Yah ok.. You got me..
I guess every surgeon you see has only trained on Monitors and webinar based technology and has never been in front of another real doctor..
Global Warming ‘Greatest Scam in History’
- Thread starter Locutus
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Yah ok.. You got me..
I guess every surgeon you see has only trained on Monitors and webinar based technology and has never been in front of another real doctor..
I expect he'll take the same kind of transportation I use, albeit a bit more luxurious and private.
But if he actually believes what he's preaching,then every trip should be prejudged on the question, "Is this trip necessary?". The trip in question clearly was not.
So how does surgeon training have anything to do with Obamas personal political promotions?
Why does everyone judge everyone of your trips and who cares ?
Trust me everyone of his trips are "accounted" for by the public.
And again it is his job.. Is it yours ?
Again, let me explain the reality of making an impression..
Giving a speach in person allows you the ability to show emotion and expression as well as discuss with the people in a face to face that cannot be achieved on a TV screen..
A surgeon cannot learn proper technique from a TV training from another because he must learn and see in person.
A discussion about the Earth ( much different then promotion ) is far more valuable in person then on TV.
Even promotional products companies still have have "Sales People" visiting customers to tell them the value of products that the TV cannot do.
That sentence doesn't really make any sense. However, I will comment on the gist of the idea.
AGW alarmists tell us we have to reduce carbon emissions by 80% to save the planet. Airliner trips are very high on the emissions/per mile compared to other travel. Thus one would assume that only absolutely necessary trips should be taken by air. If changing a light bulb will help save the planet, imagine how much more salvation could be obtained by grounding a plane.
Again, a confused statement. The public is accountable for his trips? Or pehaps you mean the public is aware of his trips. Or do you mean the public must reduce their output in order for him to take his trips? Or perhaps the public must pay carbon offests to cancel out his emissions. I really don't know what you're getting at.
Aha This one I get! Because the trip is a part of his job, the carbon emitted will have no effect. Oh wait, that can't be right. Maybe you mean that it will have an effect but because it's part of his job he's allowed to emit as much as he wants. Jobs are necessary, after all. Well in that case I guess any carbon emitted in the course of my employment is also unrestricted, as well as that of any and all work related emissions. Yeah, that must be it, although I don't know how you expect to reduce emissions by 80% at that rate.
Just one minor point. His job is POTUS. Politicking to promote himself is not part of that job.
I'm well aware of the reality of making an impression. You keep dodging the point that making an impression is not part of his job. That's what candidates try to do in order to get that job.
Again with the surgeon. Completely unrelated. Unless you mean Obama is training to be one?
A discussion about the earth is not valuable.
Once again, promoting himself is not part of his job.
Back to the “Good Old Days”
by Paul Driessen
May 01, 2009 @ 11:18 am
Think back to 1905.
The Wright brothers had just made history. Coal and wood heated homes. Few had telephones or electricity. AC units were handheld fans. Ice blocks cooled ice boxes. New York City collected 900,000 tons of vehicle emissions - horse manure - annually, and dumped it into local rivers. Lung and intestinal diseases were rampant. Life expectancy was 47.
Today, President Obama wants to prevent “runaway global warming,” by slashing US carbon dioxide emissions to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. According to Oak Ridge National Laboratory data, this reduction would return the United States to emission levels last seen in those halcyon days of 1905!
But America’s 1905 population was 84 million, versus 308 million today. We didn’t drive or fly, or generate electricity for offices, factories, schools or hospitals. To account for those differences, we’d have to send CO2 emissions back to 1862 levels.
The Civil War was raging. Nine of ten Americans were farmers (versus 2% today). The industrial revolution was in its infancy. Malaria halted construction on the Washington, DC aqueduct. Typhus and cholera killed thousands more every year. Life expectancy was 40 - half of what affordable hydrocarbon, hydroelectric and nuclear power helped make it today.
None of this seems to matter to the Obama Administration or liberal Democrats. The 648-page Waxman-Markey climate bill would compel an 80% CO2 reduction, by imposing punitive cap-and-tax restrictions on virtually every hydrocarbon-using business, motorist and family.
That’s making some legislators nervous, as they ponder the health, economic and employment effects of restricting energy supplies and driving up the cost of everything we eat, drink, make and do - especially in 20 states that get 60-98% of their electricity from coal.
