Al Gore and the two thousand scientists in the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will share this year's Nobel Peace prize for their work in publicizing the threat posed to humanity's future by global warming. The official citation from the Nobel Committee explained that "His strong commitment, reflected in political activity, lectures, films and books, has strengthened the struggle against climate change. He is probably the single individual who has done most to create worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted."
Gore's detractors have sneered at him for running up large electricity bills at his family home and riding numerous jets while trying to publicize the need for individual and public action to combat climate change. Critics have also made much of a court case in the United Kingdom against his "An Inconvenient Truth" presentation that argues that his presentation is not 100% scientifically accurate. Clearly the Nobel Committee decided that these issues are peripheral to the main point. Their decision maintains a spotlight on the urgency for the international community to cooperate in collective measures to reduce carbon emissions from fossil fuel burning.
What does global warming have to do with peace? Well, the answer is "plenty". Imagine a future world in which drought and flooding causes millions of refugees to cross national borders in search of food and water. It is not a stretch to expect that warfare is a likely result. In fact, many scientists and foreign policy experts feel that resource and environment problems are playing a major role in the Darfur genocide today.
There is a great deal of irony here for those who seek it. Gore and George W. Bush faced off in a nightmarish, seemingly endless hung election in 2000, before Gore showed a good bit of class by appearing in front of the camera to concede defeat, refuse further litigation, and shuffle off the political stage. Yet in the following seven years, the winner has become one of our least succesful Presidents and the loser has become one of our most succesful not-quite-elected non-Presidents. Destiny is odd. George W. Bush will also be remembered as a guy who never was willing to do anything meaningful to fight global warming. His most recent "action" in this area was to convene a meeting with other leaders to undercut the United Nations effort of mandatory reductions in CO2 emissions, and replace it with toothless voluntary measures. Let's have a show of hands of people willing to made sacrifices on climate change so the rest of us can kick back in our lazy boys and pop a beer! Some will interpret Gore's Nobel Peace prize award as the first step in a campaign to occupy the White House, but I feel that Gore has bigger fish to fry in serving as a key figure in an international environmental effort.
"I am deeply honored" said Gore when greeted by the big news, pledging to donate the prize money to an organization that is working to slow climate change. Well, that's a good start at rectifying Gore's weakness for not quite managing to live his beliefs. Gore's work is not done. The War on Climate Change, not the War on Terror, will be the defining challenge of the 21st century. It should be noted that the IPCC shares the award with Gore. To learn more about the work of those two thousand scientists, visit the IPCC website at www.ipcc.ch. The challenge of combatting climate change will still be going strong in another thirty years when Gore will likely reach the end of his road. Today's announcement does not record the final victory of this War. However, as Winston Churchill once commented on a different War, the Second World War, it may mark "the end of the beginning".
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Comments: 100
As Alan Weisman, the author of "The World Without Us" says (and I paraphrase): If we don't manage our earth/population, our earth/population will manage us....in the form of the proverbial pink slip!
Mario: I don't believe there is very much any individual can do with regard to issues this huge. At best they can make valiant attempts to accomplish something. That's what the prize was for this time: bringing the world's attention to the issue. With more and more resources and minds focused on global climate change, perhaps one of the great minds in this world will discover ways of lessening human contributions to the problem. Even if this is, as some folks claim, simply a natural cycle, doesn't mean that humans don't have to do something to cope with the problems it raises. It's better to start earlier than later and people like Mr. Gore and the UN group are bringing that option to the fore. Good for him.
Regards,
Doyle I <~~~~~
I have no problem with your comments. It was a fair observation, and I figure that the other scientists is the reason why the IPCC also shared the award. That's the UN arm of the scientific research into the problem.
Mike e: Uh....never mind. You're too uninformed and too juvenile to bother with.
For every scientist who pops up claiming that global warming is nonsense, there are fifty to a hundred who say sorry it's quite real.
You actually have that backwards.
