Nobel Laureate Al Gore's cable news channel Current TV announced Wednesday it's reducing its staffing by 80 people.

The company said in a press release that these layoffs weren't about cutting costs, but instead a reshifting of priorities.

The website Gawker exposed the foolishness of such a claim: 

A British study has found a new area of sea off the coast of Antarctica, supposedly caused by global warming, that is soaking up carbon dioxide climate alarmists like Al Gore and his media minions believe is responsible for -- wait for it! -- global warming.

You really can't make this stuff up!

Professor Lloyd Peck, a near-shore marine biologist from the British Antarctic Survey, marvelously said about the find, "It shows nature's ability to thrive in the face of adversity."

With obviously little fanfare, this supports the view of much-maligned climate realists who maintain that fluctuations in global temperatures are largely cyclical, and that nature typically balances such changes over the course of time.

As Agence France-Presse reported Tuesday:

The Environmental Protection Agency has threatened two of its own attorneys over a video they posted at YouTube which was highly critical of pending global warming legislation.

This wasn't the first time the agency came down on its own people for having views contrary to the Obama administration, for in March it suppressed an internal report which challenged the connection between rising temperatures and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Somewhat surprisingly, the New York Times reported this incident Tuesday (video embedded below the fold, h/t Hot Air):

Permit a late word or two on Newsweek’s thoroughly in-the-tank cover story for Al Gore. Sharon Begley oozed about Gore’s favorite quote in his book – but never seems to note that Gore’s "philosopher" expert is a Marxist. It comes near the very end of the piece:

His favorite quote in [his new book] Our Choice is from the philosopher Theodor Adorno (1903–1969): "The conversion of all questions of truth into questions of power … has attacked the very heart of the distinction between true and false."

Adorno, and his colleagues in what is called the "Frankfurt School," are Marxists. Al Gore and his liberal admirers in the press (see this Seattle Times dispatch) aspire to make it through Adorno's impenetrable prose. British journalist Alastair McKay brightly reported that in Scotland in 2006, Gore lauded the entire school of Marxists:

Good Morning America’s Diane Sawyer conducted a surprisingly tough interview with Al Gore on Tuesday, pressing him on profiting from global warming and whether or not climate change legislation is pointless in light of pollution-spewing countries such as China. She also forced the ex-Vice President to respond to a challenge from Glenn Beck.

Sawyer even pointed out the amount of methane gas created from the bodily functions of cows, observing that it's "20 times more damaging it is than CO2." The host, who will become the anchor of World News in January, then played a clip of Fox News' Beck mocking Gore:

GLENN BECK: I'm siding with PETA on this one. Once again asking Al Gore if you really want to save the planet, Al, why don't you put down the cheeseburger and pick up the veggie burger? Time for, maybe, soy milk and tofurkey.

Earning a chuckle even from Al Gore himself for the over the top glorification, CBS's Katie Couric opened her “@katiecouric” CBSNews.com Web show interview with Al Gore by extolling: “I'm honored to be joined today by the Godfather of Green, the King of Conservation: Former Vice President Al Gore.” The very friendly 30-minute Monday interview was prompted by the release of Gore new book, 'Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis.'

Monday's CBS Evening News carried a brief excerpt, sans the excessively laudatory introduction: “Today I spoke with someone who knows a bit about Washington politics and the environment, former Vice President Al Gore. He's out with a new book and is on the cover of this week's edition of Newsweek.”

Audio: MP3 clip which matches the video.

"Few people have been as vocal about the urgency of global warming and the need to reinvent the way the world produces and consumes energy. And few have put as much money behind their advocacy as Mr. Gore and are as well positioned to profit from this green transformation, if and when it comes."

For years I have personally challenged mainstream media outlets to admit how much money Nobel Laureate Al Gore HAS and WILL make by spreading global warming hysteria.

On Tuesday, the New York Times will feature a front page story that discusses exactly that.

Readers are strongly encouraged to strap themselves in tightly, for the Times' John Broder is about to take them on a journey beyond their wildest dreams:

TVNewswer reported Monday that Katie Couric “will sit down this afternoon for an exclusive interview with former Vice President Al Gore in advance of the release of his new book, Our Choice, to be released tomorrow. Portions of the interview will air tonight on the CBS Evening News.” Full title of his latest left-wing tract, 'Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis.' Don't count on Couric, however, to challenge any of Gore's premises since she's been more interested in trumpeting his cause.

Back in March and May of 2007, Couric celebrated “a lot of excitement on Capitol Hill. A movie star showed up to testify before Congress -- a movie star named Al Gore” and hailed: “He was once called 'Mr. Stiff.' Now he's known as 'The Goreacle,' the new Al Gore.” With “Gore 2.0” on screen, Couric set up the subsequent tribute by asserting that “no one's getting more attention than the latest edition of Al Gore.”