So to prod Congress into action, or achieve the 80% target via regulatory edict, the Obama Environmental Protection Agency has decreed that natural, plant-enhancing, life-sustaining carbon dioxide “endangers human health and welfare.” The authoritarian actions it is contemplating would regulate cars, trains, boats and planes; pave the way for regulating farms and factories, hospitals, schools, malls and apartment buildings, computer servers and lawn mowers; and send energy prices skyrocketing.
It is astonishing how casually activists, bureaucrats, politicians and even some corporate executives advocate arbitrary CO2 reduction targets and timetables - as though they were possible, desirable or necessary.
The targets reflect worst-case scenarios generated by computer models. But the models assume human CO2 now drives climate changes that have been occurring for eons. They ignore many natural forces, and inadequately analyze incomplete data, based on our still limited grasp of complex climate processes.
They cannot accurately replicate last year’s regional climate shifts or predict changes even one year in the future. They ignore Earth’s history of repeated climate changes, and failed to anticipate the slowly declining global temperatures of 1995-2008.
Thousands of climate and other scientist say there is no climate crisis, and CO2 plays little or no substantive role in climate change. A new Rasmussen poll finds that 48% of registered American voters now believe climate change is caused by planetary and other natural forces. Only a third still believe it’s due mostly to humans.
Climate realists also recognize that, even if America eliminated all of its greenhouse gas emissions, increasing Chinese and Indian carbon dioxide emissions would promptly offset our draconian cuts.
This alarms Climate Armageddonites. They fear it’s now or never to wrest control over energy and the economic, manufacturing and transportation activities it fuels. Now or never to profit from cap-and-tax laws, renewable energy mandates, and a forced shift away from hydrocarbons that now provide 85% of US energy.
“Socially responsible” corporate groups like the Carbon Offset Providers Coalition are banking on passage of Waxman-Markey or similar legislation. They want to ensure that any CO2 regime is “rigorous and efficient,” to foster high carbon prices, maximum subsidies and strong profits.
President Obama says cap-and-trade will “raise” $656 billion over the next decade. The National Economic Council and other analysts put the tax bite at $1.3 to $3.0 trillion.
This is not monetary manna. The wealth will be extracted from every hydrocarbon-using business, motorist and family.
The intrusive energy rules and taxes will clobber households, manufacturers, farmers, truckers and airlines. The poorest families will get energy welfare, to offset part of their $500-3,000 increase in annual heating, cooling, transportation and food expenses. Everyone else will have to trim health, vacation, charity, college and retirement budgets to pay for energy.
Every increase in energy prices will result in more businesses laying off workers or closing their doors, more jobs sent overseas, more families forced into welfare, more school districts, hospitals and churches into whirlpools of red ink.
Exactly how will they, your family, your business eliminate 80% of CO2 emissions by 2050? Exactly how will you pay those skyrocketing fuel bills?
The Nature Conservancy predicts that, by 2030, “eco-friendly” wind, solar and biofuel projects will require extra land equivalent to Minnesota, to produce the energy we now get from oil, gas and coal. Interior Secretary Salazar’s proposal to have offshore wind turbines replace gas, coal and nuclear electricity generators would mean 336,000 3.25MW behemoths off our coasts - if they operate 24/7/365. Far more if they don’t.
Where exactly will we site those turbines - and get the billions of tons of concrete, steel, copper and fiberglass it will take to build and install the expensive, unreliable, subsidized monsters?
My grandmother used to say, The only good thing about the “good old days” is that they’re gone.
Few Americans will be enthralled by the prospect of returning to that era. Fewer will relish the hefty price tag - and damage to their freedoms, budgets, jobs and living standards.
The White House, EPA and Congress need a serious reality check.
Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Congress of Racial Equality and Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow.
by Paul Driessen
May 01, 2009 @ 11:18 am
Think back to 1905.
The Wright brothers had just made history. Coal and wood heated homes. Few had telephones or electricity. AC units were handheld fans. Ice blocks cooled ice boxes. New York City collected 900,000 tons of vehicle emissions - horse manure - annually, and dumped it into local rivers. Lung and intestinal diseases were rampant. Life expectancy was 47.
