In this image from video, taken Nov. 9, 2015, former Vice President Al Gore gestures during an interview with The Associated Press in Nashville, Tenn. After decades of raising alarms about global warming,... (Associated Press) 
 
 NASHVILLE, Tennessee (AP) — After decades of raising alarms about global warming, former Vice President Al Gore is now raising hopes. 
 
 As a top-level international climate summit starts later this month in Paris, Gore — who helped negotiate the 1997 climate treaty that didn't control the problem — is sure this time will be different. 
 
 "I'm optimistic," Gore said in a sit-down interview this week with The Associated Press. "We're going to win this. We need to win it faster because a lot of damage is being done day by day. We continue to put 110 million tons of global warming pollution into the atmosphere every 24 hours as if it's an open sewer." 
 
 In 35 minutes, Gore — portrayed by critics as a preacher of doom and gloom — uses versions of the words "optimistic" or "hopeful" or "positive" at least 16 times. 
 
 Even when he ticks off the alarming impacts of global warming, he finishes with a note of confidence. 
 
 "The number of extremely hot days has multiplied dramatically," Gore said. "The large downpours, floods, mudslides, the deeper and longer droughts, rising sea levels from the melting ice, forest fires, there's a long list of events that people can see and feel viscerally now. Every night on the television news is like a nature hike through the Book of Revelation. " 
 
 But he added: "Increasingly people are connecting those dots. And even if they don't use the phrase climate crisis or global warming, more and more people are feeling that this is going to have to be addressed." 
 
 On Friday, Gore will take his mixed message of alarm and hope to Paris, a bit ahead of world leaders. He will host a 24-hour-telethon of sorts from the Eiffel Tower to raise awareness about global warming, featuring Elton John, French President Francois Hollande, actor Jared Leto, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, former United Nations chief Kofi Annan, actor Ryan Reynolds and California Gov. Jerry Brown. 
 
 But he said it's no longer just about convincing people to act — it now makes sense economically, too. He says solar and wind energy is dirt cheap — even free in Texas at certain hours. Businesses and developing countries are taking climate change seriously, he said. 
 
 "There really is a wave in corporate America moving rapidly toward a low carbon economy," Gore said. 
 
 Unlike the Kyoto treaty in 1997, which mandated emission cuts for rich nations but not poor, what's likely out of Paris won't require ratification by the U.S. Senate and is based on countries setting their own goals. And that, Gore insisted, is "more productive." 
 
 But is Gore, himself? 
 
 Dana Fisher, director of the Program for Society and the Environment at the University of Maryland, said Gore's "role is limited at this point. There was a moment in time when he was pushing a wave of attention." But now, she says, she didn't even know that Gore was organizing his Paris telethon. 
 
 "I never thought of him as central person in the climate movement," Fisher said. 
 
 Gore insists that he is. He said he's trained "many thousands" of activists and still consults with leaders in the U.S. and other governments at all levels. He plans to be at the Paris climate talks "until the last dog dies." 
 
 Some experts suggest Gore's stint as the public face of climate change activism — especially with his 2006 documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" — may have turned off some people because the messenger was so associated with Democratic politics. 
 
 "Climate change science is demonized because of Al Gore," said Erik Conway, a NASA historian who co-wrote the book "Merchants of Doubt." Conway doesn't fault Gore, but said, "If John McCain had become the titular leader of the climate change movement instead of Al Gore, we might have a different world." 
 
 But Naomi Oreskes, a Harvard historian who is a co-author of the book with Conway, disagrees. "He's become demonized because he is effective," she said. 
 
 For his part, Gore said, "Whoever becomes highly visible as a spokesman for change gets the slings and arrows and all of the anger directed at the messenger to try to get at the message." 
 
 In addition to his Climate Reality Project, his main advocacy group (which is co-producing the telethon), Gore is chairman of Generation Investment Management, a boutique investment managing firm. He is on Apple's board of directors and is a senior partner at a Kleiner Parkins Caufield & Byers, a major Silicon Valley venture capital fund. 
 
