Yet, earlier this month, Gore had enough spare cash lying around to throw $US35million at the environmentally friendly Capricorn Investment Group.

Having popularised the lemon that is global warming, Gore is now rolling in delicious lemony wealth.

Some of his tactics would make even the most grasping capitalist wonder at the ethics of it all.

As an example, while constantly harping on the need to raise awareness of global warming, Gore routinely bans the media from his global warming speeches (or speech; it's always the same one).

The reason seems fairly obvious. Gore could hardly demand $US100,000 per chat if his audience were already aware of everything he was going to say.

He keeps the press out so he can protect his franchise - which is, among other things, harping on the need to raise awareness of global warming.

Beautiful.

A similar cycle is evident in the work of former Australian of the Year Tim Flannery, who first writes a series of books warning of carbon-induced climate change then flies to the US in a carbon-monster jet to deliver $50,000 speeches warning of carbon-induced climate change.

The Weather Makers author should call his next book The Lemon Maker.

(By the way, that $50,000 claim is from Flannery himself, so may be subject to usual levels of Flantastic exaggeration. Let's say he's pulling down half that per speech, which is still enough after a US tour to buy a fully pimped stretch Prius.)

Want to buy the world's most pointless T-shirt?

That would be the Earth Hour garment offered by WWF-Australia, sold to celebrate the campaign that urges people around the world to switch off lights and non-essential appliances for one hour between 8pm and 9pm on March 29.

It's a shirt you won't be able to see during the actual event it promotes, on account of wearers being in the dark and probably scrabbling around on their hands and knees for beetles to eat.