Today, President Obama wants to prevent “runaway global warming,” by slashing US carbon dioxide emissions to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. According to Oak Ridge National Laboratory data, this reduction would return the United States to emission levels last seen in those halcyon days of 1905!
But America’s 1905 population was 84 million, versus 308 million today. We didn’t drive or fly, or generate electricity for offices, factories, schools or hospitals. To account for those differences, we’d have to send CO2 emissions back to 1862 levels.
The Civil War was raging. Nine of ten Americans were farmers (versus 2% today). The industrial revolution was in its infancy. Malaria halted construction on the Washington, DC aqueduct. Typhus and cholera killed thousands more every year. Life expectancy was 40 - half of what affordable hydrocarbon, hydroelectric and nuclear power helped make it today.
None of this seems to matter to the Obama Administration or liberal Democrats. The 648-page Waxman-Markey climate bill would compel an 80% CO2 reduction, by imposing punitive cap-and-tax restrictions on virtually every hydrocarbon-using business, motorist and family.
That’s making some legislators nervous, as they ponder the health, economic and employment effects of restricting energy supplies and driving up the cost of everything we eat, drink, make and do - especially in 20 states that get 60-98% of their electricity from coal.
So to prod Congress into action, or achieve the 80% target via regulatory edict, the Obama Environmental Protection Agency has decreed that natural, plant-enhancing, life-sustaining carbon dioxide “endangers human health and welfare.” The authoritarian actions it is contemplating would regulate cars, trains, boats and planes; pave the way for regulating farms and factories, hospitals, schools, malls and apartment buildings, computer servers and lawn mowers; and send energy prices skyrocketing.
It is astonishing how casually activists, bureaucrats, politicians and even some corporate executives advocate arbitrary CO2 reduction targets and timetables - as though they were possible, desirable or necessary.
The targets reflect worst-case scenarios generated by computer models. But the models assume human CO2 now drives climate changes that have been occurring for eons. They ignore many natural forces, and inadequately analyze incomplete data, based on our still limited grasp of complex climate processes.
They cannot accurately replicate last year’s regional climate shifts or predict changes even one year in the future. They ignore Earth’s history of repeated climate changes, and failed to anticipate the slowly declining global temperatures of 1995-2008.
Thousands of climate and other scientist say there is no climate crisis, and CO2 plays little or no substantive role in climate change. A new Rasmussen poll finds that 48% of registered American voters now believe climate change is caused by planetary and other natural forces. Only a third still believe it’s due mostly to humans.
Climate realists also recognize that, even if America eliminated all of its greenhouse gas emissions, increasing Chinese and Indian carbon dioxide emissions would promptly offset our draconian cuts.
This alarms Climate Armageddonites. They fear it’s now or never to wrest control over energy and the economic, manufacturing and transportation activities it fuels. Now or never to profit from cap-and-tax laws, renewable energy mandates, and a forced shift away from hydrocarbons that now provide 85% of US energy.
“Socially responsible” corporate groups like the Carbon Offset Providers Coalition are banking on passage of Waxman-Markey or similar legislation. They want to ensure that any CO2 regime is “rigorous and efficient,” to foster high carbon prices, maximum subsidies and strong profits.
President Obama says cap-and-trade will “raise” $656 billion over the next decade. The National Economic Council and other analysts put the tax bite at $1.3 to $3.0 trillion.
This is not monetary manna. The wealth will be extracted from every hydrocarbon-using business, motorist and family.
The intrusive energy rules and taxes will clobber households, manufacturers, farmers, truckers and airlines. The poorest families will get energy welfare, to offset part of their $500-3,000 increase in annual heating, cooling, transportation and food expenses. Everyone else will have to trim health, vacation, charity, college and retirement budgets to pay for energy.
Every increase in energy prices will result in more businesses laying off workers or closing their doors, more jobs sent overseas, more families forced into welfare, more school districts, hospitals and churches into whirlpools of red ink.
Exactly how will they, your family, your business eliminate 80% of CO2 emissions by 2050? Exactly how will you pay those skyrocketing fuel bills?