 Fifteen years later, the 67-year-old Gore claims he doesn't dwell on 2000 election, when he won the popular vote but lost the Electoral College: "I started moving forward the day after the Supreme Court decision and I'm excited about the future." 
 
 So was losing the presidency was all for the best? 
 
 "No, I wouldn't say that," Gore said, laughing. "I don't think there's any position with as much potential to create positive change as much as president of the U.S., but that was not to be. I feel very fortunate other ways to make a positive difference." 
 
 Then he returned to the subject of his telethon. Hozier will be among the performers; Gore whips out his iPhone to play the singer's 2014 hit, "Take Me To Church." 
 
 He closed his eyes and listened. The song's final verse: "In the madness and soil of that sad earthly scene, only then I am human, only then I am clean." 
 
 ___ 
 
 Online: 
 
 Al Gore's Live Earth: 24 Hours of Reality: https://www.climaterealityproject.org/24hoursofreality 
 
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 Follow Seth Borenstein at http://twitter.com/borenbears and his work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/seth-borenstein ||||| Second round of Live Earth music concerts promised by former US vice-president and Pharrell Williams were due to be broadcasted to billions around the world 
 
 Pharrell Williams and Al Gore’s promise of a second round of Live Earth concerts on seven continents that would be broadcast to an audience of billions has been downgraded to a webcast in Paris, organisers have confirmed. 
 
 Everything you need to know about the Paris climate summit and UN talks Read more 
 
 In January, the duo and producer Kevin Wall used the World Economic Forum in Davos to announce a global event that would reach 2 billion people across 193 television networks, with promotional materials promising 100 artists in seven shows. 
 
 In May organisers delayed the event from a scheduled date of 18 June and said a free, public concert would be held in Paris in the autumn instead. 
 
 But this week organisers told the Guardian that Live Earth had been reduced to an event on the 13 and 14 November at the Champ de Mars in Paris that will be closed to the public and streamed online instead. 
 
 “It is taking a different form this year than the open concert of years past but some great musical talent has signed on to the 24 Hours event,” said a spokeswoman, referring to an annual 24-hour event held by Gore’s NGO, Climate Reality. She added: “We are partnering with several distribution partners worldwide to make sure this is the most accessible 24 Hours event in history.” 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest An inflatable pig floats above the Live Earth New York concert during Pink Floyd member Roger Waters’ set in 2007. Photograph: Mike Segar/REUTERS 
 
 Details of the webcast distribution and the acts performing are due to be announced on Thursday. 
 
 Williams, the project’s creative director, had said in January that: “Instead of just having people perform, we literally are going to have humanity harmonise all at once.” He was one of the performers in the original Live Earth concerts in 2007. 
 
 Next week’s event, dubbed 24 Hours of Reality and Live Earth: The World Is Watching, comes just weeks before world leaders including Barack Obama and Xi Jinping head to Paris for a landmark UN climate change summit. 
 
 Gore said the event is “about mobilising people around the world to help solve the climate crisis and making our voices heard in national capitals and at the negotiating table in Paris.” 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Pussycat Dolls perform at the Live Earth concert at Wembley stadium in London, July 2007. Photograph: Carl de Souza/AFP/Getty Images 
 
 French president, François Hollande, and the Socialist mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, will be taking part in the web event, along with former UN secretary general Kofi Annan, journalists, weather presenters, and campaigners. 
 
 Wall said of the new plans: “The climate crisis is grave, so we are harnessing the best content and the latest in mobile, social media, and online distribution to make sure we can connect with people everywhere.” ||||| As UN climate negotiations resume in Bonn, we look at why the crunch Paris climate conference from 30 November to 11 December is so important 
 
 What is happening in Paris this December? 
 
 The governments of more than 190 nations will gather in Paris to discuss a possible new global agreement on climate change, aimed at reducing global greenhouse gas emissions and thus avoiding the threat of dangerous climate change. 
 
 Why now? 
 
 Current commitments on greenhouse gas emissions run out in 2020, so at Paris governments are expected to produce an agreement on what happens for the decade after that at least, and potentially beyond. 
 
 Emissions trajectory Photograph: Guardian 
 
 Why is this important? 
 
 Scientists have warned that if greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, we will pass the threshold beyond which global warming becomes catastrophic and irreversible. That threshold is estimated as a temperature rise of 2C above pre-industrial levels, and on current emissions trajectories we are heading for a rise of about 5C. That may not sound like much, but the temperature difference between today’s world and the last ice age was about 5C, so seemingly small changes in temperature can mean big differences for the Earth. 
 
 Why has nobody thought of getting a global agreement on this before now? 
 
 They have: global negotiations on climate change have been carrying on for more than 20 years. The history of climate change goes back much further: in the 19th century, physicists theorised about the role of greenhouse gases, chiefly carbon dioxide, in the atmosphere, and several suggested that the warming effect would increase alongside the levels of these gases in the atmosphere. But this was all theoretical. 
 
 Only in the past few decades have scientists begun the measurements necessary to establish a relationship between current carbon levels and temperatures, and the science conducted since then has consistently pointed in one direction: that rising greenhouse gas emissions, arising from our use of fossil fuels and our industries, lead to higher temperatures. 
 
 The hottest year ever around the world – in pictures Read more 
 
 Hasn’t global warming stopped? 
 
 No. Global temperatures have been on a clear upward path. There was a spike in 1998, after which temperatures were lower – but still warmer than previous decades – that led some climate sceptics to claim that the world was cooling. 
 
 During the period since 1998, global temperatures have risen at a slower pace than they did in the previous 30 years. That, too, has been seized upon by sceptics as evidence that global warming has “paused”. 
 
 But it is important to note that temperatures have not fallen, or stalled – they have continued to rise. Given the variations that characterise our weather systems, a period in which the rate of warming slowed is not unexpected. 
 
 For the past two years, the rate of warming seems to have accelerated again, but little can be construed from that. 
 
 What progress have we seen on a global agreement? 
 
 In 1992, governments met in Rio de Janeiro and forged the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. That agreement, still in force, bound governments to take action to avoid dangerous climate change, but did not specify what actions. Over the following five years, governments wrangled over what each should do, and what should be the role of developed countries versus poorer nations. 
 
 Those years of argument produced, in 1997, the Kyoto protocol. That pact required worldwide cuts in emissions of about 5%, compared with 1990 levels, by 2012, and each developed country was allotted a target on emissions reductions. But developing countries, including China, South Korea, Mexico and other rapidly emerging economies, were given no targets and allowed to increase their emissions at will. 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest People sign the Earth pledge made at the the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in June 1992. Photograph: UN Photo 
 
 Al Gore, then US vice-president, signed up to the protocol, but it was quickly apparent that it would never be ratified by the US Congress. Legally, the protocol could not come into force until countries representing 55% of global emissions had ratified it. With the US – then the world’s biggest emitter – on the outside, that was not going to happen. 
 
 
 
 So for most of the following decade, the Kyoto protocol remained in abeyance and global climate change negotiations ground to a near-halt. But in late 2004, Russia decided to pass the treaty – unexpectedly, and as part of a move to have its application for World Trade Organisation membership accepted by the European Union. That made up the weight needed, and the protocol finally came into force. 
 
 So we had a global agreement? 
 
 Not quite. The US, under George W Bush, remained firmly outside Kyoto, so although the UN negotiations carried on year after year, the US negotiators were often in different rooms from the rest of the world. It was clear a new approach was needed that could bring the US in, and encourage the major developing economies – especially China, now the world’s biggest emitter – to take on limits to their emissions. 
 
