the evidence and react proportionately to the perceived risk" crowd and put it back in the realm of schoolyard politics.

It is, after all, what separates us from the animals that dont throw excrement at each other and we all know what trouble not throwing excrement has caused. A decent, god fearing, society doesnt not throw excrement.

God help us if the enemy has "I know you are, you said you are, but what am I?" and if they are rubber whilst we are glue we may already be lost...

... "judging by the numbers of people reading and commenting on El Reg's environment stories."

What kind of variance do you observe between explicit polls of your

readership and the actuality of our behavior? Does this vary by

subject material as well?

Fubar