The Nature Conservancy predicts that, by 2030, “eco-friendly” wind, solar and biofuel projects will require extra land equivalent to Minnesota, to produce the energy we now get from oil, gas and coal. Interior Secretary Salazar’s proposal to have offshore wind turbines replace gas, coal and nuclear electricity generators would mean 336,000 3.25MW behemoths off our coasts - if they operate 24/7/365. Far more if they don’t.
Where exactly will we site those turbines - and get the billions of tons of concrete, steel, copper and fiberglass it will take to build and install the expensive, unreliable, subsidized monsters?
My grandmother used to say, The only good thing about the “good old days” is that they’re gone.
Few Americans will be enthralled by the prospect of returning to that era. Fewer will relish the hefty price tag - and damage to their freedoms, budgets, jobs and living standards.
The White House, EPA and Congress need a serious reality check.
Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Congress of Racial Equality and Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow.
Oh Please! Comparing Obama speaking on GW via monitor to a training a surgeon via the web is just plain silly.
Walter,
solar energy is neat, one can basically roof one's house with panels. What extra land do you need?
How about refineries, filtering stations, and pumping stations? Yeah, they don't use much land.
Want heat? bury a pipe in the ground to get geothermal heat.
Yeah Alternate energy is so hard on the land. :roll:
How about using up valuable farmland by plopping concrete jungles all over it?
I have driven by the windmills in southern Alberta. I think it's a helluva lot nicer to see those graceful, clean towers making energy for us than to see acres of pits of the waste from crude, which I have also driven by.
I'd rather smell the air after a windmill has used it than the air after a combustion engine has used it.
solar energy is neat, one can basically roof one's house with panels. What extra land do you need?
How about refineries, filtering stations, and pumping stations? Yeah, they don't use much land.
Want heat? bury a pipe in the ground to get geothermal heat.
Yeah Alternate energy is so hard on the land. :roll:
How about using up valuable farmland by plopping concrete jungles all over it?
I have driven by the windmills in southern Alberta. I think it's a helluva lot nicer to see those graceful, clean towers making energy for us than to see acres of pits of the waste from crude, which I have also driven by.
I'd rather smell the air after a windmill has used it than the air after a combustion engine has used it.
Frankly, anyone who believes that we can have all of the industrial activity that we do have, and suffer no effects on the world climate, is deluding themselves.
Tuesday, July 07, 2009 ...
UAH: June 2009: anomaly near zero
Global warming is supposed to exist and to be bad. Sometimes, we hear that global warming causes cooling. In this case, global warming causes global averageness. In all three cases, it is bad news. The three main enemies of environmentalism are warm weather, cool weather, and average weather.
It is not a coincidence that these enemies are very similar to the four main enemies of communism. The four main enemies that were spoiling the success of communism were Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter.
UAH: June 2009: anomaly near zero
Global mean temperature according to UAH MSU for the first 8.5 years i.e. 102 months of this century. Linear regression gives a cooling trend by a hefty -1.45 °C per century in this interval. So if someone tells you that the trend is "of course" positive as long as we omit the year 1998, you may be very certain that he or she is not telling you the truth.
UAH MSU has officially released their June 2009 data. This time, they're faster than RSS MSU. The anomaly was +0.01 °C, meaning that the global temperature was essentially equal to the average June temperature since 1979. June 2009 actually belonged to the cooler half of the Junes since 1979.
Global warming is supposed to exist and to be bad. Sometimes, we hear that global warming causes cooling. In this case, global warming causes global averageness. In all three cases, it is bad news. The three main enemies of environmentalism are warm weather, cool weather, and average weather.
It is not a coincidence that these enemies are very similar to the four main enemies of communism. The four main enemies that were spoiling the success of communism were Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter.
the great gloabal warming swindle
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That 0.1°C is higher than the average. Higher means warmer. Guess that idea bypassed you. Global mean temps don't leap by 10s of degrees, you know. they rise by fractions of degrees. Let's see if NASA graphs coincide with this graph, shall we? Data @ NASA GISS: GISS Surface Temperature Analysis: Graphs Gee, how about that, they do look pretty close. Unfortunately for you, Walter, that was then and this is now and now it looks like the changes in average temps has been fairly consistently in an upwards direction.Tuesday, July 07, 2009 ...
