Gore wins Nobel Peace Prize He might have made a couple of mistakes in his Inconvenient Truth documentary, but we suspect Al Gore will consider his shiny new Nobel Peace Prize a winning blow in the PR war on climate change. Gore is to share the gong with the IPCC, "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate …
... who famously declared "political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize". How fortunate we are to be living at a time when there are no wars going on, so that we can award the Nobel Prize to some fat septic who spends his time flying round the world delivering the message that it's wrong to fly around the world.
Utterly predictable, but wrong on so may levels ...
The recipients should be immediately stripped of this award.
Al Gore for leaving out all the 'inconvenient' facts and scientific research which disprove his position.
The IPCC for being neither independant or objective.
I propose Prof. Richard Dawkins for the Nobel Peace Prize for highlighting the serious danger posed to the planet by organised religion.
After the daft ruling in the UK courts this is valuable support for the IPCC and An Inconvenient Truth (the science has never been in serious doubt).
I'm sure there will be a flurry of climate denial pieces to try to counter this award but I've noticed that these are getting more desperate and bizarre. There's a definite sea change.
Hopefully placed high on a shelf so it won't be under water when his house floods as a result of his polution spewing jet-setting lifestyle - oh he cares, that's all he appearently has to do, while the rest of us do our best to make up for HIS carbon footprint....
What a RIP! Just what the hell does this have to do with PEACE????? (or IT...)
Well the standards must have been dropped off the map to get a nobel prize nowadays.
Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, Jimmy Carter JR I would say had the right to be called ambassadors of Peace, Al Gore not even in the same solar system let alone league.
Whose next George Bush for Literature. Mr Sock writes good.
Robert G. Mugabe for Economics.
So climate change advocacy==peace? I guess there isn't any *real* oppression ongoing in the world, then - The UN must've cleaned up Africa quite nicely - no more Darfur problem, that all went away? No other simmering spots of repression, and no one working to help resolve them, like, say, Zimbabwe, or Tanzania, and Neema Mgana or Salih Mahmoud Osman?
OK, then, we can forget about actual peace work in Africa. What about the rest of teh world? Wait, aren't there a bunch of monks in Burma, facing down a tyranical regime at the risk (and cost) of their own lives? No? I suppose they don't really matter either.
No, politics is all that matters, and Gore is the right sort of people - Another rich white hypocrite. So obviously, he was the only choice.
I gather there are several thousand scientists on the IPCC. That's a lot of cheques for fairly small sums of money. I'm glad I'm not writing them. Fortunately, some of the scientists quoted in the IPCC reports have disowned the conclusions and presumably won't be wanting their two cents. I bet they're kicking themselves about disowning a Nobel prize-winning paper though!
The fact that the Earth's surface is cooler than that of the Sun, so that Earth loses heat through long-wave infrared radiation, while gaining it through short-wave infrared radiation, and that the long-wave kind doesn't go through carbon dioxide as well is well known.
It's not as if we have to go back to the Middle Ages except for wind and tidal power, wrecking the world economy, to do something about it. We can have as much energy as we want, because there's a little something called nuclear power. And we should stretch it as far as we can, by going for the Thorium breeder.
*sigh*
One more time, for those whom have not paid attention in school. Gore got the majority of the *popular vote.* The popular vote DOES NOT determine who the President will be - the *Electoral College* does that. And thanks to the Unit Rule ('or victor take all') imposed on the vast majority of the states, With.The.Conivance.And.Agreement.Of.The.Democratic.Party, all Bush had to do was win enough states with high number of Electoral College votes. It was set up that way on purpose, because it was felt that the vast majoriity of the populace was too ill-informed to know enough to make a viable choice for President.
Apparently, 'ill-informed' remains true, though the *practical* purpose of the college is now to simplify things for the political parties, who can safely ignore small-population states and simply spam the high-density states with their political crap.
This wasn't the first time it's happened, though it's been a long time since the last such, but so long as the Unit Rule exists, it'll happen again. Force your party (Repub AND Dem) to implement the Proportional Rule, and it'll become far less likely (though not impossible) to happen again. Or campaign for a Constitutional Amendment to remove the Electoral College entirely.
...props to the Nobel Prize Committee for drawing a bit more attention to the global warming/climate change problem.
On the other hand, whatever is gained from it may be offset by the extra methane released by (mostly US) wingnuts' heads exploding.
Not sure what recounts you are talking about. Every recount had Gore lose, no matter how they tried to twist and turn it. I recall quite a few of them where liberal news papers were part of the 'watch' team - and he still lost.
And after watching how he's...handled...himself the past few years, I can only thank God that he didn't get elected.
He's a loon. A major loon.
Whatever on the peace prize. I mean, if they can give a known terrorist a peace prize, they will give it to anyone. It's quite a joke these days - Jimmy Carter is perhaps the worst president of the 20th century and they gave it to him. All I can figure is the committe is made of people that missed out on how well appeasement worked with Hitler.