Yes there is a possibility to golbal warming, but not by man's hands, it is a natural phenomenon. But facts actually lead to two other issues at hand, one being Global Climate Change, which is different than Global Warming, and also the changing of the poles, which we are about due for anyhow. The growing number of Scientists towards Global Warming, is not towards the Man Made, but the Natural effect, but many of the proponets of Global Warming, use the extrended numbers to prove they are growing, giving a false and misleading view to their falling efforts. The Scientists following the Man Made Global Warming have been dropping quite rappedly due to the lack of evidence. Even when the IPCC used the findings to show the Man Made Global Warming, they had to alter many of the reports to prove their case. Scientists have stated that over and over that their reports were used out of context, or completely rewritten.
In Gore's movie, the graph he used to show the CO2 and other green house gasses, could not be reproduced to show the same thing by many other scientists, which caused them to finally make their choice to go the other way than Gore was leading. In fact it has been shown time and again from many sources, that the co2 gasses do not climb before a cooling, but after, so yes that is a factor. Now again it has also been shown that this high of a level which is lower than many other cases of green house gasses (Minus the CO2) have risen preceeding a Global Climate Change, which is different in that it is the moving of climate zone which happens. Also we are not sure of what effects do take place during the changing of poles, and this could be a cause of that as well, as some tend to think. The longer El Nina (sp) could easily be caused by the poles in a period of transit as well as the slightly increased volcanic activity and earthquakes.
In effect there are too many factors to say any one way, but that Man Made Global Warming is honestly a fraud.
The argument that Al Gore consumes too much electricity really proves part of the point he is making regarding the lack of alternative fuels and options for running one's household.
Yes, there is still much dispute regarding whether or not global warming is even happening, but when I hear that polar bears are having problems because the ice isn't freezing the way that is expected in the North Pole, I think that is pretty good anecdotal evidence of global warming. Also, someone sent me a link a while ago to a video on U-Tube that had footage of people watching a glacier melt and fall apart. Movement of a glacier should be so slow that we don't see it and that it can only be observed over time. This included video of chunks of ice falling into the water. That says global warming to me. I don't really care what the scientists say--we can see it for ourselves.
Well deserved.
Dan points out the final refuge of the climate change denial squad: the idea that the warming is real, but totally unrelated to the billions of tons of carbon pushed into our sky by the burning of coal and oil. It strains credulity of any logical mind to hold that view, and sorry there are not that many scientists left. We would not be discussing Al Gore's Nobel Peace Prize if 98% of scientists believed global warming to be entirely based on natural climate patterns. He won because it is 98% of them who believe it to be primarily driven by human activity.
I snorted coffee through my nose when I heard this on the news this morning, what a freakin joke.
"I guess if you don't think there IS a problem called Global Warming, then you really haven't done much research or even performed the intellectual exercise of what will happen to the world's populations over the next few decades when the effects of rising temperatures hits. Rising sea waters, engulfed farm land, crops withering, populations on the move looking for food and a safe place to live, etc. You can imagine how these kinds of situations can result in turmoil. I think the WORLD, not just Gore, is looking at these potential scenarios and trying to be pro-active in dealing with them.
THAT is where the aspect of peace comes in, at least in my thinking. Maybe others see some other angles."
I can't believe the number of you who buy this crap, hook, line and sinker! All someone has to do is run around screaming that the sky is falling (thank you Randee) and you throw your hands over your heads and run screaming for cover.
On second thought, it is kinda fun to watch though. Carry on.
For Tamara K: Why does every picture of Dubya make him look like a primate and an incompetent jackass?
That doesn't mean that I have any respect for people like Al Gore. He is pushing lies and propaganda and all these silly little people are buying it. The climate changes on a regular cycle and has throughoutthe history of the world. Maybe you should all read a book called "Unstoppable Global Warming - Every 1,500 Years" its written by a real scientist, not some bozo politician.
that we will find out what kind of man he is now. He will
never have a better chance to run for president and
put his beliefs into action than now.
But - oh great a simplistic rehash of global warming theory.
