On Monday, comedian Stephen Colbert had a fabulous interview with the Sierra Club's Carl Pope (h/t Ecorazzi). Enjoy:

Three days after former Vice President Al Gore gave a speech outlining his plan for countering climate change, he appeared on “Meet the Press” with Tom Brokaw who lauded the former Vice President's efforts but also pressed him on his own energy usage and suggested that Americans must sacrifice in order to fight climate change.

Brokaw started off his program lauding Gore, claiming that since losing the presidency to Bush in 2000, Gore has “since focused on his environmental crusade, winning an Oscar for his documentary ‘An Inconvenient Truth,’ as well as the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. On Thursday he proposed a bold new plan to address global warming and the energy crisis.”

After Gore joined the program, Brokaw again lauded the former Vice President and showed his personal beliefs on global warming by describing him as “Nobel Laureate, Oscar winner and crusader for conservation of energy and attacking the climate change that we're all experiencing in this country.”

For many months, NewsBusters has been reporting the financial interest Nobel Laureate Al Gore has in advancing global warming hysteria, and has continually wondered when media will raise this issue to the American people.

On Sunday's "Meet the Press," Gore gave host Tom Brokaw the perfect setup to ask him about his investments in renewable fuel technology when the former Vice President mentioned how much money T. Boone Pickens has put into windmill farms.

Predictably, Brokaw missed this opportunity to be the first major, mainstream media member to ask the Global Warmingist-in-Chief about his own investments, and just how much he stands to make if America does indeed shift all of its electricity production to renewable sources of energy.

Here's the exchange in question (video embedded below the fold):

The "Yeas and Nays" gossip column in Friday’s Washington Examiner reported the liberal weirdness on display at the Kennedy Center when Robert Redford assembled poets aged 13 to 25 for a supposedly deep-thinking "spoken word forum" on the environment. One "def poet" who inspired Redford was George Watsky, who touts himself as the "Undisputed Backtalk Champion." But the snippet that the gossips used was simply bizarre, from a poem titled "I Am So Green."

I have green middle fingers and I flip the green bird....I am so green, Morpheus offered me the red pill and the blue pill, I chose the green one.

Redford is apparently dazzled by odd Matrix metaphors. "You cannot go through a day without seeing something real coming up in print, radio, TV, song, fashion or film," Redford said. "But this group added something new, and what is really important is that they are using both their ears to hear the adults that are making the policies to convey the depth and degree of their passion and their voices to demand that we participate in the system that is shaping them."

Updates at end of post: Schmidt responds to (and ignores!) NBers' questions.

Last Saturday, one of the nation's leading climate alarmists -- a government employee with a history of attacking people that don't agree with his views on anthropogenic global warming -- wrote rather disparagingly about a somewhat satirical NewsBusters piece.

Despite claiming he typically doesn’t comment on things “written about climate change in the more excitable parts of [sic] web,” NASA’s Gavin Schmidt took time out of his busy Saturday schedule to respond to something he described as “probably the most boneheaded article that I have seen in ages.”

Was this an effort by one of the founding members of RealClimate – the world’s leading website specializing in climate change hysteria – to correct errors he felt existed in my article? Or, was this a predictable attack on a popular conservative blog that not only regularly exposes the one-sided nature of media reports about global warming, but also frequently brings attention to studies that go counter to RealClimate’s, and maybe more importantly, Schmidt’s views?

After all, to climate alarmists like Schmidt, media shouldn’t be reporting the realist (nee “skeptical”) side of this issue as was made perfectly clear by Nobel Laureate Al Gore during an interview with NBC’s Meredith Vieira during the November 5, 2007, installment of the “Today” show (photo via NPR):

[Updated] "Good Morning America" reporter Claire Shipman on Friday worried that Al Gore's occasional kind word about John McCain might result in the election of the Republican. Interviewing the former vice president about his new energy proposals, the ABC correspondent fretted, "...And some Democratic eyebrows have been raised at your praise of John McCain. Democrats worried that maybe you're, you're going to help him get elected."