 What followed was, agreed at Bali in 2007 after much drama, an action plan that set the world on the course to a new agreement that would take over from Kyoto. 
 
 This is taking a long time. What happened next? 
 
 It did take a long time. But getting agreement from 196 countries was never going to be easy. The next act of this long-running drama fully demonstrated that: the Copenhagen conference of 2009. 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest US president Barack Obama along with European leaders including German chancellor Angela Merkel, centre, attend negotiations on the final night of the Copenhagen UN Climate Change summit in Denmark on 18 December 2009. Photograph: Pool/Getty Images 
 
 What happened at Copenhagen? 
 
 Everything but the treaty. All of the world’s developed countries and the biggest developing countries agreed – for the first time – to limits on their greenhouse gas emissions. This was a landmark, as it meant the world’s biggest emitters were united towards a single goal. 
 
 The emissions reductions agreed on were still not enough to meet scientific advice, but they were a big advance on reducing emissions compared with “business as usual”. 
 
 But what didn’t happen turned out to be the point that NGOs and many in the press seized on. What didn’t happen was a fully articulated and legally binding treaty. 
 
 Is that important? 
 
 It depends on your viewpoint. The Kyoto protocol was a beautifully written, watertight, fully legally binding international treaty, a sub-treaty of the similarly binding UNFCCC. But it never met its objectives, because it wasn’t ratified by the US, and not by Russia until it was too late. And none of the countries that failed to meet their commitments under Kyoto have been sanctioned. 
 
 The Copenhagen agreement, on the other hand, was not fully adopted by the UN in 2009 because of last-minute chaos at the conference, though it was ratified the following year in the form of the Cancun agreements. For this reason, the Copenhagen agreement was derided as a failure by green groups. 
 
 But the targets agreed at Copenhagen, in the form of a document signed by world leaders, still stand. 
 
 Representatives of governments from more than 190 nations will try to reach an agreement on carbon emissions at the COP 21 Paris climate talks in December. Photograph: COP21 
 
 What is likely to be agreed in Paris? 
 
 We know already what the biggest emitters have committed to. The EU will cut its emissions by 40%, compared with 1990 levels, by 2030. The US will cut its emissions by 26% to 28%, compared with 2005 levels, by 2025. China will agree that its emissions will peak by 2030. 
 
 Nations responsible for more than 90% of global emissions have now come up with their targets – known in the UN jargon as Indended Nationally Determined Contributions or INDCs . These include all of the major developed and developing countries, though their contributions vary: in the case of developed countries, actual cuts in emissions, but for developing countries a range of targets including limits on emissions compared to “business as usual”, and pledges to increase low-carbon energy or preserve forests. 
 
 Analysis of the INDCS, endorsed by the UN, has suggested that these pledges are enough to hold the world to about 2.7C or 3C of warming. That is not quite enough to meet the scientific advice. However, that is not the end of the story. One of the key components of any Paris agreement would be to institute a system of review of the emissions targets every five years, with a view to ratcheting them upwards. 
 
 Another, and complementary, approach is to make more effort to bring down emissions outside the UN process, for instance by engaging “non-state actors” such as cities, local governments and businesses to do more. 
 
 If the commitments from the major countries are in the bag, does that mean the Paris agreement is settled? 
 
 Not at all – the other key question, apart from emissions reductions, is finance. Poorer countries want the rich world to provide them with financial help that will enable them to invest in clean technology to cut their greenhouse gas emissions, and to adapt their infrastructure to the likely damage from climate change. 
 
 This is a hugely contentious issue. At Copenhagen, where the finance part of the deal was only sorted out at the very last minute, rich countries agreed to supply $30bn ($20bn) of “fast-start” financial assistance to the poor nations, and they said that by 2020, financial flows of at least $100bn a year would be provided. 
 