Moggy, you are right about there being climate changes
before ... but you miss the point about the differences
between then and now. It used to be there was no
oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere too ... does that mean
you would not be worried about returning to that state?
The natural world is not as flexible or robust any more.
Significant climate change will have two huge effects.
1) Animals which now are threatened and in decline
do not have alternative environments to migrate to
when they habitat changes and will go extinct.
2) The whole Earth has changed so much, unprecedented
that we do not know if we will reach some tipping point
where we will pass the recovery point of the climate
system and move to a runaway greenhouse effect
such as on Venus.
This time could be used to the fullest to push a new
standard of relationship between human activity
and the environment, not simply based on Global
Warming, because it is indeed and unknown, but based
on the fact that unregulated and unchanged we are
have destroyed much of what was living on the planet,
and put the rest of it into dangerous decline. It needs
to stop - it needs to get turned around.
you are able to imagine that a few hundred people are able to pollute a brook. And you are able to conceive of a hundred thousand people polluting a river. with me so far? How about several million people being able to pollute a bay 200 miles long and twenty miles wide? That describes the Chesapeake Bay right now, which long ago used to be the largest seafood factory in the world and is now a borderline sewer with large algae blooms every summer.
Now imagine 6 billion humans burning things to stay warm, to generate electricity, and to propel their vehicles. Is it possible for that many people to double the amount of CO2 in the sky of a small planet by cranking out millions of tons of CO2 daily? We are almost there. It's not absurd, its just a matter of numbers and scale.
I refuse to read "Unstoppable global warming every 1500 years". I do not have time to track down all the contrarians that are laughed about in academic circles and read their stuff. Some of them clearly believe what they write, but that does not make it worthwhile. I also do not bother reading creationist books, or the stuff from the guy who said that HIV is really not the cause of AIDS.
what Al Gore looks like! I almost forgot that.
No they do not look at history, that is for the stupid to do. They are interested in the present, becvause that is where we are today, and the past has no effect on the future. ROFLOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Animals have evolved and animals have become extinct, that is the way it works folks. It was working that way before man's actions ever came into play..so what was the cause of it then? When was the last time you saw a dinosaur in your back yard? I suspose we're responsible for killing them off too? Maybe someone traveled back in time in their modern time machine and drove their SUV around enough to kill off the lot of them?
Chris, the fact that you refuse to read anything that contradicts your beliefs says a whole lot about you and your beliefs. I don't think your beliefs could stand up to the truth. Maybe you're afraid that your beliefs would be proven wrong and you can't handle that? Maybe you'd be embarassed to find out that you bought into a load of propaganda?
I have no desire to beat my head against a rock any longer today...carry on, this is all very entertaining.
Not the question, not the problem.
> Animals have evolved and animals have become extinct,
Not in the modern world ... unless you are happy with a natural environment with thousands of species of rats, cockroaches, flies, mice, etc.
> When was the last time you saw a dinosaur in your back yard?
Was that meant to showcase your lack of judgement or knowledge?
I think you should stop beating your head against a rock altogether Moggy, it hurts, and it obviously has not had the affect you would want on your intellectual powers.
Good thing you are NOT in science! I cannot even imagine the experiments that you would contrive and the way you would justify results. THIS is the impact of a lack of good scientific training - this is basically Chem 101 logic, people. No, I take that back - even the science my kids did in 4th grade would show how illogical your statements are.
The problem is that we humans are charged with maintaining the planet, and there is nothing to gain by letting species die off. We lose ... apparently you do not understand that.
1) We lose genetic diversity. In every species are millions of years of evolutionary lessons and tricks. Proteins and compounds that we more and more can find, understand and take advantage of.
2) Every species lost reduced the complexity and the sustainability of the ecology making it less able to survive things like global warming, or other negative events or environmental insults.
3) Every species that is lost is another form of life that we lose.
The statement that lots of animals have gone extinct is such a plain ignorant statement. It may be true, but it is not factual or informative ... especially in trying to make an argument that it doesn't matter. In the extreme case if all animals went extinct we would be dead.
