Al Gore won the Nobel Prize today for his work in global warming. I understand that each Nobel winner gets a cash award of about $1,500,000. This will come in handy for Gore, so he can pay all those utility bills for his home, which consumes more than 10 times the energy of the average American home.
31 Replies to “Gore Wins Nobel Prize”
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this guardian article made me laugh:
http://commentisfree.guardian......peace.html
sorry wrong article, this is the one that made me laugh, the british are so witty – really funny stuff
about Gore
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opi.....do1202.xml
gehman, thanks for the link!!
The following sentence is worth the price of clicking by itself:
“The former US Vice-President has already taken over from Michael Moore as the most sanctimonious lardbutt Yank on the planet.”
Gore barely got his BA graduating with a C minus average.
Gore claims that the professor he took an ecology class from was his mentor. He got a D in the class and that professor has no memory of him in the class.
Gore dropped out of Vanderbilt Law School.
Gore flunked out out of University of Tennessee Divinity School. (Really, how hard could that program have been?).
I could go on.
This is the guy we’re supposed to listen to when it comes to science? This is the type of person who gets a Nobel prize? Each year the peace prize goes lower and lower: Arafat, Carter, ElBaradei and now Gore.
ex-xian, Gore is an hypocrite on the environment; he is kinda dim; he’s a liar (not Clinton-class, but a liar nevertheless); he’s never done anything particulary noteworthy to promote the cause of world peace. He has absolutely no qualifications to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. At least he’s not a terrorist like Yassir Arafat. I think this award will go down in history as the moment the Nobel Committee announced its utter allegiance to liberal politics even at the expense of its legitimacy (what little it had left after the Arafat debacle).
Ha! Hey, Gore and Arafat get Nobel award, but not Ghandi?
Nah, no agenda, nah…
Hey, I wonder who has the most efficient house. Bush or Gore? Oh Gosh, Edwards?
http://www.treehugger.com/file.....e_bush.php
Anyone want to compare?
North Pole, South Pole, we all go round…
http://www.canadafreepress.com.....91307m.htm
Quoted from linked articles…
And, more importantly the model is seemingly flawed…
“The climate models predict warming in Antarctica and they are increasingly inconsistent with the observations.”
Our scientist probably do not know the extremes to which our system can be pushed yet and their models show they have not fully understood all the variables to predict with any accuracy this year or next what will happen.
Either by natural CO2, etc., or human pollution or by external forces such as solar.
Maybe we should all calm down a bit and stop predicting disaster.
The true problem and utter irony? Terrorist and Tyrants. President Bush has freed 50 million people in Afghanistan and Iraq from murderous thugs. Peace is breaking out across Iraq now neighborhood to neighborhood as Iraqis reject Al Qaeda and Insurgents. I realize Bush will never get the Nobel.
But who is truly making a difference today? A self-inflated ego, Daddy-boy Oil-wealth self-promoter? I wonder, has Gore sold all of his oil stocks and mineral rights?
Or, a President when under fire, 3,000 Americans dead, took the hard steps necessary to make difficult changes in the world. Our military and this President in time, in history will be seen much better than a global warming scare monger awared a political prize the equivalent of which was handed out to a terrorist thug like Arafat.
Free 50 million? Produce a propaganda film? I’ll take the man who has freed 50 million any day.
I rarely comment on this site about environmental issues, but Gore winning the Nobel Peace Prize is a a mockery of the award. Whatever one may think of the ultimate environmental issues, the idea that the Peace Prize should go to someone whose claim to fame is pushing an agenda and a film is a blow to the credibility of the prize. Hopefully we’ll all look back in a decade and realize that this was a mistake.
Oh well, I guess it could have been worse: the Peace Prize is understood to be somewhat political in nature; at least they didn’t give him a science-related award.
This still can’t beat those Nobel nerds choice for the Peace prize to terrorist, assassin Yassar Arafat (1994).
Giving it to Gore for promoting what is largely a lie (anthropogenic global warming) is a great clue to the IQ levels of the not so noble nobel gang.
Maybe someone should dismantle Nobel.org and rebuild it on more honest and reasonable grounds .
I think they should give themselves a Darwin award (http://www.darwinawards.com/) for this kind of idiocy .
“I think they should give themselves a Darwin award for this kind of idiocy.”
This is precious — well said!
Guys, when those against ID read us talking in a way that appears to “deny” global warming, they see us as ignorant. There is said to be evidence that ID people were also opposed to the link between HIV and AIDS.
IMHO we should avoid talking too much about topics that are not closely aligned to ID.
I realise that being sceptical is a virtue but I fear that some who would otherwise be helped by ID discussion may be put off by what we say on unrelated issues.
The award money from the Nobel is pocket change for Gore. Google gave him about $50 million to be on the board and Apple gave him another large amount. Someone said he left the Vice President with a net worth of around 1 million and is now worth more than $100 million. I am sure the amount changes daily.
To me the one unforgiveable fallacy in his presentations is that temperature rises precede CO2 rises but that is never pointed out as he tries to leave everyone with the direct opposite impression. The Global Warming people would be taken more seriously if they weren’t always being political.