That question, which hit Gore from the left, was one of the few, even slightly challenging queries. Instead, Shipman tossed softballs, such as asking, "Do you think that, right now, climate change is as much a threat to our country as terror?" The ex-VP asserted that "the climate crisis is by far the most serious threat we have ever faced" and Shipman offered no follow-up. She failed to ask Gore for some sort of evidence to back up this claim or to point out that terrorism killed 3000 people on 9/11 alone. (How many have died from the "climate crisis?)

As my fellow NewsBuster Amy Ridenour accurately reported, global warming obsessed media are predictably gushing over Nobel Laureate Al Gore's call for America to completely convert all of its electricity production to solar, wind, and other renewable sources by 2018 (photo courtesy AFP).

As they gush, fawn, and genuflect, will press members dare to point out that Gore is heavily invested in companies which manufacture that which he's recommending America convert to?

After all, as NewsBusters reported on April 11, Gore admitted his financial stake in such things to an audience in Monterey, California, back in March (video available here, relevant section begins at minute 15:00):

The media love affair with Al Gore continues. Thursday night, after Gore delivered a speech calling for the end of “carbon-based fuels” within ten years, CBS anchor Katie Couric asserted that “as many as 10 million families could have their electricity shut off this year because they simply can't pay their bills,” but, she assured viewers, “Al Gore says there is a green answer.” Reporter Nancy Cordes then trumpeted: “The man who has cast himself as the country's environmental conscience issued an audacious dare to America's next President.” Cordes concluded with how “both Barack Obama and John McCain accepted Gore's challenge. As McCain put it, Katie, if the Vice President says it's doable, I believe it's doable.”

Introducing her interview with Gore, which she traveled to Washington, DC to conduct, Couric hailed: “Al Gore laid down a green gauntlet today.” And she couldn't resist reminding viewers that Gore's “environmental work earned him a Nobel prize” before she helpfully cued him up on energy policy: “It really is multi-tiered, isn't it? I mean, it's a national security issue, it's an environmental issue.” Couric soon moved on to pushing Gore about accepting the VP slot or at least “being, say, an environmental czar” in Obama's administration.

“Our Planet,” fill-in NBC anchor Ann Curry teased, "Al Gore's ambitious energy plan for America off fossil fuels within ten years. Is it possible?” Reporter Ann Thompson celebrated how Gore “threw down the gauntlet to the nation to dramatically change the way America generates electricity.” After reporting Gore's plan would cost $3 trillion, Thompson called Gore “undaunted” and concluded: “And he says the time to move is now.”

A rather shocking event happened Wednesday: the American Physical Society, an organization representing nearly 50,000 physicists, opened for debate "the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for the global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution."

This is significant because on November 18, 2007, the organization declared:

Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth's climate. Greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide as well as methane, nitrous oxide and other gases. They are emitted from fossil fuel combustion and a range of industrial and agricultural processes.

The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring.

Now, almost exactly eight months later, the following was posted at the APS website (emphasis added):

So much of the liberal bias on cable networks is visual. It can impact the casual viwer on the treadmill at the gym watching with the audio off. Case in point is the video embedded at right from the July 15 edition of "The Situation Room" on CNN. [audio available here]

In it, anchor Wolf Blitzer tries to put a substantial wedge between House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) and presumptive GOP nominee Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) over drilling for oil in ANWR. Notice that while Boehner defends opening up a small patch of the national Arctic wilderness for oil exploration, CNN producers make Boehner share a split-screen with footage of frolicking wildlife. The caption on screen reads, "Republicans at Odds Over Oil: McCain Against ANWR Drilling."

The message is clear: the GOP is the party that wants to shed [animal] blood for oil.

The global warming alarmism in the mainstream media never ceases to stop as "The Houston Chronicle" went so far to warn of a spike in kidney stone cases. Yes, driving an SUV can now cause pain in the back as well as the pump.

In a July 14 article, "Got kidney stones? Blame global warming study says," reporter Eric Berger warned "the prevalence of kidney stones may rise by 30 percent." The line of reasoning behind the study is that as temperatures warm, people sweat more without adequate fluids to replace and thus create more kidney stone cases.

