In a wide-ranging Op-Ed, former Vice President Al gore pushes back against the climategate conspiracy, urges the Senate to take action and encourages the public to replace whichever public officials fail to take action. Here is the money graf:

We have overcome existential threats before. Winston Churchill is widely quoted as having said, “Sometimes doing your best is not good enough. Sometimes, you must do what is required.” Now is that time. Public officials must rise to this challenge by doing what is required; and the public must demand that they do so — or must replace them.

In a separate piece, entitled How the G.O.P. Goes Green , Thomas Friedman was able to get some choice quotes from Senator Graham:

“I have been to enough college campuses to know if you are 30 or younger this climate issue is not a debate. It’s a value. These young people grew up with recycling and a sensitivity to the environment — and the world will be better off for it. They are not brainwashed. … From a Republican point of view, we should buy into it and embrace it and not belittle them. You can have a genuine debate about the science of climate change, but when you say that those who believe it are buying a hoax and are wacky people you are putting at risk your party’s future with younger people. You can have a legitimate dispute about how to solve immigration, but when you start focusing on the last names of people the demographics will pass you by.”

Both pieces are must-read.

This isn’t the first time the GOP has used Valentine’s Day as an excuse to attack Democrats, but it is hilarious that they are still scared to death of Al Gore.

Here is the transcript:

CHRIS HAYES, “THE NATION”: Good evening, Keith.

OLBERMANN: Why did “The Washington Post” let us get lectured about science and politics by someone who quit her only state office, and has a pastor who runs these precautionary exorcisms on her so she can stave off witchcraft.

HAYES: I thought it was a really atrocious decision on the part of “The Washington Post” to run this op-ed. What exactly it contributed to the debate-there are people like Greg Mankiw, who worked in the Bush White House, an economist at Harvard. He’s a very conservative guy. He strongly opposes the cap and trade. He wants to see a carbon tax. There is a debate to be had.

But to give over your op-ed page to someone who makes, essentially a conspiracy claim, it would be like if they turned it over to someone who wanted to argue that 9/11 was an inside job. “The Washington Post” would never, in a million years, do that and they shouldn’t be doing this.

OLBERMANN: From Mrs. Palin’s point of view, from the GOP point of view, is this at all about getting elected anymore, or is this just kind of political cover for big business? Keeping the country safe from polluters for another hour, another month, another year, whatever it is they can manage?

HAYES: Luckily, they go hand in hand. I actually think what’s motivating Palin-and you can actually see, she has moved, you know, in the direction of the conspiracy theorists on this issue. What’s motivating her is the fact that the polling on this is really disturbing, because it has become an article of faith among the right wing base that this is a grand socialist conspiracy to usher in state control.

So I think she’s really, as she is want to do, pandering to that base right now. I think what’s driving that kind of op-ed, more than any kind of business shilling, is the fact that it has become one of these issues, like the birth certificate, that you can sort of win points with the base with.

OLBERMANN: And by the way, the video we’re seeing right now, that was taken in July in Washington, D.C. All right, that’s-bad joke, I’m sorry. But let’s put all these points together now about the predilections of the far right and what they believe and what they don’t. What is the Palin explanation for polar ice melting, which she acknowledges. If it is witchcraft, why has she not sent Pastor Moothy (ph) to fix it. A slightly more serious version of that, and if this is not man-made, if it is part of the right-wing agenda, if it all should be theocratically interpreted, if it’s all in God’s hands, how come Sister Sarah, with her direct line to God, has not instructed God to fix this?

HAYES: You know, what’s really interesting about this op-ed is that it’s not even internally logically consistent conspiracy mongering. There are two alternate theories of the conspiracy the denialists make. One is, yes, the world is warming, but it is not caused by humans. The other, the science that says the world is warming is fake and part of the conspiracy. And she endorses both. Those both cannot obtain.

The fact of the matter is, she governs the one state in the union that is most immediately seeing the effects of climate change. The permafrost is actually melting. There are houses that have cracked because of it in the state of Alaska. And because of that, she was forced to kind of acknowledge the fact that warming is happening. She can’t have it both ways.

And the editors of “The Washington Post” didn’t see fit to make any kind of intervention, to at least have a logically consistent piece of work on their pages.

