Al Gore Is Worth $200 Million; Former Presidential Nominee Made $70 Million From Current TV Sale

Al Gore may have lost the 2000 Presidential election to George Bush, but it hasn't hurt his wallet. Gore is now worth a reported $200 million, half of which came over the course of a single month this past January. Gore made $70 million from the sale of Current TV due to his 20 percent stake in the company and $30 million from exercising options on 59,000 shares of Apple Inc. stock.

Back in 2000, Gore wasn't even a multi-millionaire after his Presidential loss to George W. Bush. He was worth approximately $1.7 million and had additional assets that included pasture rents from a family farm and royalties from a zinc mine. Now, the former Current TV shareholder can call himself one of the richest men in the United States after the network, which he helped to start in 2004, was sold to Qatari-owned Al Jazeera Satellite Network for about $500 million.

Gore's work and writing on global warming, which included the popular documentary An Inconvenient Truth, have earned him a share of a Nobel Prize and an Academy Award nomination.

Gore is now on the same level of wealth as former Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who Barack Obama accused as being out of touch with Americans due to his fortune. Romney is worth an estimated $250 billion.

However, Gore's three best-selling climate books have not contributed to his earning power. Gore has long pledged any book and film money to his nonprofit, the Climate Reality Project, created in 2011 from two advocacy groups Gore founded a year earlier.

That also isn't to say that Gore has been immune to business failings in the last 13 years. He racked up tens of millions in losses in a solar-module maker and an investment firm he helped start took stakes in two carbon-trading firms which fizzled.

Estimates of his wealth are based on company filings, government records, public pronouncements he or his associates have made about past business dealings and interviews with people in a position to know of and evaluate Gore's holdings.