And wrongo - most of the science is in question. Read some facts. The movie was a joke - and it's not a suprise the libs gave him an oscar for it.
...when Yasser Arafat got one as well. I'm sure his widow finds it a great comfort as she sits all alone counting the $billions of US/EU handouts that he siphoned away from his people.
Gore is just a failed "leader" who has found another path to glory. S'just messianic fervor for the non-religious.
Helmet, fireproof cloathing, getaway car at the ready...
Like others said, any notion of it meaning anything went out with Arafat.
Gore did lose the election, by any recount means that were on the legal table including his own proposals.
Yes, there where irregularities. Yes, it's likely all things being equal having local officials and districts that could actually run an election would've cleaned it up enough for him to have won.
At the same time, let's realize the complexity of the factors that lead to such incompetency.
One is the voting reforms of the 1960s that enfranchised illiterates and feeble minded. Gee, allow people who aren't able to read to vote, and they can't understand the simple directions. Wow, shocking they screw up. This sillyness is continuing to this day -- Massachusetts is currently considering going with photographs of the candidates on the ballots. What a joke.
Two is the long-term corruption in Democratic machine-politics areas with voting. These institutional irregularities (like Richard J. Daley's Chicago proclaimation of "Vote Early and Often!" or New Orleans and many other areas long history of the dead voting). These weren't an issue of much national concern until those irregularities that had developed to within local party politics bled over into affecting national elections. The Republicans aren't harmless in this today, as they brought along the Democrat's dirty trick and sillyness book as the south moved from solidly Democrat to much more Republican on the edges.
These institutionalized irregularities in voting are continuing -- Elliot Spitzer, Democratic Governor of New York, is pushing for illegal aliens to be issued driver's licenses. All it takes in NY to register to vote then is to show your Driver's License and "swear or affirm" by your signature on the form that you're a citizen eligible to vote. Hmmmm. Numerous other 1990s era reforms in voter registration help with fraudlent voting -- from motor / voter laws, to the utter ridiculousness of accepting "forms of ID" such as utility bills in order to cast votes.
In time we will get these issues cleaned up, but right now neither party is interested in cleaning up the areas there are problems -- as long as their Poltical Science majors are working up spreadsheets about how to divide the country into tiny little segments.
We have been through periods of national malaise and corruption like this before, we will get in cleaned up for a few generations, and we will see the return of the corruption again in the future.
So here we are, again. Yet another politician gets a cuddly toy -
For telling all us non Americans what we already know.
Jees they sure know how to pat each other on the back!
And just HOW has Gore changed our lives to deserve this honour?
Hmmm - Oh I know... by consuming megawatts of power and aviation fuel via his world crusade on climate change... a self fulfilling prophecy if ever I saw one
>> liberal news papers were part of the 'watch'
I didn't think there were any, that was the problem when the right claimed a liberal bias and then research pointed out there was on average a right wing bias in the 'liberal' media. all very sad really.
Al Gore? Peace Prize? hmmm obviously ran out of Ghandi's.
OK... Gore won a peace prize, which through the genius of what is the English language (both UK & US English) is eerily similar to piece.
Gore was Clinton's VP
Clinton was known to get a piece, every now and then
As was Paris Hilton (I submit her world famous video for example.)
John Edwards, like Al Gore & Bill Clinton, is a democrat who is having an affair...
So, it will be my prediction that sometime in the next couple of weeks or so, there will be a video of Albert Gore & Paris Hilton having a wild sexual fling, with the Nobel prize visible somewhere close to the bed...
Considering the list of past “deserving” recipients (Arafat, Menchu, Annan, etc), Gore fits right in.
Should be renamed the Nobel “Piece-of-the-Action” Prize.
PS #1:
Al Gore did not "win an Oscar". The film's producers did.
PS #2:
Justice Burton's decision regarding the showing of AIT was anything but "daft", as anyone with a bit of common sense can see by reading it:
http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2007/2288.rtf
I just heard on BBC World Service that concrete (CONCRETE!!) is responsible for about 5% (one part in 20!!!!!) of man-made CO2 emissions. Geesh, was that little detail mentioned in Gore's .ppt file? Nine errors? Make it at least 10 now.
Okay - LISTEN UP GLOBAL WARMING BOFFINS OF THE WORLD !!!
You too Mr. Gore.
Go away, and get the pie-chart of man-made sources of global warming gases (ALL greenhouse gases, correctly weighted back to CO2 equivalent) corrected and completed. DO NOT come back nor talk to ANYONE here until the fricken pie-chart is done and correct. Don't forget concrete this time.
Geesh, airlines get all the news when they might be responsible for 2% (maybe). And that ignores the probable short-term benefit of Global Dimming (contrails). Meanwhile, the concrete industry is now reported as 5% and nobody even knew.