He must run for President in 2008.
http://www.globalwarming.org/node/1143
What a fabricated mess! Claimed Antartica was shrinking when in fact it was increasing. False claims, etc. As much as I love nature, I detest propaganda.
Now, how do we get a law like the Brits have against “Political Indoctrination” applical in America for our public schools? So we can fight garbage that is shown as fact in films of evolution without any legitimate rebuttals?
Al must surely feel he got shafted for having been given just the Peace Prize. Why not the Nobel prize for physics as well? Chemistry too, and literature for his sci fi novel Earth in The Balance.
“Since Bush seemed to have been canonized here (I’m not even going to address the ridiculous claims about Iraq) has ADMITTED THAT HUMANS CAUSE CLIMATE CHANGE.”
This actually should cause YOU (assuming you really dislike Bush and consider him a liar) to reconsider anthropogenic global warming. After all, he lied about the reason for the war (oil), lied about WMD, lied about torture… and now he says humans cause global warming. Funny how NOW you believe him.
idnet.com.au and ex-xian:
skepticism towards Al Gore’s documentery is a widspread phenomanon to the extent it has been making manstream news with some regularity. I can hardly see how disagreeing with Al Gore can be used to marginalize the ID proponents that have issues with GW.
ex-xian wrote:
“Wow. Just wow. In the past few weeks I’ve learned quite a bit about ID supporters.
“Since Bush seemed to have been canonized here (I’m not even going to address the ridiculous claims about Iraq) has ADMITTED THAT HUMANS CAUSE CLIMATE CHANGE. Not to mention religious and right-wing (two demographics that I suspect are highly represented here) Pat Robertson has described himself as a “convert” to global warming.”
You paint with a pretty broad brush there. Let’s analyze your thoughts for just a moment. It sounds like you are saying that Bush and Pat Robertson are on board with AGW? Hmmm, shouldn’t that influence all those ID-supporting the AGW skeptics — if, that is, your argument is correct that it’s just right-wing politics?
Perhaps, just perhaps, it is not political allegiance so much as a willingness to buck consensus authority and think for one’s self that is the common thread.
Either way, there is certainly nothing more than a minor correlation, not causation. There are probably plenty of ID supporters who are on board with Bush and Robertson on this one. Further, I think you’ll find plenty of people who are skeptical about this one and also skeptical of ID.
In any event, let’s be clear on a couple of key facts (yes, unlike another topic that shall remain nameless for now but starts with an “e”, it is unfortunately necessary to set up some definitions beforehand in order to have a rational debate):
– Global warming is not the same as AGW (anthropogenic global warming).
– A conclusion of AGW does not address whether the warming is bad.
– A conclusion that AGW is bad does not allow us to conclude that the proposals on the table to curb AGW are either sensible or effective.
There are a lot of careful and thoughtful people, scientists and lay persons alike, who are perfectly willing to accept global warming — even AGW — but who do not subscribe to the kinds of rhetoric and policy agenda pushed by Mr. Gore. It doesn’t mean they are in denial; it means they are thoughtful and rational.
The topic of this thread was Mr. Gore’s receipt of the Nobel *Peace* Prize. As I mentioned before, whatever you think of the environmental issues, the idea that Mr. Gore would be selected as the recipient of the Peace Prize should, I would think, strike most careful observers as a political statement rather than an objective evaluation of what Mr. Gore and An Inconvenient Truth have actually contributed to the world.
idnet.com.au wrote:
“IMHO we should avoid talking too much about topics that are not closely aligned to ID.”
I think you are generally correct, which is why I generally don’t jump in on the global warming discussions. I have contributed a few thoughts to this thread because I am so amazed that Gore would receive a Nobel Prize for his advocacy in this area, and because I view it as a clear political statement, rather than an acknowledgement of any particular good that has come from his efforts.
Perhaps my initial quick postings were a bit intemperate. I trust my last post was more measured and did a better job of pointing out the issues.
Enough said on my part — I’ll go back to lurking.
Arthur B. Robinson, Noah E. Robinson, and Willie Soon at the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine — among much else — document a little-noted benefit to increased atmospheric CO2 in their peer-reviewed paper “Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide”:
ex-xian:
It must be nice to live in a reality of your own making with no regard for what the real world of facts is like.
This is called, in psychological terms, ‘projection’.
What I find most galling is that Bush really has a terrible school and service record, but conserv’s never try to use it to say he’s unfit. Gore, who has an overall positive academic record, is attacked as a lazy moron.
You complain about others not back-checking. Now I’m not going to back-check this–it’s not worth it to me–but I remember people who I would trust saying that Bush’s GPA was higher, perhaps even much higher, than Gore’s. So why, then, are you so “galled”? (Unless, of course, you’re French)
Wow. Just wow. In the past few weeks I’ve learned quite a bit about ID supporters. Dembski admits that he has ulterior religious motives for supporting and promoting ID, Phil Johnson is an HIV/AIDS denier (not recent, but I recently found out about it), and the folks at Uncommon Descent are global warming skeptics.
ex-xian, you don’t seem to have a clue, so I will kindly give you one. The link between Darwinism, HIV/AIDS and Global Warming: government funding! So what we have is basically “scientific political correctness”.
