Al Gore's 'expletive-laden' climate change rant

The former vice president has some choice words for global-warming skeptics  

Best Opinion:  U.S. News, Portland Mercury

The audio: Al Gore, the Nobel Peace prize-winning former vice president who fell a few hundred Florida votes shy of becoming America's 43rd president, is one of the world's leading advocates of climate change awareness. And last week, while attending the Aspen Institute Forum on Communications and Society seminar in Colorado, Gore proved just how deeply held his convictions are. The Democrat was unknowingly recorded giving an "expletive-laden" rant on the politics of climate change, during which he blasted the dubious theories of climate change skeptics as "bullshit." (Listen to the audio below.) "When you go and talk to any audience about climate, you hear them washing back at you the same crap over and over and over again," he says. "There's no longer a shared reality on an issue like climate — even though the very existence of our civilization is threatened."

The reaction: This is just what the climate change discourse needs, says Tierney Sneed at U.S. News & World Report. Gore's diatribe is "passionate and profanity-laced," and it reinvigorates a debate that has gone quiet while the government focuses on unemployment and the deficit. Indeed, "this makes me very happy," says Paul Constant at The Portland Mercury. But Gore should get this mad more often, and to wider audiences. "Preaching angrily to the choir is fine, but treating climate change deniers politely isn't going to make them go away. He needs to bring this anger to the public." Have a listen: