The wave began as the crowd got antsy Wednesday evening at Santa Ana Star Center.

Former Congressman and Vice President Al Gore was scheduled to speak to them at 7:30 and, here it was, almost 8, and still no sign of him.

Although most in the crowd were there to hear Gore speak on global warming, more than a few held hope that he would run for president in 2008.

This "soul rebel", attending the Al Gore event at the Star Center covered his vehicle with political bumper stickers, mosty anti-Bush, with one pushing Comedy Central's Jon Stewart for President.

Among them was Fran Martone of Santa Fe, who was wearing four Gore campaign buttons from his run for the presidency in 2000.

"I'm here to support Al Gore. I've seen 'An Inconvenient Truth' a number of times but I'm also here to convince him to run for the presidency this year," she said. "I've got my question (form) filled out, asking him to run; I've got my buttons; my friends are out there with the signs."

Martone said she had voted for Gore, who lost to George W. Bush, in 2000.

"I think none of us knew how a Bush presidency might be," she said. "If you listened to some of (Gore's) speeches he's given in the last couple years, particularly the one he gave on Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday, I think it was a year-and-a-half ago, the way the Constitution has been completely decimated under the current administration with complicity of some of the Democrats, and how our rights have been taken away from us, that's a major concern of mine. Of course, the occupation of Iraq is a concern of mine; of course, global warming and the environment's another one and I can't think there's anyone better to address those issues than Al Gore."

Steve and Marci Levine of Corrales took it a step further: They had T-shirts specially made that bore the message "Run, Al."

They were seated in the VIP room, where Gore appeared at 7:11 p.m., walking through the room, shaking hands, posing for photographs and signing autographs - including Marci's T-shirt.

"I'm not going to ask him if he's going to run for president, I'm just going to beg him to run for president," she said. "When he came by and signed it, he said to me, 'I've never seen that shirt before.'"

"Just say the word and I'll make a thousand more," Steve Levine said.

The Levines are new to the state; Marci Levine said the couple moved here from Los Angeles.

"We moved to New Mexico in February and we're hoping this 'blue' state turns blue again," she said.

What brought the couple to the Land of Enchantment, she was asked.

"The 405 (an arterial of I-5) and botox injections," she said. "We didn't want either one of them."

Gore's introduction began at 8 p.m., it turned out, and he began his "Inconvenient Truth" presentation by telling a few jokes, one of which included an erroneous story about he and his wife Tipper owning a Shoney's Restaurant in Tennessee - after the couple had been seen eating there one day.

The story spread so quickly that former President Bill Clinton called Gore to congratulate him on his new venture.

Throughout the evening, Gore was critical of the media, which also managed to turn a dining experience into an entrepreneurial experience.

Gore's "cause," global warming, has been ignored by the media in large part because of its fascination with Britney Spears, Paris Hilton and "the embalming of Anna Nicole Smith," he said.

"I used to be the next president of the United States," Gore quipped, preceding what was an almost verbatim soundtrack from "An Inconvenient Truth," which won an Academy Award earlier this year.

"I flew in Air Force 2 for eight years - now I've got to take my boots off to get on an airplane," he said, again drawing laughter from the crowd.

His message, of course, was totally serious: Increasing carbon-dioxide emissions are changing the environment by increasing temperatures on the planet - glaciers ("Within 15 years, there'll be no 'snows of Kilimanjaro,'" he said) and ice caps are melting, ocean temperatures are rising, the continents are heating up, many forms of wildlife are disappearing while some changes have led to the proliferation of insects, such as mosquitoes bearing West Nile Virus that have managed to move westward from the East Coast to California in the past decade.

Australia, which Gore recently visited, is experiencing a "thousand-year drought," he said, with major evacuations being planned. If global warming continues and the west half of Antarctica as well as Greenland disappear into the sea, the resulting flooding on several continents - including North America's San Francisco Bay area and Manhattan in New York City -- would mean hundreds of millions of "climactic refugees."

"We shouldn't be borrowing billions of dollars to buy oil from the Middle East," he said, urging the development of fuel-efficient automobiles, as well as solar and wind energy.

Bottom line: "Is terrorism the only thing we're worried about?" Gore queried. "Intervention is a good thing and we need more of it.

"We've got everything we need to begin solving this crisis ... The renewable energy future is very bright in this country," he said, reminding everyone that the U.S. doesn't have to make a choice between the environment and the economy.

Without a safe and healthy environment, there won't be much need for an economy.

"We're Americans - don't tell us we can't solve this," he said.

Before closing and answering questions from the audience, Gore said he'd heard a man once say we "can go to another planet to escape global warming."

Pausing for effect, he added, "We can't even evacuate New Orleans."

The presentation ended at about 9:40 p.m., almost duplicating the 96-minute run time of his film.

"We had over 2,000 people in attendance of Mr. Gore's presentation," said Star Center general manager Tommy Scott. "It was a very good crowd, who I feel (and heard) immensely enjoyed the presentation. We didn't have any problems inside or outside the facility. All in all a wonderful evening with a very enlightening presentation."

"He had a lot of good things to say," said Victor Samuels, exiting the Star Center with his Corrales neighbor, Susan Cote, who said she'd seen "An Inconvenient Truth" several times.

About the only difference between the recorded "An Inconvenient Truth" and Gore's talk at the Star Center was the mention of the effects global warming has had or will have on New Mexico, which at one point Gore mistakenly identified Alamogordo, rather than Los Alamos, as the birthplace of the atomic bomb in the 1940s.