(Sorry if this is obvious) What does Al Gore gain personally from this? What's his motivation?
Millions of dollars and momentum for a shot at the White house.Power and greed in other words...
Actually Al Gore has gotten rather wealthy out of this. He was, of course, always wealthy and came from an elite wealthy family. And he had some dubious dealings with Armand Hammer in the past. But Gore runs a "carbon offset" company that profits nicely from people atoning for their carbon sins by buying offsets from Gore's company. In addition he earned millions from his hysterical, error filled "documentary" -- enough to afford private jets to fly around the world for elite gatherins like the Cannes Film Festival. And the politicians in Norway gave him an award worth a large sum of money which Gore bragged about giving to a "non profit" organization -- which he happens to run. That allows him the tax benefits while still allowing a lot of control over how the money is spent.
He has worked up at least two book deals out of this that also earned him a fair sum of cash, gets hefty speaking fees. All in all he has pulled in multiple millions of dollars from being a panic monger. I don't think he wants a run for the White House, the reduction in income would be too much. Mr. Gore has done very well by doing "good".
There are Big Business interests on both side of the AGW debate. Whichever way the debate tilts there is someone ready to make a fortune from Govt interference in the market. This is lost on some believers of AGW. They assume capitalists are one monolithic old-boys-network and that all are AGW deniers. Case in point: this Media Lens article. They don't realise they're just working for the profits of some other business interest (and of course Govt bureaucrats).
Cheers!
Once again, I don't know of this "hysteria" of which you speak. I may be a lab rat but I do read the papers, and what I'm seeing is a convergence of the popular worry to the scientific worry. Half the public is still trying to pretend that this is a "hoax", maybe even a "socialist" conspiracy, that they're being lied to by scientists, that It's The Sun or What About the "Medieval Warm Period" (or even benthic bacteria 
), but opinionmakers and policymakers are coming to appreciate what the science predicts and what the ecological (and by extension economic) consequences are. People are really coming to appreciate the difference between the largely speculative harms, such as an increase in hurricane strength and frequency, and the sure bets, such as desertification and ocean acidification.
But anyway: Give them a carbon market and you'll see far less of this scrounging for favors. In a vacuum of action, do-somethingism is deceptively attractive to the average Joe. Thus a politician who subsidizes some industrial scheme a spin doctor can tie to AGW mitigation comes out on top.
Carbon trading internalizes the externality and provides a means to reduction (that looks a lot like Coaseian bargaining!) that is neutral to the market. Problem solved.
Ben.....CLS may just taer you a new one about that. 
And after that he'll TEAR you another one for luck....
^@#*&&%*&*(^!!! Spell checker!!!
That's why I posted it.
Ben: this blog has reported numerous times on hysterical false claims that got widespread media play in the warming debate. So to say you have never seen such hysteria is only true directly but not indirectly since I have quoted from those sources here on several occassion where I know you read the remarkst since you commented on them.
James: I would tear Ben a new one. We disagree respectfully.
Ahh, yes, you're right. This blog has reported both on the exaggeration of global warming and on the effort to defeat science with rhetoric, twist around enough, and make AGW somehow go away.
"It's not happening", "man isn't causing it", and "OMG we're all going to die" are all quite false claims. Whether they're hysterical depends on the state of mind of the source.
I'm still trying to figure out what bug has bit Arnold Kling lately. He's been serving up stale denialist leftovers over at EconLog, without even looking for the scientists' rebuttals, and so far has been shot down every time. Is it hysterics, or a coming-of-age process for libertarians?
Ben: On other matters can you check your email for emails from me?
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