The smearing of Al Gore

If you are right wing, what do you do to stop Al Gore after he has won an Academy Award for his very excellent ‘An Inconvenient Truth’? You can’t counter the science, you can’t counter a media who have just woken up to the issue, you certainly don’t want to stop or slow down the very system that gives you all that money, privilege and power – hey, I know – let’s smear the prick and make it look like he is a hypocrite!

The Tennessee Center for Policy Research has just come out with this story…

Last August alone, Gore burned through 22,619 kWh—guzzling more than twice the electricity in one month than an average American family uses in an entire year. As a result of his energy consumption, Gore’s average monthly electric bill topped $1,359. Since the release of An Inconvenient Truth, Gore’s energy consumption has increased from an average of 16,200 kWh per month in 2005, to 18,400 kWh per month in 2006. Gore’s extravagant energy use does not stop at his electric bill. Natural gas bills for Gore’s mansion and guest house averaged $1,080 per month last year. “As the spokesman of choice for the global warming movement, Al Gore has to be willing to walk the walk, not just talk the talk, when it comes to home energy use,” said Tennessee Center for Policy Research President Drew Johnson.

Now in his defense, Al Gore says that the figures are correct but through a spokesperson said…

Kalee Kreider said that Gore purchases enough green power such as solar, wind and methane gas to offset almost all of his electricity costs. “Sometimes when people don’t like the message, in this case that global warming is real, it’s convenient to attack the messenger,” she said.

But because most people only read a headline, Al Gore’s side of the story gets lost, so who are The Tennessee Center for Policy Research?

The Tennessee Center for Policy Research is an independent, nonprofit and nonpartisan research organization dedicated to providing concerned citizens, the media and public leaders with expert empirical research and timely free market policy solutions to public policy issues in Tennessee.

‘Independent’? Really? Who runs the Tennessee Center for Policy Research? Well the President of the Center is non other than Drew Johnson, the very same Drew Johnson who worked for the American Enterprise Institute, who are the American Enterprise Institute? Aren’t they that neo con right wing think tank who were in the news last month?

In February 2007, The Guardian reported that AEI was offering scientists and economists $10,000 each, "to undermine a major climate change report" from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). AEI asked for "articles that emphasise the shortcomings" of the IPCC report, which "is widely regarded as the most comprehensive review yet of climate change science." AEI visiting scholar Kenneth Green made the $10,000 offer "to scientists in Britain, the US and elsewhere," in a letter describing the IPCC as "resistant to reasonable criticism and dissent." [6]

The Guardian reported further that AEI "has received more than $1.6m from ExxonMobil, and more than 20 of its staff have worked as consultants to the Bush administration. Lee Raymond, a former head of ExxonMobil, is the vice-chairman of AEI's board of trustees," added The Guardian.

Right, so the President of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, Drew Johnson, who used to work for the American Enterprise Institute which is currently offering $10 000 to any scientist who can cast doubt on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and who also received $1.6million from ExxonMobil, the very industry the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports are adding to human pollution which is destroying our environment SAYS, that Al Gore, the man responsible for informing the masses about global warming in his film An Inconvenient Truth, that he is a global warming hypocrite a day after he wins an Academy Award to maximize any discrediting of his image that they can.

‘Independent’ my arse! It’s a pity the media don’t point this out before they publish these clowns so we can see their true agenda.