Gore Should Give Back Oscar, Two Academy Members Say

Two members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences have called on the group to take back the Oscar awarded to former Vice President Al Gore for the documentary "An Inconvenient Truth."

Roger L. Simon and Lionel Chetwynd made the request based on the e-mails that a hacker/whistle blower released revealing that so-called scientists at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in England systematically falsifying data to support the theory that the earth is heating up and that humans caused it.

"An Inconvenient Truth," a film based on a climate-change speech that Gore developed, won the Academy Award for best documentary feature in 2007. (Coincidentally, the next day, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research uncovered that Gore’s Nashville home guzzled 20 times more electricity than the average American household. )

That same year, the Academy elevated Gore's PowerPoint lecture, helping him to snag a Nobel Peace Prize as well.

The academy members' request that Gore return his statue is happening as preparations are under way for next week's United Nations climate change meeting in Copenhagen, where 16,500 people from 192 countries will fly in using private jets, consume 200,000 meals, and produce an estimated 41,000 tons of carbon dioxide, roughly the same as the carbon emissions of Morocco in 2006.