Al Gore's five loaves and two fishes (and his $100,000,000 made from "Global Warming")

Al Gore's five loaves and two fishes (and his $100,000,000 made from "Global Warming")

Not content with having invented the internet, the great Climate Science communicator Al Gore appears to have developed still more miraculous skills of late: the ability to turn 17,000 into 8.6 million – just like that.

The figures refer to the number of "views" for Gore's special "24 Hours Of ManBearPig" which this column helped celebrate the other day. Gore claims that as many as 8.6 million flocked to his thrilling festival of climate fear; but a nasty cruel man called Charles the Moderator at Watts Up With That? has "done the math" and reckons the figure is probably more like 17,000. And that, he believes, is a generous estimate. (H/T John from CA).

So whom are we to trust? An evil climate denying website run by evil climate deniers? Or a loving family man who has selflessly made it his mission to travel the world acquiring as large a carbon footprint as possible in order to spread the word that we should all drastically reduce our carbon footprints?

I'm with Gore, obviously. Not only has his knowledge and insight proved hugely influential on our own beloved Prime Minister's climate policies – "I've just had a meeting with Al Gore. He really knows his stuff", David Cameron once told a distinguished businessman who'd come hoping for a quiet word about his economically disastrous environmental policies – but it's quite obvious that he really is a man with the power to work miracles.

Just look, for example, at the magical way he has managed to make his fortune grow. In 2000, the year he lost the presidential election, he was worth a modest $1-2 million. Now his fortune has swollen to well over $100 million, thanks to partly to his $100,000 plus speaking engagements (which have earned him at least $10 million) and partly to his canny green investment decisions (such as his decision to pull his investments out of the Chicago Carbon Trading exchange before it collapsed due to global lack of interest in trading an Emperor's New Clothes commodity invented by Enron's Kenneth Lay and championed by an even dodgier Hawaiian/Kenyan born Chicago lawyer).more