Surprisingly, the article did contain some balance noting "some global warming skeptics"- (they didn’t even use the pejorative term "deniers.") -"also note that the U.S. Southeast has actually cooled during the last century" and even quoted skeptic Rob Bradley of the Institute for Energy Research.

Berger then immediately refuted Mr. Bradley and warned of an "increase in tropical diseases such as malaria."

So global warming "deniers" beware, you will not only have blood on your hands, but in your toilets.

The environmental movement stands to lose many supporters if it works against people's economic prosperity, said energy security expert Gal Luft on July 11.

Luft, executive director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, warned attendees of the fourth "Integrity in Science" conference in Washington, D.C. that as economic prosperity declines, apathy about climate change issues increases.

"They [poor people] could not give a damn about climate change because they want 24 hours a day light," said Luft. He cited the example of people living in slums outside Bangalore, India. (Audio is available here)

"In India alone, 600 million people are not connected even to the [power] grid," said Luft. "When you talk to these people all you ahve to do is drive 10 minutes from the center of Bangalore to the slums there and ask them about climate change. And they'll tell you: 'We want electricity, we want it today, we want it cheap, we don't care how you make it.'"

Our friends at Minnesotans for Global Warming -- the folks who brought us the fabulous video "If We Had Some Global Warming" -- have just released a new number deliciously set to John Lennon's "Imagine."

Update: Lyrics at end of post.

In today's "People Can Prove Whatever They Want If They Really Try Hard Enough" moment, Swiss scientists claimed early this week that efforts to clean the air over Europe the past three decades are responsible for at least half of that continent's 1°C rise in temperatures since 1980.

In an interesting chicken and the egg conundrum, scientists in America claimed Thursday that global warming causes smog.

So, cleaning the air causes global warming -- which ends up leading to higher levels of smog?

Let's start with the Swiss study reported by NewScientist Wednesday (emphasis added, photo courtesy Reuters):

Is environmental activism a mark of intelligence? Joy Behar seems to think so. The panel on the July 10 edition of "The View" discussed the vicious divorce case between model Christie Brinkley and husband Peter Cook. Joy Behar, who blamed earthquakes on global warming, countered charges the Brinkley is an "air head" by noting she is "very concerned and upset about the environment."

"You know, I have to say in her [Christie Brinkley’s] defense, she is one of these people that worry about nuclear reactors on Long Island. And she has gas masks that she was giving out to people in case of a terrorist attack. She’s very concerned and upset about the environment. So she’s not an air head and she’s not stupid. Just because she’s a model, you know, people think she’s an air head. She’s not."

From the "You've Got To Be Kidding Me" department: "Global Warming Causing California Glacier to Grow, Scientists Say."

What? Hasn't Nobel Laureate Al Gore and every climate alarmist in the media been warning us that global warming is causing glaciers to melt, and that we're all going to die if we don't do something about it?

Well, not so fast, because according to the CBC, much like climate change can cause droughts AND torrential rains, it now seems the tricky little devil can make glaciers grow too (emphasis added, better stow fluids and sharp objects):

Two weeks ago, a parent-teacher council blamed the online research source Wikipedia for falling test scores in Scotland.

On Tuesday, Canadian columnist Lawrence Solomon blamed Wikipedia for helping to spread global warming hysteria around the world.

The connection? Oftentimes "inaccurate or deliberately misleading information" published by Wikipedia being taken as fact by unsuspecting readers.

In the case of climate change, such inaccurate or deliberately misleading information acts to solidify the myth being espoused by Nobel Laureate Al Gore as millions of people across the globe believe Wikipedia is a purely factual resource.

As the Scotsman reported on June 21, such an assumption carries risks (emphasis added):

As media members have advanced global warming hysteria by claiming the naturally occurring gas carbon dioxide is going to destroy the planet, one seemingly obvious scientific constant has eluded them: plants love that which people like Nobel Laureate Al Gore want to eliminate.

Truth be told, without carbon dioxide, we'd all die, a scientific fact that has been inexplicably lost in this so-called debate.

Well, as amazing as it may seem, a group of German scientists have discovered what, with all due modesty, has been inherently obvious to yours truly for years.

Believe it or not, Agence France-Press reported Tuesday that crops love all this extra CO2 (emphasis added):