Al Gore, Global Warming and 2008

Technically considered hostile ground, Gore accepted an invitation from the Calgary Chamber of Commerce and will head up on April 23rd to speak on the growing threat of climate change. The reason it’s hostile ground? Gore stated some sharp opionions last year regarding the oilsands which are located in Alberta. A lucrative industry for their area, Gore felt the oil industry was backing the ‘ulta-conservative’ leader Stephen Harper in order to protect their stake in the oilsands industry.

A short time later, in an interview with Rolling Stone, Gore followed up on that point, stating “for every barrel of oil they extract there, they have to use enough natural gas to heat a family’s home for four days. And they have to tear up four tonnes of landscape.'’

Tickets are $100 for Chamber of Commerce members, and $150 for non-members (partial proceeds from the event will be used to fund a U of C student award related to environmental sustainability and global climate change.)

Just read about two Al Gore speaking confirmation announcements for Lisbon, Portugal. Amazingly, he’s flying there twice within a 30 day period to speak at two different conferences - the first, in early February ‘07, he’ll be addressing a conference at the Museum of Electricity organised by Cunha Vaz & Associates (conference also supposedly backed by the Lisbon City Hall), and the second, in early March ‘07, he’ll be the star attraction at the Association of Portuguese Distribution Companies conference.

And word has it, in order to offset the amount of carbon dioxide he’ll be producing by crossing the Atlantic twice within 30 days, he’s stricly requested a hybrid Lexus as his transportation vehicle while in Lisbon…

Rolling Stone posted a great article , titled ‘Run, Al, Run‘, covering the many reasons Gore should run in 2008.

Mike Davidson’s blog (a favorite of ours) has a hilariously great write up on a screengrab he captured during a viewing of AIT on DVD.

Check it out here..

Way up in Idaho, a typically deep red Republican state, Al Gore had been scheduled to speak at Boise State University offering a keynote address to a conference on climate change.

The school offered 1,000 tickets for the event … Guess what? Those tickets evaporated in ten minutes.

So the University decided to move the event to the basketball arena which holds around 10,000 …

those tickets sold out in under 5 hours.

c-r-a-z-y

It’s official, Al Gore’s film documenting the perils of Global Warming garnered two Oscar nominations - one for best documentary feature and the other for best original song. Now, Al’s not technically the one being nominated (the film’s director, Davis Guggenheim, won the nod, as did singer Melissa Etheridge for the song ”I Need to Wake Up”).

 ”The film … has brought awareness of the climate crisis to people in the United States and all over the world,” Gore said in an e-mail statement. ”I am so grateful to the entire team and pleased that the Academy has recognized their work. This film proves that movies really can make a difference.”

Other films nominated for best documentary feature include “Deliver Us From Evil,” about the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church; “Iraq in Fragments,” about the Sunni-Shiite conflict in that country; “Jesus Camp,” about a summer camp for evangelical Christians, and “My Country, My Country,” about the months leading up to the January 2005 elections in Iraq.

So… do you think the film should have been nominated?

National Geographic wrote a nice piece a while back examining several global warming aspects of Gore’s movie ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, in an attempt to determine whether the scientific claims made in the movie are accurate, or -basically- hot air.

The consensus?

The movie was accurate - actually pretty darn accurate. They did take a few liberties in explaining a few points, though..

See what you think..

Check it out here

Do you think Global Warming is real?