The man himself has been reduced to a footnote in the last advertisement from his new "we" campaign. The ad is scheduled to appear in the usual suspect media "to make sure Al Gore's clean electricity challenge stays on the top of our leaders' minds during their break." See a bigger version here.
The campaign is currently asking its millions of lip-service supporters to put their money where it counts by helping defray the placement costs of the ad in the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and New York Times. My motive for giving you a preview is not to ask that you donate (although feel free), but to ask: What do you think of this approach? Is this the kind of thing that will change congressional minds?
Given the interest in the whole framing thing among ScienceBloggers and readers, I would think there should be a fair amount of free opinion on this subject.
Incidentally, Gore's challenge to America ;;;; to produce all our electricity cleanly within 10 years ;;;; may sound ridiculously ambitious, but not everyone in Congress is laughing it off. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told Grist "It is absolutely possible." What that means in political terms is something else, but it's at least a positive endorsement.
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Why put the money into the big 3 newspapers?
They ought to be buying the ads in the remaining hometown weekly newspapers and putting the money into the local economies.
If there's no locally owned newspaper in the town, not even a weekly classified and used-car listing, then go to the next nearest one.
And if that doesn't work, leave flyers in the laundrymat.
Yeah, lots more trouble. But who are they trying to reach?
"Nancy Pelosi told Grist..."
This is akin to Brezhnev talking to Pravda. I'm sure they asked her many hard hitting questions about the details of this quixotic scheme such as Which would be prettier for the wind turbines, green or blue?
The first image looks vaguely like the World Trade Center on 9/11, and that's a bold image to have for a message about reliance or foreign oil. But it appears to be just a smokestack.
At the time, putting a man on the moon sounded ridiculously ambitious. So what if it doesn't actually happen in only ten years? We should recognise the threat and go for it. "This approach" is better than the current alternative which is nothing.
Quite frankly, Climate change is very bad news and we need people and bodies in the know to step up to the plate and put their money where their mouth is... all this 'debate' about GW is just fizzling while were sizzling.
Scientist, if they think that it is happening and is as bad as it is and are not seeing a positive reaction to their alarms - should be taking drastic steps like Hansen and Gore.
Letters stating 'we believe etc...' are not strong enough - shouldn't they be threating resignations, having sit-ins, demanding audiences with leaders, placing law suites .... setting themselves on fire and jumping of tall buildings?
I think the ad is effective. Why? Because it reaches the non-scientific audience and delivers a strong message. A message strong enough to get someone like me to sit down and do a little research on my own to sort out what's going on for myself. That's not a bad thing, regardless of who is responsible for getting the message out there.
In fact, we need more like it. The majority of everyday Joes are couch potatoes. You need to reach out through the TV and hit them on the head with it, over and over and over from all different sources for it to stick.