(Meanwhile, this week's Newsweek cover champions: “The Thinking Man's Thinking Man: Al Gore's New Plan for the Planet.” See cover image below the jump.)

"Al Gore's views on climate change are advancing as rapidly as the phenomenon itself."

Such was Newsweek science editor Sharon Begley's sub-headline of her proselytizing piece "The Evolution Of An Eco-Prophet."

Fortunately for the Goracle's loyal followers, Begley didn't ask him how the planet could possibly have cooled the past eleven years despite his warnings about the plague "carbon dioxide."

As for all those powerful hurricanes Prophet Al hath foretold, tropical cyclone activity has been at 30-year lows for the last three years.

Even New York Times environmental writer and true believer Andrew Revkin recently noticed that Arctic ice levels have actually been on the rise lately.

But Begley, although being a "science editor," wasn't concerned about anything so mundane as -- ahem -- science in this article. Heavens no.

'Twas much more important to tell parishioners how the eco-prophet looked:

For several years, Nobel Laureate Al Gore and his media sycophants have been telling the nation that a movement away from fossil fuels to biofuels is necessary to save the planet from the Left's bogeyman known as global warming.

A new study by the Marine Biological Laboratory raises series questions about this premise.

According to MBL's Thursday press release, "Carbon emissions caused by the displacement of food crops and pastures may be twice as much as those from lands devoted to biofuels production."

Beyond this, "increased fertilizer use for biofuels production will cause nitrous oxide emissions (N2O) to become more important than carbon losses, in terms of warming potential, by the end of the century" (h/t Glenn Reynolds):

Anti-human environmental extremists are advancing policies that are offensive to civil rights, dangerous to vulnerable populations and in conflict with American freedom, according to a new documentary that premiered Sunday evening.

Global warming propaganda that distorts scientific data could have severe ramifications for average Americans, just as unfounded assertions over the use of DDT triggered a ban that could be responsible for hundreds of millions of deaths in the underdeveloped world, the filmmakers claim.“Not Evil, Just Wrong” calls attention to the growing body of scientific studies that show natural variability as opposed to human activity is responsible for warming and cooling trends.

In many respects, the film serves as a rejoinder to former Vice-President Al Gore’s documentary entitled “An Inconvenient Truth,” which identifies human emissions as the primary culprit behind global warming.

Monday’s Lou Dobbs Tonight on CNN gave attention to filmmaker Phelim McAleer – whose film Not Evil, Just Wrong premieres this Sunday and challenges Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth – in the aftermath of his recent attempt to get Gore to respond to the British High Court ruling that there are nine factual errors in An Inconvenient Truth. But McAleer’s microphone was cut off as he tried to get Gore to answer for some of these inaccuracies and whether the former Vice President was trying to correct his mistakes. After a report by correspondent Casey Wian – who showed a clip of the exchange between McAleer and Gore, and who also mentioned some of the inaccurate points in An Inconvenient Truth about polar bears and Hurricane Katrina – Dobbs hosted a debate segment between McAleer and Fred Krupp of the Environmental Defense Fund.

McAleer pointed out that many of the environmental scientists pushing global warming theory were pushing global cooling theory decades earlier: "And the same environmentalists who are now saying it is warming, 20 and 30 years ago were saying we're going to have an ice age. I'm old enough to be at school and I was told that we're going into a new ice age."

Former Vice President Al Gore a few years ago advised Internet behemoth Google about "aspects of search quality."

Such was reported by the New Yorker in its October 12 issue (subscription required).

By themselves, the following paragraphs from this 6500-word piece don't mean much.

However, given the ongoing concerns about Google's political leanings and how its search algorithms might be manipulated to favor liberal news outlets over conservative points of view, the very idea that Gore might have had any input to this process is worrisome to say the least:

Stanford University's noted global warming alarmist and Al Gore advisor Stephen Schneider appeared in a 1978 television program warning Americans of a coming Ice Age.

For those that have forgotten, "In Search of..." was a televised documentary series from 1976 to 1982 that was normally narrated by Leonard Nimoy.

In the May 1978 episode "The Coming Ice Age," Nimoy presented to viewers facts about the previous Ice Age, and discussed how the bitterly cold winters of 1976 and 1977 might be a harbinger of a new one: "Climate experts believe the next one is on its way. According to recent evidence, it could come sooner than anyone had expected." 

