Apr 07

Regarding this CNET report, Tom Nelson says, “It’s come to this” for Al Gore and the man-made global warming movement:

In her role as an environmental campaigner, Savage has been named a U.N. Climate Hero. She is also a trained presenter for Al Gore’s Climate Project, and is an Athlete Ambassador for 350.org, whose mission is to inspire and unite people to find solutions to climate change. Bill McKibben, who co-founded 350.org, says Savage’s perseverance is part of what makes her such a good spokesperson.

“Environmentalists have spent a long time thinking about bar graphs and pie charts. Important stuff, but there are other parts of our heads and hearts that need reaching, and that’s what Roz is good at,” McKibben said in an e-mail.

Although she’s been at it for a while now, Savage says she still feels like she’s learning how to talk about environmental issues to reach the “unconverted,” particularly, when it comes to climate change. “I actually now try not to talk about climate change because especially in this country it’s so polarizing,” she said. “I prefer to talk about sustainability because it is just kind of common sense on a finite planet. And the other thing is that sustainability is a positive thing to move toward.”

Yes, the post-release of An Inconvenient Truth afterglow has certainly worn off as the Climate Project presenters are no longer being greeted adoringly as saviors of the planet, but are rather greeted by prickly questions about the validity of the science of man-made global warming.

And one more thing Roz:  Sustainability on a finite planet may represent common sense for a lot of folks, but it’s not reality.  Better get another crisis.

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Aug 10

So, Big Green is about to “launch a major movement…to help build a formidable grassroots advocacy force”, and they have the nerve to call it “grassroots”.  That sounds like nothing but Astroturf to me.  And the words “formidable…advocacy force” are carefully chosen words of aggression that indicate Al Gore and The Climate Project are trying to incite an “angry mob”.

From the YouTube notes:

Statement from Al Gore, founder of The Climate Project, and Jenny Clad, International Executive Director

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Jun 01

James Hrynyshyn reports for Seed:

Polling data leading up to last week’s summit of The Climate Project wasn’t exactly inspiring. The widely respected Pew Forum says the share of Americans who believe the Earth is warming is stuck at less than 50 percent, while Rasmussen Reports—often accused of Republican bias—shows that the number has fallen to 34 percent. Both polls have proven track records from the 2008 Presidential election.

As one of some 2,500 volunteers trained by former vice president Al Gore to present his Inconvenient Truth slideshow, I was discouraged to learn more than half of all Americans still deny the science that links human activities to global warming….While the polls suggested failure, the mood at the summit—a reunion of 600 global warming foot soldiers in Nashville, TN, from May 14 through 16, 2009—was positively celebratory.

On the other hand, I spent much of the three-day gathering trying to reconcile these frustrating results with the self-congratulatory tone that filled Hutton Hotel’s sixth floor.  Gore invited a number of global authorities on climate change to reinforce his message that we were responsible for the Congressional committee working on a bill at that very moment that would cap greenhouse gas emissions. “It seems incredible that we could change enough minds and put it on the agenda,” Gore told us. “It was really was An Inconvenient Truth that galvanized everything,” insisted Canada’s arch-environmentalist, David Suzuki. Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, declared us “missionaries,” who, “Collectively and individually can bring about change.”

These messages were well-received in a room filled with activists wearing T-shirts bearing slogans like, “My carbon footprint is smaller than yours,” who all signed a contract vowing to give no-admission slideshows in return for nothing more than a lapel pin. There were those that drove and flew long distances—from as far as Nigeria and Macedonia—to hear our heroes remind us that what we’re doing is important.

They are only now agreeing to give no-admission slideshows?  Were they oxymoronic paid volunteers before?

…Is there any evidence the Climate Project is actually changing minds?

I managed to put that question to Gore himself, in the buffet line. “There are a lot of polls out there that do show progress,” he said, seeming a little surprised to be on the defensive by one of his own supporters. I asked if he could be more specific, and he replied without skipping a beat, “Mark Mellman just wrote something, I think”….

Of, course Gore was “surprised to be on the defensive by one of his own supporters”.  He goes through his life surrounded by a protective cocoon of “yes men” that don’t dare confront The Goracle with thorny questions.

Gore might have told me that my fixation with polls misses the point as changing public opinion is no longer the prime directive of The Climate Project. As part of the project’s “Phase Two” stage, as it’s officially called, we were later informed of a new mission: to write letters to editors, organize phone banks, and to do whatever it takes to convince Congress to support the Waxman-Markey bill.

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