OLBERMANN: Which brings up the idea of an end game for the GOP and Palin. What is the end game? Let’s say they are 100 percent right, that climate-gate exists, that this is a scam, that changes in climate are natural. Do they have a plan for how to keep the government together, to criminalize abortion during the rapture and the upcoming ice age and/or universal sweat lodge, whichever comes first?

HAYES: You know, I don’t know what the right-wing government’s plan is. But I will say, on an extremely serious note, that this-you know, we’ve talked about this in a million different ways-and Al Gore-and there are a lot of messengers who are better at this than I am. But it’s hard to over-state the stakes right now, in Copenhagen, in the climate change legislation moving through Congress. We are at a sort of pivotal moment in the fate of the Earth, but also as a test of the moral fabric of American democracy. And history is going to look extremely, extremely unkindly on this op-ed and the people that are using their platform to sort of propagate this very monstrous deception.

Here is an interesting clip of this wide ranging interview:

MITCHELL: Well, one of the things that she has written recently on Facebook is that this is doomsday scare tactics pushed by an environmental priesthood that makes the public feel like owning an SUV is a sin against the planet.GORE: Well, the scientific community has worked very intensively for 20 years within this international process, and they now say the evidence is unequivocal. A hundred and fifty years ago this year was the discovery that CO-2 traps heat. That is a — a principle in physics.

It’s not a question of debate. It’s like gravity; it exists.

MITCHELL: If it’s so unequivocal, I’ve got to ask you about the — the leak of those e-mails. Even today, Tom Friedman talked about them massaging the evidence. Why would they feel the need to hype the evidence if it’s so unequivocal, some scientists, I should say?

GORE: Yeah, I don’t think they did. I haven’t read all the e-mails that were stolen. They’re from — the most recent one was like 10 years ago.

And what they’ve done is they’ve snatched a few phrases completely out of context, and I’ll give you an example.

One of the oft-quoted phrases has to do with the scientist saying that a particular study isn’t good science and shouldn’t be included in the — international report. Well, that was their view. They exchanged it privately.

The study was included, fully aired, discussed. The weak points were — were analyzed. The other points were analyzed. So it’s an example of how these private exchanges have been blown out of proportion, taken out of context, misrepresented.

Full interview here.

Here are the best parts of John Dickerson’s interview with Al Gore:

Q: How damaging to your argument was the disclosure of e-mails from the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University?

A: To paraphrase Shakespeare, it’s sound and fury signifying nothing.

…

These private exchanges between these scientists do not in any way cause any question about the scientific consensus. But the noise machine built by the climate deniers often seizes on what they can blow out of proportion, so they’ve thought this is a bigger deal than it is.

…

What we’re seeing is a set of changes worldwide that just make this discussion over 10-year-old e-mails kind of silly. The entire North Polar ice cap is disappearing before our very eyes. It’s been the size of the continental United States for the last 3 million years and now 40 percent is gone and the rest of it is going. The mountain glaciers are going. We’ve had record storms, droughts, fires, and floods. There is an air of unreality in debating these arcane points when the world is changing in such dramatic ways right in front of our eyes because of global warming.

…

If the people that believed the moon landing was staged on a movie lot had access to unlimited money from large carbon polluters or some other special interest who wanted to confuse people into thinking that the moon landing didn’t take place, I’m sure we’d have a robust debate about it right now.

Full transcript below.

Read the rest of this entry »

Media Matters:

While discussing the purported “Climategate” emails stolen from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, Steve Doocy claimed that Jon Stewart “really took a shot at Al Gore,” then aired a clip of Stewart stating, “Poor Al Gore. Global warming completely debunked via the very Internet you invented.” But Doocy — in a possible violation of a recent Fox News memo on “Quality Control” — did not air Stewart’s subsequent statement in which he said the emails don’t “disprove global warming,” but do offer ammunition to global warming deniers.

Here is the video:

This is interesting:

“It’s important to change lightbulbs,” he says, in a well-burnished soundbite, “but more important to change policies and laws.” Or perhaps to break laws instead: peaceful occupations of the kind witnessed recently in the UK, he predicts, are only going to become more widespread. “Civil disobedience has an honourable history, and when the urgency and moral clarity cross a certain threshold, then I think that civil disobedience is quite understandable, and it has a role to play. And I expect that it will increase, no question about it.”