What about methane from landfills and sewers? Anyone? "Oops, ah 29% and we're sorry we forgot to mention it previously." (?) Note - Methane is many times worse a greenhouse gas than CO2.
We humans cannot fix this problem until we get the basic facts correct. Once we have the basic facts straight, then we can address the easy and cheap fixes first, and only then try to get everyone to ride to work on their recumbent bicycle while eating granola and singing Kumbaya. Trying to start with automobiles and airplanes is just plain stupid when there are easier fixes available that nobody even mentions. STUPID. And DANGEROUS.
PS: All transport (ALL transport*) is less than livestock (subset of agriculture).
*Except they haven't properly accounted for dirty combustion of garbage-grade Bunker C on a few hundred thousand stinky ships belching out all sorts of crap many times worse (greenhouse impact, let alone the smell) than CO2; NOx for example. They'll figure it out eventually...
I dunno...
I think most of us could agree an aggressive program to get off of fossil fuels by moving on a massive scale to nuclear or wind power would be a good thing. It gets out of the geopolitical issues of depending on particular regions for massive amounts of energy. And it eliminates the carbon issue of global warming.
Whether or not you agree with all the points, it gets countries much more self-sufficient, it reduces pollution regardless of whatever impacts that pollution has, etc.
But do you think for a moment the people who are rallying that climate change is proven beyond a doubt science that we must do something on NOW... would allow construction to begin on new nuclear plants or massive windfarms without decades of questioning if the science and engineering is sufficient?
Not going to happen. That science doesn't fit the liberal agenda -- you know, nuclear is bad and building things out in the countryside is bad.
Here in the U.S. we have big arguments over Yucca Mountain and piles of spent fuel rods sitting around the country -- yet if we'd get over Jimmy Carter's Kumbya policy of not recycling nuclear fuel we'd be able to extract much more energy from those "spent" rods and have a smaller volume of waste to manage in the end.
By the way, regarding Global Dimming one of the interesting things in the U.S. NIST report on Global Warming (completed largely before George W. was in office) is the theory that the reason we saw a cooling trend from 1945-1975 was from other pollutants that had been reflecting sunlight. Without cleaning up earlier pollution problems in the 60s and 70s (a good thing), we likely wouldn't be worrying now about warming.
The rising oceans will force a large part of the planet's population to move elsewhere which will lead to conflicts over shrinking resources. If the awareness created by Gore helps avert these conflicts, then he and the IPCC well deserve the peace prize. But we have to wait and see whether they have made a difference or the climate skeptics have their way.
Amusing to see the ranting against Al Gore. We all know he won in 2000, not just nationally, but even in Florida. At least we know it if we believe "the will of the voters" is supposed to count.
In a sense it doesn't matter. Reality ultimately prevails. The reality delivered by Dubya Bush is miserable failure.
By the way, I don't hate Dubya. I just love America and hate to see it harmed. Dubya is just grist for the historians' mills now--and his record of miserable failures will hopefully never be surpassed.
Regarding the actual ruler of America, the Dick Cheney just wants to die with the most toys. I hope he gets his wish--and as soon as possible.
Oh yeah. The joke. There should be a "poor joke" icon. Spam is Al Gore's fault. As a Senator, he was too good at getting money for them while they were developing the Internet. He kept telling them not to worry about the money, and he kept it flowing--and that's why SMTP has the built-in fantasy that email is "free". No such thing as free in a real economy. (Free is only for such things as ideas, but that's too tangential here.)
Hi Matt,
We (the whole family) really like windmills. We often go for long Sunday drives and we will arrange things so that we can visit windmills along the way. I trust you see the irony (long drive, windmills). But that's my point. The irony is The Point. Because it isn't actually irony. It seems ironic only due to Lack of Info or Bad Info.
Let's say you have an Animal Problem in your house - your house looks like Noah's Ark. You need to get the animals out. There's a cow standing knee-deep in dung pretty close to the front door, and she looks bored from being cooped up inside for so long. All you'd have to do is open the door and she'd probably wander out without too much fuss. And that one cow outside would solve 5% of the total Animal Problem, and get you maybe 15% of the total animal reduction required.
But all the environmentals are running around pointing at the birds and chasing the bunny rabbits. There's hundred of birds and thousands of bunny rabbits, but their droppings are individually small (but do add up to about a cow in total). The big fat cow next to the door is being ignored, and just had another 48 kg dump on your floor.
Any sane person would take a minute to wander over to the door, and invite the cow to leave. Then make a quick check around the house for any further cows, hippos, rhinos, elephants, etc. And then get back to the birds and bunnies only after all the large beasts were shown the door.
Global Warming Cows:
Cows in fact, Livestock Industry is 18 % (recent UN-FAO report)
Dirty Bunker C in ships = no one knows (significant due to NOx etc. ?)