 As a cornerstone of any Paris agreement, poor countries want assurances that this pledge will be met. That has now been given, in several forms: the OECD issued a report in October showing that two thirds of the finance required is already being supplied; and a report by the World Resources Institute showed that the remainder can be made up by increased finance from the World Bank and other development banks, and from the private sector. The World Bank and several governments have already committed to upping their financial assistance, meaning that a clear path towards the 2020 target can now be discerned. 
 
 There is more, however. Poor nations also want a similar provision in place beyond 2020, but there is strong disagreement over how this should be done. Some want all the money to come from rich country governments, but those governments are adamant that they will not provide such funding solely from the public purse. They want international development banks, such as the World Bank, to play a role, and they want most of the funding to come from the private sector. 
 
 An agreement on this is still possible, but it will be one of the main obstacles to a Paris deal. 
 
 Low targets, goals dropped: Copenhagen ends in failure Read more 
 
 Will world leaders go to Paris to agree on this? 
 
 Yes. The heads of state or government of more than 130 countries have already said they will come. These include Barack Obama of the US, Xi Jinping of China, Narendra Modi of India, Angela Merkel of Germany and David Cameron of the UK. None have as yet pulled out as a result of the terrorist attacks on Paris, and security has been stepped up as an assurance. Unlike the Copenhagen talks, however, at which world leaders turned up at the last minute of the two weeks of talks to find their negotiating teams in chaos and without a clear agreement for them to sign, this time the leaders will arrive at the beginning of the conference, give their negotiating teams clear instructions, and expect a fully formed agreement at the end of it. 
 
 On behalf of the French government, the conference will be led by foreign minister Laurent Fabius, and environment minister Segolene Royal, but the French president Francois Hollande will also play a key role. They are all confident that a deal can be made. 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest French president Francois Hollande. Photograph: Philippe Wojazer /Pool/EPA 
 
 What else can we expect before Paris? 
 
 The key question now is over security. With the French capital under recent attack, and reports of fresh assaults averted by the armed forces, the atmosphere in Paris will be unlike any city that has hosted major international talks before. Security will be paramount - the French police and army will be on the streets, and the venue will be patrolled by uniformed UN guards - but the atrocities of 13 November will hang heavily on all delegates. This may mean that when world leaders attend private meetings, terrorism is discussed before climate change. But it may also mean that delegates are under more pressure than ever to come up with a deal, given the tragic circumstances surrounding them. 
 
 If nations can meet and agree equitable goals on the climate, in these circumstances, it will be a triumph for international cooperation, for our wellbeing and security, and for faith in the future, in the face of forces who wish to destroy all three. ||||| Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period.
– The 1997 Kyoto climate treaty he helped negotiate didn't end up controlling climate change, but Al Gore says this month's conference in Paris will be different. "We're going to win this," he tells the AP. "We need to win it faster because a lot of damage is being done day by day. We continue to put 110 million tons of global warming pollution into the atmosphere every 24 hours as if it's an open sewer." Though he says "every night on the television news is like a nature hike through the Book of Revelation," he adds "increasingly people are connecting those dots" and "more and more people are feeling that this is going to have to be addressed." It's a real change of tune for a man the AP notes has been framed as a "preacher of doom and gloom" by some. Indeed, in their 35 minutes together, Gore "uses versions of the words 'optimistic' or 'hopeful' or 'positive' at least 16 times," writes the AP. Their talk comes in advance of a 24-hour-telethon he'll host Friday at the foot of the Eiffel Tower to raise awareness about global warming. Though initially scheduled as a global Live Earth event to be broadcast to 2 billion people across 193 television networks, Gore now says 24 Hours of Reality and Live Earth will be streamed online and is "about mobilizing people around the world ... and making our voices heard in national capitals and at the negotiating table in Paris," per the Guardian. (The UN Conference on Climate Change kicks off Nov. 30.) French President Francois Hollande, Pharrell Williams, Elton John, Duran Duran, Bon Jovi, Neil Young, Fall Out Boy, Hozier, Ryan Reynolds, and Jared Leto will also take the stage, per People.