GlobalWarming.org

So Fox called at 6 a.m. – always lovely when there are babies in the house – eager to talk in a few hours about Google’s latest environmental activism. That is of course their plan, working with environmental activists, to arrange 1 million phone calls to Capitol hill on “Earth Day” – which Google regularly celebrates, for example with a melting Google-in-ice. The calls are in support of “eco-friendly measures”. We can only assume by the target audience this means the mandatory sort, pending before Congress in the form of legislation.

The University of Virginia, from which I regularly did television hits for over two years, for the fifth straight time refused me access to their satellite uplink, not just for Fox but Glenn Beck and as I recall one of the GE/NBC cable networks. This practice initiated on the heels of a rare description of me on air as coming out of Charlottesville. Living here, I can assure you that such tawdriness as global warming skepticism doesn’t sit well with the local powers. Just ask son-to-be-former UVa prof. Pat Michaels. Of course, this is speech, and a public university. More on that later.

So Fox apparently really wanted to talk about this. And, by telephone, I hear myself announced as someone “who has issues with” Google enabling 1 million phone calls. Well, no, I don’t really, and that article that got their attention makes clear that IMO they’re just increasingly annoying in their left-wing activism but that’s life. Kathryn Lopez has covered Google’s selective celebrations over at The Corner, as has NewsBusters.

There are however red flags by this now that the “60 Minutes” interview with Al Gore revealed that he somehow got involved in this company in the early days, explaining how his fortune grew from under $2 million when he left office to something over $100 million now. Google of course was made possible not just by a better mousetrap but Silicon Valley investment funds. With which Gore also works, enabling said fortune, and which are heavily invested in companies that only gain real value upon adoption of, well, let’s just call them “eco-friendly measures”. So what followed was a rather confused interview in which I attempted to steer the conversation there, and a resistant Bill Hemmer sought instead to learn what it is I am trying to “do about this.” Which suggestion of course was cut from whole cloth.

Here’s a quick rundown. Google has managed to note St. Patrick’s Day, the first day of Spring, the birthday of Norwegian painter Edvard Munch, the start of the World Cup, Shichi-go-san being celebrated in Japan, the Persian New Year, Louis Braille’s birthday and Korean Liberation Day. But they have a history of snubbing Easter (a bunny or an egg for one of the Os would have been nice), while seizing upon left-wing causes like Earth Day (yes, Lenin’s birthday), and the global warming black-outs. It took being embarrassed by their refusal to recognize Veterans’ Day for that to change just last year.

As Fox reported in February, a journalist had his writings disappear from Google when he persisted in pursuing stories about corruption at the United Nations. Google even sent him a letter saying he was a non-person as far as they were concerned.

When Google found themselves shut down in China, rather than simply refuse they chose to work with the censors on a selective version of the search engine, to keep annoying stories like those about the Dalai Lama and such away from hardworking people who are better off without such distractions. They failed to understand how thugocracies are fought, or appeased and enabled.

Now, that would be nice to “do something about”.

It occurs to me that the Gores fessed up to a fourth spread during this interview.

STAHL: He's also making his parents' farm eco-friendly… oh, so you'll have windmills here?

 GORE: Yep.

This home has apparently been Al’s, as well, since 2004. Windmills are coming, but that footprint just keeps on growing.

About those 33 solar panels for that home – their second, an 18-room job, of what would soon be three for our jet-setting power couple – that the Gores purchased after his presidential defeat, and as he ginned up what “60 Minutes” described as a monomaniacal commitment to the global warming cause. Tennessean Bill Hobbs had apparently done the homework for us. In short, if you have to ask, you can’t afford it. Besides, run these numbers and you’ll see it has nothing to do with the economics of the matter.

Of course, it would be silly to wonder if everyone could foot such a monstrous bill, paying that much for so little impact but in order to live in the carbon-constrained world of Gore’s dreams. But a lot of things are silly to you and me that may not occur to people with mansions and multiple, bicoastal homes.

Which reminds us, as I previously noted, that there must really be something to hide about those “private donations from those concerned about solving the climate crisis”, accounting for the bulk of the Gore group’s budget, in order to present this $300 million ad campaign as the Gores’ project

A few things came to mind about the new Al Gore ad campaign, and his appearance with wife Tipper on CBS’s 60 Minutes last night. The first was the confused nature of the claimed target of this largest ad campaign ever, at least according to the Washington Post. Gore has repeatedly insisted (and 60 Minutes reiterated the claim) that the public are overwhelmingly with him, and that it is therefore the too-timid lawmakers who must be influenced; but the ad spokesman says it is aimed at influencing the public.

They are indeed walking a fine line here, because for their own reasons they need to say the public is with them: they can’t risk the appearance that Gore seems to bring along with him on this and related issues of being out on the fringe, and also have admitted that people are swayed when they think others have been swayed already. After all, why does someone need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to remind people how much they agree with them?

Second is that the $100 million ad campaign has gone to $100 million per year for three years, half of which — $150,000,000 — the New York Times says has been raised.

Remember, from where one receives funding dictates one’s opinions and legitimacy. The alarmists, and specifically Gore, tell us so.

So I particularly noticed when Tipper rushed to interject that the Gores had also tossed in, on top of the litany of pots of money which Gore claims he dedicated to this project, the $750,000 “cash component” of the Nobel Peace Prize which she said they also matched from their personal, recently swelled fortune. Add it up, and the Gore’s still come in around $100 million short of what they’ve raised.

So, where is it coming from? Tipper clearly didn’t want that question to fester, and Lesley Stahl either wasn’t interested, got the hint, or left it on CBS’s cutting room floor.

It’s worth noting that waaaaaaay down on the campaign’s FAQs page we are told that the funding came from Gore himself, via book and film profits plus Nobel prize, and his own contributions . . . “and has since received additional support in the form of private donations from those concerned about solving the climate crisis.” You’ll notice that this wording allows for corporations, hedge funds, and the like to be captured under its ambit.

It is clear that they actually desire the message to be that this is Al Gore’s project, funded as well as run by him, which is of course a little inconsistent with the warmists’ complaints that we’re focusing on him in our own efforts to focus on Gore’s hypocrisies. Why do we focus on Gore? Because as my colleague and fellow PG’er Iain Murray notes, “he is, unquestionably, the main financial as well as ‘moral’ driving force behind this crusade.” Dare we say, he’s their Big Oil.

Or, is he? They don’t want to talk about who is funding it. It might be their “partner” the Climate Action Network (certainly not the Girl Scouts, also a partner), which happens to be a bunch of businesses pulling an Enron and designing ways to make money off of carbon regulation. But the fact they don’t want you to know where the $100 mil-plus is coming from is a pretty good sign that we should ask. 60 Minutes clearly won’t.