One climate expert cited was Stephen Schneider, a climatologist working for the National Center for Atmospheric Research at the time who was asked to address some of the possible solutions being discussed to stop the coming Ice Age such as using nuclear energy to loosen the polar icecaps (video embedded below the fold, relevant section at 6:04, h/t Minnesotans for Global Warming via Bob Ferguson):

Thanks to Drudge, the Internet will likely be abuzz with the news and video about Irish filmmaker Phelim McAleer's challenge to former Vice President Al Gore over correcting the nine errors found by a British judge in Gore's Oscar-winning "An Inconvenient Truth" documentary.

McAleer is co-producer of Not Evil, Just Wrong, a film challenging the content of Gore's film, that according to Wiki will be premiering on October 18.

When organizers of the Society of Environmental Journalists annual conference tired of McAleer's refusal to back down and acquiesce to Gore's conveniently incomplete answers, they cut off his microphone. The video also shows a meeting official scolding McAleer afterwards for attempting to "monopolize" the floor, telling him that "you got as much as you're going to get."

Gore's answers to McAleer's challenges are so disingenuous that they deserve their own Oscar for dissembling.

Here is a transcript of the exchange, which begins at about the 0:40 mark of the video:

You probably already knew Jeanane Garofalo was no fan of conservatives, Republicans or just about anything that could be described as right of center. But the former Air America host and MSNBC regular really has a low regard for conservative activists.

In an appearance at the 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C. on Aug. 21, Garofalo ripped into tea party protesters, or what some of the wizards of smart on the left have deemed "tea baggers" calling them "functionally retarded adults" and "racists."

"Do you remember tea baggers?" Garofalo said. "It was just so much easier when we could just call them racists. I just don't know why we can't call them racists, or functionally retarded adults."

On Wednesday’s CBS Early Show, correspondent Daniel Sieberg reported on a young global warming activist from California: "...everyday citizens of all ages are doing their part to raise awareness of climate change....15-year-old Alec Loorz takes his message across the country, using poles to illustrate the predicted sea level rise if nothing is done to prevent global warning."

At one point, Loorz declared: "All of lower Manhattan would be underwater." That’s not the first time such a claim was made on the CBS morning news program. On November 5, 2007, Early Show co-host Harry Smith interviewed New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg about a proposal to impose a national carbon tax and declared that "Manhattan will be underwater by 2050" if global warming was left unchecked.

On Wednesday, Sieberg went on to tout Loorz’s activism: "Alec’s voice also has the support of a former vice president. At the age of just 12, he applied to be part of Al Gore’s network of official speakers. It took some persistence, but eventually, Alec was accepted....And Alec’s cool factor certainly isn’t lost on his friends and family members."

NBC's Andrea Mitchell, on Thursday's, "Today" show cheered an added benefit to the release of Euna Lee and Laura Ling from North Korea, was that it reunited Bill Clinton and Al Gore. In a segment headlined, "Together Again, Clinton and Gore's Emotional Reunion," Mitchell -- who is traveling with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wherever she goes these days -- hailed that the event brought back the "Boomer buddy team," and gushed "Both are now international superstars."

Before the Mitchell story, "Today" anchor Meredith Vieira, gleefully teased, "It was like a flashback to the nineties," and observed that both Gore and Clinton were, "Smiling. It was good." [audio available here]

The following teaser and then Mitchell report were aired on the August 6, "Today" show:

The media is so dramatically conservative in Washington, D.C. that Grover Norquist outranks former Democrat presidents, vice presidents, and presidential candidates in the booking order. So claimed the Daily Kos blogger known as "Dengre" in a post on "The bias we fight." Be amazed: 

And as we fight we need to know that we start every round of every battle at a disadvantage. If you are a liberal or a progressive you are always a dirty f***ing hippie --- always a weak-ass panda in this Bourgeois Town. And Conservatives are always the voice of power with access to any media outlet they wish to use. Grover Norquist can get on any show he wants to be booked on and he will always be treated as a serious player. Al Gore, Howard Dean or Jimmy Carter will never be given the respect that the inside-the-beltway crowd gives Norquist and the rest of his merry band of conservative think tank thieves. The gap is big.

Grover Norquist is a serious Washington insider, but let's not suggest that if he threw a huge anti-Gore concert to laugh at the hype over global warming, NBC would broadcast it for 75 hours. He also hasn't guest-hosted the Olbermann show like Howard Dean just did.

NASA's James Hansen is looking to stir up trouble at a coal mining facility in West Virginia, and the CEO of the company about to be marched on isn't taking it lying down.

Quite the contrary, Massey Energy's Don L. Blankenship, whose company is set to be protested by Hansen and actress Daryl Hannah this coming Tuesday, has challenged the NASA official to debate him about global warming and West Virginia's economy.

As reported by WOWKTV.com Sunday, Blankenship issued the following statement concerning the matter: