I don't think it's really fair to say that Al Gore popularized it. People were certainly widely talking about global warming (though usually under the name "the greenhouse effect") as long ago as I can remember, which is about 1990. Gore didn't hitch onto the bandwagon until sixteen years later.

The real reason for the left-right divide is that the most widely proposed solutions always seem to involve more taxes and more government intervention. They are also, in my opinion, not the most effective way to spend that money on CO2 emissions reduction.

Ultimately it's a technological problem and demands technological solutions -- we need to find ways to cheaply and efficiently produce the same amount of energy without burning fossil fuels. The solution is therefore throwing more money at R&D, not attempting to coerce people into using less energy.

The "cash for clunkers" program, for instance, cost $3 billion. The budget of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado, which is doing some really good work, is about $130 million a year.

I'm not going to comment on the particular facet of contention here. I do, however, think that there is a severe deficiency in critical thinking skills in modern society. Especially in America. It lends toward making many assumptions and accepting many claims on everything except facts and it encourages leaping to conclusions simply because it's better than an unanswered question.

I am not a well-learned student of critical thinking, either. I'm just another public school cretin. I do value knowledge and evidence, however. I despise when people are reaching a conclusion or supporting a claim in a clearly disingenuous way, though. I don't think I ever participate in this, but I'm certainly not immune, I'm sure.

The greatest way we could benefit society and advance mankind in a single generation would be to embrace critical thinking and teach the skills to every student and then allow them to draw conclusions to things instead of jumping on one bandwagon or another, based on variables unrelated to facts.