Al Gore and the Peace Prize
Several readers have asked for my comment. This is what I posted over at Climate Skeptic:
This
morning I was all fired up to write something petty, like "Al Gore now
has made the same contributions to peace as have previous winners
Yassir Arafat and Henry Kissinger." Later, I considered a long and
drawn out post on the inaccuracies of "An Inconvinient Truth", but I
really have already done that in long form here and in short form here.
In truth, the Peace prize process has for years been about a group of
leftish statists making a statement, and often it has been about
tweaking the US, rather than a dispassionate analysis of true
contributions to peace made with the benefit of some historic distance
(as is done with the scientific prizes). Further, most folks I argue
with don't really care about the specific inacuracies in Gore's movie,
their response typically being something in the "fake but accurate"
line of reasoning.So instead I will say what I told a reader by email a few hours
ago. I tend to be optimistic about the world, and believe that we are
approaching a high water mark (so to speak) for the climate
catastrophists, where we will look back and see their influence peak
and start unwinding under the presure of science and the reality of the
enormous cost to abate CO2. Gore's Peace prize, in the same year as
his Oscar and that global warming music festival no one can even
remember the name of 3 months later, feels to me like it may be that
high water mark. The Peace Prize certainly was the high water mark
for Jimmy Carter's credibility, not to mention that of Henry Kissinger
and a myriad of others. Think of it this way -- if the guys who made
the peace prize decisions were investors, and you knew what they were
investing in, you would sell short. Seriously, just look at the
group. Well, they just invested in Al Gore.Update: One thing many commenters have not pointed
out is that Al Gore is really manuevering the US and China and India
(and the rest of the developping world) into a position that, if he has
his way, conflict is going to occur over who gets to grow and develop,
and who does not. CO2 catastrophism has the ablility to be the single
most destabalizing issue of the 21st century. This is peace?
Paul Maynard:
Coyote
Here's my post over at the reference frame with unpublished letter to the London Daily Telegraph. Today FT give it front page billing (but then the FT is now a fully paid up supporter of AGW) but Mail and Telegraph relegate it to the inside with critical reference to this week's court judgement. On Radio 4's any questions last night, there was full support for Goreball warming and one panellist actually said in a two hour presentation, 9 errors are to be expected! I hope we are both right about this being a high-water mark.
Regards
Paul
Lubos
This is the letter I have just sent to the London Daily Telegraph. We can only hope that after hubris comes nemesis and that pride cames before a fall.
I think all rational people should declare today be a day that the "science" died. I'll just drive my gas guzzling chevy to the levee - whoops the Democrats in New Orleans forgot to come up with the cash.
Sir
There is only one good thing that one cay say about the extraordinary decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize jointly to the insufferable Al Gore and the IPCC. It may encourage him to run for president and then his chicanery can be examined in relentless detail.
Damian Thompson (writing in today's Telegraph) said that Mr Justice Burton was not saying the Gore's basic thesis is wrong and nor was he. Apart that is from the fact that the judge condemned virtually every aspect of the Gore film. In response to Gore's central claim about the relationship between temperature and CO2 over past 650,000 being an exact fit and the basis of the whole CO2 induced warming farrago, the judge said that there was a " connection but not a precise correlation." There is a connection of course. It is that the ice cores upon which Gore bases his slick presentation demonstrate that rises in CO2 lag rises in temperature by between 800 and 2,000 years.
After 15 years and $billions in research, the Global Warming brigade have no proof that human produced CO2 has anything but a tiny effect on climate. The Telegraph and your sister paper once showed some balance on this issue but with the exception of Christopher Booker and the odd columnist, you recite the same bilge as the Guardian. It is about time this huge falsehood was exposed properly.
For the sake of humanity, we can only hope that this absurd award is the high water mark and that Gore and his followers will be revealed as the charlatans they clearly are.
Yours sincerely
Paul Maynard
October 13, 2007, 1:26 amLondon
Peggy McGilligan:
Nobel Peace Prize:
NEW Global Warming Deodorant Initiative
According to the Norwegian Nobel Committee:
AP – Al Gore has for a long time been full of hot air. He has a vivid imagination about the world around him. His strong commitment, reflected in political activity, lectures, films and books, has strengthened the struggle against climate change. Al’s distrust of the seasons probably stems from an episode of the Twilight Zone, in which the Earth gets too close to the Sun, making conditions intolerable in New York City. Summers are by nature hot & sticky, and Gore is probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures needed to create a more effective national antiperspirant, or at least prolong winters and thereby save the planet. If former college roommate, Tommy Lee Jones, could save the City of Los Angeles from an errant volcano, and the world from giant cockroaches in Men In Black, then certainly big Al Gore deserves a prize for his efforts to perspire less, market his Global Warming Deodorant, thus prevent the meltdown of Earth.
Laws are made for men of ordinary understanding and should, therefore, be construed by the ordinary rules of common sense. Their meaning is not to be sought for in metaphysical subtleties which may make anything mean everything or nothing at pleasure. –Thomas Jefferson.
But, nobody games the system like the Clintons: http://theseedsof9-11.com
October 13, 2007, 12:54 pmmorgganovich:
i think your call on the peace prize as high water mark (see also, time magazine man of the year) is dead on.
i would also point out another interesting fact:
this is the third time in the last 7 years that the Nobel peace prize has been given out to a UN agency.
2005
The prize was awarded jointly to:
INTERNATIONAL ATOMIC ENERGY AGENCY and MOHAMED EL BARADEI for their efforts to prevent nuclear energy from being used for military purposes and to ensure that nuclear energy for peaceful purposes is used in the safest possible way.
2001
The prize was awarded to:
UNITED NATIONS, New York, NY, USA
KOFI ANNAN, United Nations Secretary General
so obviously, the folks who make this decision would seem to view the UN as the greatest source for peace in the world. certainly the residents of darfur and kosovo, who had their welfare held hostage by endless security council wrangling might have a somewhat different opinion.
i am not familiar with the process for nomination of and decision upon candidates for this award, but must confess that looking at a history of recipients, the award seems to have moved from being awarded to individuals making contributions to social change and particularly individual well being and liberty toward more of a name recognition contest where the winners tend to be the ones with the strongest unaided brand awareness. to me this would seem to suggest that the process has been enlarged to include a larger number of voters who have less knowledge of the overall field of world philanthropy/social impact etc. and rather vote more on a politically correct headline basis.
winners here: http://www.nobelprizes.com/nobel/peace/peace.html
is anyone aware of whether and how the nomination and decision process for this award may have changed over the last decade or two?
October 13, 2007, 1:22 pmMicolai P:
Al Gore and IPCC achieved a lot by recklessly mixing up climate change by CO2 and energy consumption. Recent experience show that the carbon dioxide issue will remain difficult to prove them wrong for another decade or more. Instead require IPCC to explain recent climatic events, for example the early arctic warming in the last Century, which is convincingly explained at: http://www.arctic-warming.com
October 14, 2007, 8:19 am