If any action we take is weighted by how many cents it takes out of the pockets of people who have huge amounts of money already, and is not weighed against the loss of what is owned and inherited by all of us ... our common heritage as sentient living creatures you are just being stupid and greedy and I'm sorry there is not a kinder way to put it.
Go join your conservative think tank and maybe you guys can come up with this whole "flat earth" solution.
When you're done with that, maybe you should tackle the "evolution" thing.
Why don't you educate us on the environmental benefits of second-hand stupid!
But wait....this time it's okay for conservatives to look at history to DEFEND their actions and CONDEMN liberal thinking even when it's logical....
but....it's not okay to look at the historically bad decisions conservative thinking has led to all throughout man's existence.
Typical!
> figure out the solution to the mess we are in.
Then you are not a scientist, you are an engineer.
I don't know how you can think that you are being
a scientist, or objective or expressing experimental
fact accurately when you make a claim that extinction
is a natural phenomenon ... and leave it at that.
Smallpox would never have gone extinct naturally.
Wild pigs would never have swam naturally to the
islands and killed the dodo birds without human
mistakes.
Be a scientist then, and be accurate clear and
honest ... differentiate ... make an honest difference
between pre-history when extintions were 100%
evolutionary, natural processes, and today when
there is no part of the natural environment on
the Earth that is not in decline because of human
UNNATURAL interference in the ecology.
You are so black and white and lacking in understanding
and recognition in your discussion of this issue that there
is no choice but to hammer you for your disingenuousness.
I would much rather have a rational discusssion, you
you seek to use the strategy of reducing the discussion
to what you want to say and ignoring the majority of
the universe of what is being discussed to the point of
absurdity.
If you are a scientist, then you have really lost your
persepective on facts, and your judgement, not to
mention your social responsibility.
Regards,
Doyle I <~~~~~
Regards,
Doyle I <~~~~~
But in a subtler way it makes it a bit harder for anybody to run for president on the platform that global warming is just nonsense and doing anything about it is just going to destroy our economy. Sure, that will still play really well with 20 to 30 percent of us. But you do not get to the White House on 30 percent. You have to bring along a bunch of independents along with the base people. So i think in future elections you will plenty of Republican nomination wannabees saying we have to cut the best deal we can get with the international community. But saying that global warming is B.S.? Not so much.
"I find it so insulting that liers can win that award. " Dan, your argument would carry more weight if a: you specify the person and the lie; and b: spell correctly.
"There is still a lot of debate as to whether Global Warming is a human or natural thing, or even if it really exists." Ty, while there is some debate as to the first part, there is no credible debate as to whether global warming exists.
Dan: Define "extrended".
"When was the last time you saw a dinosaur in your back yard? " This morning. Or, to be precise, it was a dino descendant called a "robin".
The problem with the current climate change is the addition of Global Dimming - a phenomenon which is entirely man-made (or nearly so). Its presence answers a lot of the questions raised by global warming nay-sayers. (One example: "If the world is growing warmer, why is it still so cold?" Because less sunlight reaches the Earths'center, so it's cooler.) Global Dimming is also why we must be much more pro-active in the present global-warming scenario.
It is unfortunate that our succesful efforts in the USA to filter particles out of our smokestack emissions has the negative effect of allowing greenhouse gases to do their thing.
Al did no research, but he delivered the message thereby becoming the target. All that researched and there is an organized resistance to accepting the truth.
The non-believers look so silly denying Global Warming. Only promoting the flat earth theory would make them look dumber.
Al pays more for electricity because he has two homes on the meter, an older less energy efficient home that he is weatherproofing, and he buys more expensive electricity from an eco friendly green company.
Wow, spying on his power bill. Assassination might be next.
A Youtube video mocking the "An Inconvenient Truth" turned out to have been produced by slick Republican public relations firm called DCI, which just happens to have oil giant Exxon as a client.
Al, there is too much money being made, you better wear Kevlar.
I think it is already too late. We should have gone into action decades ago, if not before.