UAH: June 2009: anomaly near zero
Global mean temperature according to UAH MSU for the first 8.5 years i.e. 102 months of this century. Linear regression gives a cooling trend by a hefty -1.45 °C per century in this interval. So if someone tells you that the trend is "of course" positive as long as we omit the year 1998, you may be very certain that he or she is not telling you the truth.UAH MSU has officially released their June 2009 data. This time, they're faster than RSS MSU. The anomaly was +0.01 °C, meaning that the global temperature was essentially equal to the average June temperature since 1979. June 2009 actually belonged to the cooler half of the Junes since 1979.
Global warming is supposed to exist and to be bad. Sometimes, we hear that global warming causes cooling. In this case, global warming causes global averageness. In all three cases, it is bad news. The three main enemies of environmentalism are warm weather, cool weather, and average weather.
It is not a coincidence that these enemies are very similar to the four main enemies of communism. The four main enemies that were spoiling the success of communism were Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter.
[FONT=Times New Roman,serif] [/FONT]The North auroral oval. Credit: NASA, NSSDC, Holzworth and Meng.
Ring of Ice, Ring of Fire
Jul 08, 2009
Everyone knows the Ice Age was a time when the Earth cooled, glaciers moved down from the North, and the mammoths froze. However, everyone is mistaken.
Lands in the Arctic get little precipitation, and a mile or more of ice is a lot of water. Before it can fall as snow, it has to evaporate from the ocean and be transported. John Tyndall, a prominent British physicist, realized in 1883 that a mountain of ice in the North requires a lot of energy everywhere else, which means heat. An ice age requires not a cooler climate but a warmer one with a cold spot where the ice is.
That lands near the pole were warm and ice-free during the Ice Age has been known—and ignored—since the 1700s. Tools and other signs of human habitation are (conventionally) at least 30,000 years old.
Pleistocene remains indicate that extensive grasslands supported large populations of many animal species. This warm climate stretched across the northern parts of Siberia, Alaska, Canada, and Greenland, while land to the South was buried under thousands of feet of ice. Further south, beyond the ice, the warm climate again asserted itself.
Glacial scratches in rock show that the ice moved not from the pole but from a number of localized
Ring of Ice, Ring of FireThat lands near the pole were warm and ice-free during the Ice Age has been known—and ignored—since the 1700s. Tools and other signs of human habitation are (conventionally) at least 30,000 years old.
Pleistocene remains indicate that extensive grasslands supported large populations of many animal species. This warm climate stretched across the northern parts of Siberia, Alaska, Canada, and Greenland, while land to the South was buried under thousands of feet of ice. Further south, beyond the ice, the warm climate again asserted itself.
Glacial scratches in rock show that the ice moved not from the pole but from a number of localized
Carbon Baron Gore
August 25, 2009
Who will be the Robber Barons of the 21st century?Al Gore is poised to become the first climate billionaire
At the turn of the 20th century, a period famous for its Robber Barons, John D. Rockefeller was making his fortune in oil, Andrew Carnegie in steel, Cornelius Vanderbilt in railroads and J.P Morgan in finance. Many predict that the history books of the future, when listing the legendary fortunes made at the turn of the 21st century, will place Al Gore at the top of the list, as the first great Carbon Baron.
In 2000, when Al Gore lost his bid to become president of the United States, he had less than US$2-million in assets. Neither was Gore known for his financial acumen — annual White House disclosures of his and Tipper Gore’s joint tax filings showed little income beyond the $175,000 he earned as vice-president.
To the contrary, Gore was a laughing stock in investment circles for his lack of financial sophistication, which, the press said, explained why Gore’s net worth had been declining during the booming 1990s. Gore had failed to understand the significance of the new Internet economy that had so transformed the world.Instead “most of his money was in checking and passbook accounts or tied up in property,” The New York Times reported, in an article entitled “Gore Has Not Bought Stocks for Decades.” In an article entitled “Gore flunks investor test,” Dow Jones’ SmartMoney.Com mocked Gore for being irrationally risk averse, saying, “Al Gore’s assets look more like 1899 than 1999. As things stand, the vice-president is without anything with a P/E, let alone an IPO: no stocks, no funds, not even a bond. What does he have? Land — as far as the eye can see. Oh, and a zinc mine he’s leasing out to an Australian mining company.” Fortune magazine went so far as to headline a 1998 story, “The Vice President’s Financial Acumen ‘Ain’t Worth a Bucket of Warm Spit’” Its verdict: “This is a family in dire need of a money manager.”
