Esteemed former VP, or shameless huckster?

Apparently Al Gore's book sales are slipping so he sought out the only audience stupid enough to listen to his idiotic global warming bleatings...

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore warned hundreds of U.N. diplomats and staff on Thursday evening about the perils of climate change, claiming: Cigarette smoking is a "significant contributor to global warming!"

Gore, who was introduced by Secretary-General Kofi Annan, said the world faces a "full-scale climate emergency that threatens the future of civilization on earth."

Gore showed computer-generated projections of ocean water rushing in to submerge the San Francisco Bay Area, New York City, parts of China, India and other nations, should ice shelves in Antarctica or Greenland melt and slip into the sea.

Then, Gore had his staff open a stack of cardboard boxes to begin selling his new book, "An Inconvenient Truth, The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It," $19.95, to the U.N. diplomats.

First, forgive me if I'm wrong but Gore's dire, breathless warning about melting ice caps is crap! All the data I've seen lately show that the ice at the southern pole is actually thickening, and the oceans are in a slight cooling trend. As for the Arctic ice: it is frozen water, therefor, like ice in a glass of water, it is floating on the Arcitc ocean. Ice floating in water displaces an amount of water equal to it's own weight already, so if it melts, the overall level of the water remains the same.

Example: The USS Cole displaces 1,090 tons, the USS Nimitz displaces 104,000 tons, and judging from the size of Al's head alone, he displaces no less than 0.15 tons.

Second, shouldn't Gore be lecturing the Chinese and Europeans who both adore smoking, about its make-believe dangers to the environment?

Third, and I loved this part, Gore was just trying to scare everybody into buying his stupid, fictional book by telling them their cities were in peril. I wonder what the sales were for the evening.