Well, Al Gore has been here and gone. He spoke for an hour to a packed ballroom, and crowds also filled overflow rooms to watch a closed-circuit broadcast of his talk.

He started out with many of the same stories he trots out in his movie, An Inconvenient Truth, and in the talks he’s been giving on climate change around the country. Yes, he introduced himself as the man who used to be the next president of the United States. Yes, the audience laughed dutifully.

But he also tested the waters on a new topic – the loss of reason as a driving force in America. There are reports he will have a book out early next year, The Assault on Reason.

Here’s Gore: “I’ve come to believe that the reason why knowledge, and science as the most refined category in the field of knowledge, seems now to be paying a less important role than it did in the past has to do with a fairly dramatic change in the ways in which we communicate information among ourselves….The meritocracy of ideas has virtually disappeared in the television space….As a result the role of knowledge and reason and logic has been diminished.”

Gore called on the assembled scientists to engage with the public, to clearly communicate the results of their science – particularly any findings having to do with climate change: “When you come into possession of a truth that has deep implications for the future, and find courage to express it … you will find that the force of that truth will move obstacles from your path.”

No, we don’t know if he’s running for president in 2008. Yes, he got a standing ovation – and signed autographs before slipping out of the ballroom.