Concrete Industry = 5 % of man-made green house impact - who knew?
Methane from landfills and sewers = Methane is much worse than CO2
You're not going to get your 30% total reduction from the Transport Industry because ALL TRANSPORT COMBINED is only 17% (recent UN-FAO report, and that's even before the pie-chart is correct and or complete - actually less if you add concrete for example). Even if you shut down all planes, trains, and automobiles - maybe half the required reduction of 30%.
Why not show some cows the door? 30% is within reach if we focus our attention on the livestock industry, dirty Bunker C fuel in ships, concrete, and municipal infrastructure system.
Cars can continue to get more and more efficient. Tax the hell out of SUVs because they're stupid. Clean up all heavy diesel engines (now!) because NOx and other old-fashioned 'air pollution' are also very bad greenhouse gases.
Airplanes are already getting more and more efficient. Leave them alone and thank them for the Global Dimming. We'll get back to them later if we need to.
Compare this logic against the idiocy of running news items where they always show the stock footage of the tail-pipe of a car, or of an airplane taking off.
Let's slay a few cows FIRST.
Concrete. Dirty Bunker C. Livestock. Landfills. Sewage plants.
And he will need to return the award. Of course now that Al's got the piece prize, maybe he will get some.
In the meantime "light my fire", and make that CO2. Energy drives the world economy, nothing less. To take it all away means we might as well be in the stone age (which is where Al wants us, not him, to be).
They should have awarded it to Rush Limbaugh, a much better candidate if you ask me. Of course he didn't invent the internet (*SIGH*)
I'll puke later.
Age of a creationist world: < 10,000 years.
Age of a big bang theorist: > 20 million years.
Average amount of empirical evidence used to support global warming theories...
< 120 years.
Approximate amount of time studies have covered in relation to age of the planet.
Creationist: 1.2 percent of total
Bang Theorist: 0.0006 percent of total
Chance of ANYONE BEING RIGHT and Al Gore inventing the internet: 0 percent
Chance of Al Gore being a douche: 100 percent
"Cows in fact, Livestock Industry is 18 % (recent UN-FAO report)"
Yes, I'd wondered why no one seemed to have picked up on the Livestock contribution of Methane.
So Vegetarians are far more carbon neutral than carnivores, perhaps the government could introduce some form of offsetting, I was thinking perhaps full blown carnivores would only be allowed to drive the least polluting of vehicles, or perhaps be restricted to bicycles.
Lacto - ovarian "veggies" who also eat fish ( how does that work?) would be allowed something a little more polluting.
Bog standard veggies could have a regular vehicle and that would leave the Vegans to drive the SUVs and Maseratis.
Another benefit is the carbon offset trading with the regions of India etc which are predominantly Veggie and of course the Buddhists are holding all the Aces
Gee, I'd have thought he'd be in the running for that prize when he was moderating middle east peace negotiations.
But instead of continuing that career, he switched over to grinding science up into little teeny digestible bits - making it accessible to morons. What the hell does that have to do with peace?
As long as polar ice core measurements show that CO2 levels *follow* temperature change the New Zealots can beat their drums all they want.
Simple scientific fact: a trend that follows another can *never* be a root cause, but is simply an effect of that which it follows.
Anyone claiming CO2 is Da Big Baddie is simply making a fool of himself.
What's this "We shit" in the argument about Yucca Mountain? Aside from the fact that facility occupies a relatively small footprint, when compared to the rest of the area of the US, where I am, I believe that dump to be in about the perfect place...
And sadly, reclaiming additional energies from spent fuel rods is all a matter of efficiency... I'm no nuclear genius, but I would have to guess that one would need to add an additional fuel rod or two to augment the reduced output of the spent fuel. And unless I'm mistaken, we just aren't there yet...
Judging from the number of Al Gore haters posting here it must be that those involved in IT are holding a serious grudge for the "information superhighway" term. Or, perhaps, there area lot of ignorant boobs coming out of the woodwork.
The earlier poster surmising about sea-level rise causing loss of land and thus sparking conflict was thinking in the right direction. Now, consider what happens when the world climate becomes unstable - deserts will probably become bigger while the rainfall will become more concentrated in the areas where it already predominates. Hard to grow food in deserts and also difficult to stop it being washed away in floods. Potential problem there.
As to climate change: raving ignoramuses aside there is consensus that it is happening. Is it all due to human behaviour? Possibly not. Can we reverse it by changing our behaviour? Possibly not. Should we try anyway, or just wait to starve and/or die in massive conflicts?
Would be awarded to a blowhard.
The inconvenient truth is that climate change is a millenium cycle, that is being measured with an egg timer.
You think the glaciers melted without short time global warming? Who can you blame that on? Oh, yea, those Neanderthals, with all their fancy electronic gadgets...
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