One hundred million reasons why Al Gore loves his current job

I usually prefer to stay focused on the substance of this debate rather than on the personalities involved, but there's so much about the AGW ringleader, Al Gore, that shouts out "snake oil salesman" to me.

Put simply, Gore has profited handsomely from this TEOTWAWKI Tour. Steven Swinford of the UK's Sunday Times reports the following about Mr. Gore:

Al Gore, the former US vice-president turned environmental campaigner, has made more than £50m in just seven years from his books, speeches and shrewd investments in technology and green ventures.

[...] Today Gore commands between £50,000 and £85,000 a speech, holds stock options in Google worth £15m and has made as much as £4m from advances on his book deals. He is also advising a US venture capital company on how to invest a $600m green technology fund.

He has come a long way since losing the 2000 presidential election to George W Bush when, according to official documents, Gore was worth just £1m. His biggest assets were his two homes in Nashville, Tennessee, and Arlington, Virginia, valued at £375,000, and £500,000 invested in oil company shares.

Read on to see the many other ways that AGW has been very good for Gore. For our American readers, UK£50 million translates to over US$100 million. That'll get you quite a heap of offsets. Or, perhaps, the presidential nomination of a major American political party, just as the campaign of that party's presumptive front-runner is "faltering".

But wait a minute -- I just noticed in the excerpt above that he has $US1 million invested in oil company shares. Does that mean that every time his alarmism and the government policies derived therefrom drive up the cost of oil, Gore earns profits?

Nice racket if you can get into it.