So bringing up that Arafat winning makes the prize worthless is like saying the Catholic Church worships child molestation because a few priests are found guilty of such crimes. Sure the church tried to "handle the problem within" but that doesn't mean Catholics molest children.
Just like the above statement has nothing to do with Al Gore, neither do the Arafat statements.
On another point Gore shares the prize with Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change." So saying he is getting too much credit means that all you know about the award is what you heard in a sound bite.
With that out of the way, how can any educated person say Mankind is not affecting the climate. I don't even know where to start with that one....wait, yeah I do...don't let the boob tube rule your thinking. After all according to Fox News Saddam Hussein was the cause of 9/11
oh wait the hanging chad said bush is president. :)
As for the energy wasted arguing about this, why don't we just err on the side of caution; who will really be hurt if we become better stewards of the earth? What we have here is national dimming-- a man made phenomenon by which critical thinking becomes extinct.
Thank Science Al Gore is here to silence those 62% of infidel climatologists with his declaration that "The debate is over." All hail Al Gore! If we're going to lick this thing, we'll need to get the re-education camps for heretics up and running right away.
Detractors are mostly wrong. One prominent one just resigned as Virginia state climatologist, but it also turns out that he was a fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian Republican think tank with a record. He is and was taking money from those politically opposed to Al Gore. Would you trust him to be fair ? Big Coal, Big Auto, Big Utilitities all don't want change and they are doing the Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) strategy that working so well for Big Tobacco to stop smoking restrictions and warnings for so many years. The detractors are opposed largely for economic and political reasons. They don't have good science behind them and it is true that the mainstream scientists do think there is global warming.
There is a spectrum of opinion about how soon and what to do. Some say it is ALREADY too late to do anything. The tipping point has already been reached! Conservative blow hards like Rush Limbaugh basically want to do nothing but study the problem and hope for the best. So both sides of the extreme views want to shrug and do nothing.
What to do ?
First, continue studies start new ones. The climate is complicated. The fact we still cannot predict or control the weather should make this obvious. There are lots of moving parts. The Nobel prize in Chemistry went to a scientist who studied catalysts on surfaces. Among other uses, his work went into atmospheric chemistry and ozone layer models. Probably not something he expected or a use that was expected when he started. His work is also used in the auto industry for catalytic converters and undoubtly many other down to earth uses.
Second, educate the public. People will start taking measures by themselves if they believe it is the right thing to do and it makes sense. When hybrid cars first came out, conservatives laughed and made fun of them. Al Gore was laughed at during the 2000 campaign for saying these cars could revitalize the car industry. MY GOP friends pointed to Business Week articles saying that they made no economic sense because you would never save enough gas to make them economically successful. It was totally irrational because even if they didn't drive one, my GOP friends benefited for lower prices from the hybrid drivers lowering the demand for gas at NO cost to themselves. But instead of applauding the hybrid car drivers they were booing! My point is that the early adopters of hybrid cars took a risk (that hybrids would be a failure) that benefited themselves and everyone else and at NO cost to the doubters. (Note to GOP - renewable energy is in the same state as hybrid cars a decade ago. Early adopters can buy renewable energy now albeit at extra cost. Applaud even if you don't buy it. Yet.) Government and the media can help the climate debate by pointing out the pros and cons of various options to consumers and let them make their choices by personal action and personal choices of what to buy and use.
Third, have a long attention span. Have followup stories. If there is a report on Arctic ice this year, have a report again in two years. I think a lot of science reporting is too fascinated with one shot wonders. Big hurricane tonight at 11 is the usual media story. Climate change is a trend that may take a decades, even whether this year is hot, is not climate change until you look at the decades long trends and see a pattern.
I wish someone would lay out a plan on climate. The Bush administration reneged on a 2000 campaign promise to sign the Kyoto treaty and has basically done nothing in the past 7 years. No leadership at all. No alternate plan at all. No action at all. This should not be a political issue. Republicans and democrats used to work together on environmental issues in the 1970s.
thanks for those good points. The guy you are discussing who used to be the Virginia State Climatologist is named Patrick Michaels. I stopped paying attention to anything from him after he wrote an article stating that global warming is probably real, but that the worst consequences can be averted through the wide use of home air conditioning. Huh?!
