Al Gore, former Nobel Prize nominee and Oscar winner for An Inconvenient Truth, has arranged the side trip at the request of three students at University of Victoria.
Organizers are seeking corporate donations and charging $199-plus ticket fees to cover costs, including Gore’s rumored fee of $175,000 US.
Gore was vice-president to Bill Clinton for two terms. He ran for president in 2000 but lost a hotly contested race to George W. Bush. He now dedicates much of his time to lecturing about the perils of global warming.
Democracy is utterly dependent upon an electorate that is accurately informed. In promoting climate change denial (and often denying their responsibility for doing so) industry has done more than endanger the environment. It has undermined democracy.
There is a vast difference between putting forth a point of view, honestly held, and intentionally sowing the seeds of confusion. Free speech does not include the right to deceive. Deception is not a point of view. And the right to disagree does not include a right to intentionally subvert the public awareness.
You don't see this every day. President Barack Obama used Twitter today to call out climate deniers in Congress who are blocking political action to address climate change. 
The tweet links to this video released by Organizing for Action, the 501(c)(4) campaign group that promotes the President's national agenda.
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Only $175,000 ?
Well, I guess Al hasn't finished wallpapering his office with giant computer screens:
http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1622338_1363003,00.html
He could give Ernst Blofeld some serious competition in the Bond villains secret headquarters department.
$175,000? Egad. Al Gore's
$175,000? Egad.
Al Gore's next book will be titled: "How To Get Rich Off of Hippies".
Everyone is bashing him - why
even with all this neg. hype..remember he is still the only one that did something PROACTIVE about Global warming issue!
Everyone's bashing Gore
Everyone's bashing Gore because they have nothing else to bash. His message is true in "An Inconvenient Truth" and, as they can't pick apart the science, they feel they have to try to discredit the man. It's a sorry state the "denier" movement is in. They're grasping at straws and are on their last breaths.
I am bewildered by this,
I am bewildered by this, too. But it seems that anyone who has any success at appealing to the average person re: AGW is labelled self-serving, an egomaniac, etc. People like Al Gore and David Suzuki are able to express complex scientific information in a way that people can understand, and for this they are reviled. Suzuki has been clarifying science for audiences for a staggering 28 years on The Nature of Things, and I think he does a great job. I still mourn the loss of Carl Sagan, who had a similar talent for drawing popular attention to scientific issues and a passion for engaging people. He recognized AGW as a serious issue, and had he not died 11 years ago he would no doubt be speaking out with Gore, Suzuki, Hansen and their many colleagues. Would Sagan have been subjected to this kind of personal attack?
ps
Just as a matter of interest, I wonder to what use the speaking fee is put? The "issue" of how much energy Gore's house uses evaporated fairly quickly when it was itemized and clarified.