Wall Street Journal goes for a gotcha and fails:

Washington Wire: Did you have any conversations with officials at Apple Inc. [on whose board of directors Gore serves] prior to Apple’s recent announcement that it is quitting the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as a result of differences with the Chamber on the issue of U.S. climate policy?Gore: No. I ran into one of my fellow board members the day after the announcement, and he said, ‘Did you talk to Steve?’ And I said ‘no, did you?’ [laughs] I didn’t talk to Steve.” [That, of course, would be Apple founder Steve Jobs.]

Washington Wire: Did you agree with Apple’s decision?

Gore: Oh yeah. Absolutely.

Full excerpts here, although I wish they would release the full transcript.

Al Gore’s new book is Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis.

David Roberts flagged this exceptionally bad NYT article which attacks Vice President Gore for… putting his money where is mouth is. He summarizes:

Professional Gore haters, who make their living peddling lies, cast an absurd charge against Gore. The charge goes in the headline. It goes in the first paragraphs of the story. Then in paragraph 32 it’s revealed that the charge is baseless. And John Broder wasn’t embarrassed to have this appear under his byline.

Oh, and to state the obvious: even if it were true, nobody but a professional Gore hater could possibly find anything wrong with someone investing in the very solutions they say are necessary to save the world. The non-Gore-demented might even find that a perfectly predictable way for a capitalist to respond.

I wonder how John Broder covered the release of the Pickens Plan, which advocates federal policies designed to drastically increase the amount of natural gas used as transportation fuel. Boone Pickens, of course, is the founder of the Orwellian Clean Energy Fuels Corporation, which is the largest provider of natural gas for transportation in the country. Did Mr. Broder point out this apparent conflict of interest?  Here is what he wrote:

Mr. Pickens, 80, the founder and chairman of BP Capital Management, is the major supporter of a national energy plan announced last month to wean the United States of its dependence on foreign oil by turning to domestically produced natural gas. He has pledged $58 million for a marketing campaign that he hopes will force the presidential candidates into a discussion of his ideas.

No mention whatsoever of the fact that Mr. Pickens is one of the biggest investors in natural gas in the United States, and stands to profit substantially if his plan is enacted. Why the discrepancy, Mr. Broder?

Cameron Scott at The Thin Green Line points out that this story was pushed by Marc Morano, one of the least credible individuals I’ve ever had the pleasure of running circles around. Why is the New York Times running stories being pushed by Marc Morano? Are they trying to destroy their own credibility?

Cameron also asks another good question:

Republican lawmakers—including Kyl, Cornyn, Coburn and Hatch—as well as a few Democrats are heavily invested in oil and gas and coal companies. For the GOP, the oil and gas is the sixth largest recipient of investments; automotive is the eighth and other energy companies are 24th and 25th. (See the Democrats’ profile here: oil and gas ranks seventh and automotive 25th.)

James Inhofe, long the lead cheerleader of climate denialism and Morano’s longtime boss, had at least 10 percent of his assets in fossil fuel in 2007.

Where are the articles on that?

Unfortunately, the Times wasn’t alone in leveling this baseless attack.

The London Telegraph ran a shorter version of the same story, as did other outlets.

And once newspapers are talking about the story, it must be news. Right, Mika? Diane Sawyer seems to think so as well.

Gore’s response to this criticism has been spot on. He told Morning Joe’s Mika Brzezinski, “Of course I invest according to my beliefs and values.” And he told Good Morning America’s Diane Sawyer, “I am proud to [have] put my money where my mouth is for the past 30 years.”

I’m eagerly looking forward to the day when Brzezinski, Sawyer or Broder challenges Senator Inhofe or T. Boone Pickens, or Exxon-Mobile for that matter, about their obvious conflicts of interests.

Update: Brad Johnson points out that Diane Sawyer repeatedly invoked Glenn Beck in her attack of Gore. He also takes note of the fact out that Beck mentioned the Diane Sawyer segment three times, and clearly enjoyed the recognition from Sawyer.

Here is a tiny teaser:

“One of things that they do in this chapter is try to frame this as them versus the environmentalists, to say, ‘We’ve got the scientists on our side, and you’ve got Al Gore’,” says Romm. But, he argues, climate scientists familiar with the book see Dubner and Levitt as gravely mischaracterizing the state of the science

Go read the whole thing.

And I’ve also been meaning to link to this open letter to Steve Levitt, which is excellent. Very much worth taking the time to read if you are following the controversy over Superfreakonomics.