He was apparently unaware of the fact that most people in Africa not only lack a source of electricity, but also do not even live in an airtight hut.
We have made some progress. First they denied Global warming existed.
I fear it may be too late, the signs are more and more frequent. They even predicted that some places would actually get colder due to weather patterns changing. No doubt the doubters will use it to stupefy.
And it didn't take a Supreme Court Ruling!
But, hey, who am I to urinate on Al's glory-seeking parade. WTG Al ... but you're still a loser.
Just kidding. Actually science is apoltiical. Some of the people who practice science may not be apolitical. Most of them check their politics in at the closet outside the lab door.
The motivations that guide the contrarians on global warming do vary. Some of the contrarians are simply so opposed to environmentalism by virtue of their religious, political, or philosophical convictions that they do not allow themselves to evaluate the evidence objectively. Others are simply contrarian by nature. Have you met a few people like that? Whatever the majority is saying is what they are going to argue against. We have intelleigent design guys out there too, plus a few kooks who argue that HIV is totally unrelated to AIDS, so global warming is not the sole example of these psychological processes. Some of the most prevalent psych modes having to do with evolutionary theory are also duplicated by the what-global-warming crowd. As summarized in "The Making of the Fittest" by Dr. Sean Carroll, the six thought modes are:
1. Doubt the science
2. Question the motives and integrity of the scientists
3. Magnify disagreements among scientist, and cite gadflies as authorities
4. Exaggerate potential harm (to acting on the science)
5. Appeal to personal freedom
6. Acceptance repudiates key philosophy, so reject it.
I think I recognize of couple of those in your standard arguments, David.
Excellent and enlightening book
... I think I missed the part about global warming though.
He was arguing about the people who dismiss evolution,
no. I have not yet finished it.
> Al Gore seems to be in possession of the mic of public
> opinion at the moment. But does that alone make him
> a worthy winner of a Nobel Prize? I'm not sure.
Doesn't really matter what you think makes him worthy
of the NP does it, that is defined by the Nobel committee,
no?
I think the Earth is the number one priority or should be
of every decent human being on the planet. That said,
in the current insane cloud of humanity, war and greed
take precedent over sanity ... so the unraveling of the
knot of insanity and moving towards some sane management
of the planet requires first that the people who care about
the planet come out on top in the insane warmaking we
are using to determine dominance of action on the planet.
What a tragedy that the only place we know in the whole
universe that has life is suffering such insanity that it could
destroy itself without thinking.
> hands on the levers of real power?
Definitely ... or when it is possible for them to get power,
such as Gore, should go for it and try to change things
for the better. Gore is wrong when he says he can do
more for the environment by NOT being President ... how
lame does that sound anyway?
My point was that if you did two experiments, side by side, but had different parameters, then you could not compare them as equal. That's one of the most basic tenets of scientific experimentation. The factors in the world's environment today are so drastically different from the factors in the world's environment millions of years ago, it makes no sense to say the outcome is the same, or even similar, for the same reasons.
Chris W., Oct 13, 2007, 3:27pm EDT
Actually, Chris, my allegation of political motivations were not directed at the "contrarians". It was directed at the "scientists", and others, who are foisting this politically-driven crisis on us, not at those who are pointing out the shotty to outright false "scientific" conclusions saying the current cycle of climate variation is anthropogenic.
Anecdotal citations will not suffice, particularly when there are draconian measures being called for by some to alleviate something that has yet to be proven to exist. Yes, we should be good stewards of our environment. That does not necessitate relegating millions of Third World inhabitants to lives of meager existence, or fatally crippling the major economies of the world is the answer to a problem a connection to human activity that lies somewhere between tenuous and nebulous.
we can agree to disagree on who the true contrarians are here. But I will note that there were 2000 IPCC scientists who share the award with Gore, and I am not sure that they were even paid for the work they did.