Nobody doubts Gore’s financial acumen now. Within eight years of leaving politics, Gore had reportedly become worth well in excess of US$100-million. Many expect him to become a billionaire through his stakes in a global warming hedge fund, a carbon-offset business, a renewable energy investment business and other global warming related ventures. He is now money manager to institutional investors and the super rich through Generation Investment Management, a firm that he co-founded in 2004.
Neither does anyone anywhere any longer regard Gore as a timid investor, bereft of ambition. His goal for Generation Investment Management, as he described in 2008 to Fortune magazine, is to help drive a societal transformation that will be “bigger than the Industrial Revolution and significantly faster.”
The Fortune interview explained his firm’s intention to help orchestrate “a makeover of the US$6-trillion global energy business,” from coal plants and the internal-combustion engine to petrochemicals and even bottled water. “What we are going to have to put in place is a combination of the Manhattan Project, the Apollo project and the Marshall Plan, and scale it globally,” Gore continued. “It’d be promising too much to say we can do it on our own, but we intend to do our part.”
Gore’s societal plan and his investment plan are indistinguishable and straightforward: He wants to make fossil fuels uncompetitive and renewable energy competitive by convincing governments to punishingly tax fossil-fuel technologies through mechanisms such as cap and trade. In the process, Gore intends to make money at every stage of this transformation — through his stake in the carbon trading markets being created, through his portfolio of renewable energy and other so-called clean-tech investments and by acting as a broker.
In amassing his fortune, Gore has not been operating in an unfamiliar business environment, as the early detractors of his investment acumen might imagine. Rather, he has been operating entirely in his element. He has always been a lobbyist for climate change legislation, whether as a senator or as vice-president, and he remains so in his new capacities. And in his capacity as a politician, he always needed to raise funds. This is the essential skill he brings to Generation Investment Management, where he today approaches old political allies for support: Gore asks well-heeled charitable foundations, endowments, corporations and pension funds to place their assets under the management of his firm. To do their bit for the environment, and for him, they oblige.
To date, Gore has done well for himself. As for the others, they know not to expect quick profits: Gore is clear in explaining that his focus is on long-term sustainable investments.
And as for Gore’s prospects of becoming a billionaire, they rest entirely on one big bet: That government legislation will create the mandates that his businesses need to boom. Without those mandates, his businesses — few of which are viable in a traditional free market economy — will go bust. As will the funds entrusted to him by the charities, endowments and pension funds seeking sustainable investments.
There is nothing unusual in furthering business interests through government mandates: Many of the Robber Barons of a century ago also relied on their ability to lobby for favourable government legislation. Where Gore departs from the Robber Barons of yesteryear is in the nature of the product being produced. Whatever else might be said of the Robber Barons, there was no disputing the value of the railroads, steel, oil and other commodities that they were producing. In the case of carbon dioxide, the basis of Gore’s economy, rather than there being no dispute, there is no consensus that he isn’t selling vapourware.
August 25, 2009
Who will be the Robber Barons of the 21st century?Al Gore is poised to become the first climate billionaire
By Lawrence Solomon
At the turn of the 20th century, a period famous for its Robber Barons, John D. Rockefeller was making his fortune in oil, Andrew Carnegie in steel, Cornelius Vanderbilt in railroads and J.P Morgan in finance. Many predict that the history books of the future, when listing the legendary fortunes made at the turn of the 21st century, will place Al Gore at the top of the list, as the first great Carbon Baron.
In 2000, when Al Gore lost his bid to become president of the United States, he had less than US$2-million in assets. Neither was Gore known for his financial acumen — annual White House disclosures of his and Tipper Gore’s joint tax filings showed little income beyond the $175,000 he earned as vice-president.
