“There has been a very large, organized campaign to try to convince people that it (global warming) is not real, to try to convince people that they shouldn’t worry about it,” Gore said during an interview on the Norwegian talk show Skavlan to promote his newest book Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis. Gore said:

In my country, the oil and coal companies spent $500 million last year just on television advertising just on these questions. There are now five anti-climate lobbyists on Capitol Hill in Washington for every member of the House and Senate. So it’s been a very massive, organized campaign.

To bolster their muscle, two groups that Gore founded in 2006 announced Friday that they are merging.

The union of the Washington-based Alliance for Climate Protection and the Nashville-based Climate Project will create, they said, “one of the largest non-profit educational and advocacy organizations in the world.”

The unified group, which will carry the Alliance’s name, will have branches in eight countries, more than 200 staffers in 30 U.S. offices and 3,000 volunteers in 55 countries.

Some of its funding comes from Gore, who won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his warning about climate change. It gets 100% of the proceeds of both his new book – which uses recycled paper – as well as his 2006 best seller, An Inconvenient Truth.