To the contrary, Gore was a laughing stock in investment circles for his lack of financial sophistication, which, the press said, explained why Gore’s net worth had been declining during the booming 1990s. Gore had failed to understand the significance of the new Internet economy that had so transformed the world.Instead “most of his money was in checking and passbook accounts or tied up in property,” The New York Times reported, in an article entitled “Gore Has Not Bought Stocks for Decades.” In an article entitled “Gore flunks investor test,” Dow Jones’ SmartMoney.Com mocked Gore for being irrationally risk averse, saying, “Al Gore’s assets look more like 1899 than 1999. As things stand, the vice-president is without anything with a P/E, let alone an IPO: no stocks, no funds, not even a bond. What does he have? Land — as far as the eye can see. Oh, and a zinc mine he’s leasing out to an Australian mining company.” Fortune magazine went so far as to headline a 1998 story, “The Vice President’s Financial Acumen ‘Ain’t Worth a Bucket of Warm Spit’” Its verdict: “This is a family in dire need of a money manager.”
Nobody doubts Gore’s financial acumen now. Within eight years of leaving politics, Gore had reportedly become worth well in excess of US$100-million. Many expect him to become a billionaire through his stakes in a global warming hedge fund, a carbon-offset business, a renewable energy investment business and other global warming related ventures. He is now money manager to institutional investors and the super rich through Generation Investment Management, a firm that he co-founded in 2004.
Neither does anyone anywhere any longer regard Gore as a timid investor, bereft of ambition. His goal for Generation Investment Management, as he described in 2008 to Fortune magazine, is to help drive a societal transformation that will be “bigger than the Industrial Revolution and significantly faster.”
The Fortune interview explained his firm’s intention to help orchestrate “a makeover of the US$6-trillion global energy business,” from coal plants and the internal-combustion engine to petrochemicals and even bottled water. “What we are going to have to put in place is a combination of the Manhattan Project, the Apollo project and the Marshall Plan, and scale it globally,” Gore continued. “It’d be promising too much to say we can do it on our own, but we intend to do our part.”
Gore’s societal plan and his investment plan are indistinguishable and straightforward: He wants to make fossil fuels uncompetitive and renewable energy competitive by convincing governments to punishingly tax fossil-fuel technologies through mechanisms such as cap and trade. In the process, Gore intends to make money at every stage of this transformation — through his stake in the carbon trading markets being created, through his portfolio of renewable energy and other so-called clean-tech investments and by acting as a broker.
In amassing his fortune, Gore has not been operating in an unfamiliar business environment, as the early detractors of his investment acumen might imagine. Rather, he has been operating entirely in his element. He has always been a lobbyist for climate change legislation, whether as a senator or as vice-president, and he remains so in his new capacities. And in his capacity as a politician, he always needed to raise funds. This is the essential skill he brings to Generation Investment Management, where he today approaches old political allies for support: Gore asks well-heeled charitable foundations, endowments, corporations and pension funds to place their assets under the management of his firm. To do their bit for the environment, and for him, they oblige.
To date, Gore has done well for himself. As for the others, they know not to expect quick profits: Gore is clear in explaining that his focus is on long-term sustainable investments.
And as for Gore’s prospects of becoming a billionaire, they rest entirely on one big bet: That government legislation will create the mandates that his businesses need to boom. Without those mandates, his businesses — few of which are viable in a traditional free market economy — will go bust. As will the funds entrusted to him by the charities, endowments and pension funds seeking sustainable investments.
There is nothing unusual in furthering business interests through government mandates: Many of the Robber Barons of a century ago also relied on their ability to lobby for favourable government legislation. Where Gore departs from the Robber Barons of yesteryear is in the nature of the product being produced. Whatever else might be said of the Robber Barons, there was no disputing the value of the railroads, steel, oil and other commodities that they were producing. In the case of carbon dioxide, the basis of Gore’s economy, rather than there being no dispute, there is no consensus that he isn’t selling vapourware.
It will be interesting to see how water will play out in the next decade. Under current NAFTA rules - once bulk shipments of water are started to the USA we can not stop it. We can not charge more for it than in our own country. Maude Barlow of the Council of Canadians is on the warpath to prevent it. Seems that these bottled watercompanies that have been under attack for their plastic containers may just start the revolution towards bulk shipments and since the water they draw is from licences they received from the province there is nothing the Feds can do to stop it. These environmentalists may have just stuck a plastic fork in their eyes
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