I really have no axe to grind when it comes to the HIV/AIDS controversy; but consider this: HIV, the retrovirus, has been around since the 1920’s. If it’s been around since 1920, why did the AIDS epidemic start in the 80’s? Doesn’t that make you scratch your head a little? But, of course, you’re a liberal; and no one is more close-minded than a liberal, so, if the NY Times says that there’s no controversy, I’m sure that’s good enough for you. But we’re here to try and help you along.
ex-xian : I suppose that stands for ex christian – a very dumb, judas-like confession if ever there was one.
As for anthropogenic global warming you seem to be entirely ignorant of the facts. Mars is experiencing global warming and it’s temperature has risen about the same as earth’s in the same period of time.
That should give you a clue – seeing that your comments are otherwise clueless.
See Here
here and here
You also reason in a very childish manner with your snide note on Dembski admitting “ulterior religious” motives. Are you so gullible as to believe that one persons pr any number of persons) religious motives are the end all argument against any theory of origins?
If so then you should completely abandon Darwinism since all of it’s high priests (Dawkins, Provine, Scott, Lewontin etc.) are all religiously motivated (materialism, secular humanism etc) Darwinists.
I would say to you, “You want to go home and rethink your life” (as Obi-wan to Elan Sleazebaggano, in SWE2)
Al Gore = Mother Theresa. You would have to be joking!
Everything is political today. Everything. Everyone has an agenda, and in the US (and probably other countries, but I can’t speak to that) there is a war being fought between the left and the right. A physicist (name escapes me at the moment) recently said that “thinking about the multiverse and how it effects your own life can drive you crazy”… this same thinking applies to thinking about the war between the left and the right.
In order to prevent insanity in today’s truly messed up political reality I choose to live by Rob Lowe’s quote in the movie “About Last Night”. When he is asked if all of the world’s woes bother him his reply is “I live in a pretty good neighborhood”….
The war between the left and the right doesn’t bother me because me because I simply do not pay attention to it. Extreme left, extreme right, they are both the same, different faces of the same coin. Both ignorant, both narrow-minded, both wrong.
Al Gore winning the Nobel is nothing more than a sortie in the war. To all those that hold that a Nobel means nothing anymore this is a non-event. No more important than being informed of a scene in a TV show you don’t watch.
I live in a pretty good neighborhood, and as such I have no qualms about Gore or the Nobel, anymore than I care about a certain character in MTV’s The Real World, a show I have never watched.
Al Gore means less than nothing to me, as does the Nobel committee, but you probably already guessed that. 😉
XtremeCamera:
I sympathize with your frustration, but if you and your neighborhood aren’t politicized then your statement that, “Everything is political. Everything,” is an exageration.
Thank goodness that most of life isn’t political. Like playing with my granddaughter at the park, praying with and for my fellow-believers, planning our company’s next business move, taking my wife on a dinner-date, talking about gardening with a neighbor, sharing Christ with a hungry heart, or driving through the Texas Hill Country on a sunny Sunday afternoon.
I’d say, rather, that too many things which ought not be politicized, have been. For example, when it comes to issues such as global warming, science has forsaken a disinterested pursuit of truth to become a consensus-building (a.k.a. “political”) enterprise.
Choosing to ignore the politics involved in Al Gore’s award is easy. Choosing to ignore the political takeover of, say, medicine, is going to prove more difficult 7 1/2 hours into a 15-hour wait to see a doctor. By then, however, it will be too late.
When it comes to politics, here’s my favorite definition of “democracy”: Two wolves and a sheep deciding what to have for supper.
ex-xian is now an ex-member and all his comments were ex-communicated.
ex-cellent!
I thought of Dr Sanfords book when I saw this news. Even though it isn’t what he meant, I woudl say that he was correct. The human genome really is degenerating.
While in one of the main operations centers in Iraq. I saw this news clip of Gore having won this “prize” on one of the big screens. Gore still doesn’t have respect from anyone in the military that I know. Nobody in the room could respect the event. And, no offense intended to anyone with mental impairments… because my heart goes out to anyone struggling in society in that way. So, I hate to sound crude, but all I could do was drop my jaw and simply comment that the human race as a whole had just become a little more retarded by seeing this so called “prize” awarded to Gore.
What’s so bad about global warming anyway? Siberia would become a bread basket, and rain might be more common then in the deserts – bringing them to life.
That’s my two cents.
H’mm:
First, given the technical defects in his case, it is painfully plain that Mr Gore’s Prize has more to do with the Internationalist political climate, rather than the real one — and several other inexplicable awards over the past years simply underscore the point.
That will, sadly, redound to the harm of the Nobel Prize as an institution, long term.
However, having got that out of our system, we need to attend to matters more directly germane to the focus of this blog. Namely, the current deleterious intersection of Science, worldviews, political agendas and public perceptions.
Where to begin?
1] Let’s calm down:
We can note that very, very few of us are qualified to read technical, mathematics- and theory-dense papers on climate trends and driving dynamics with critically aware insight.
It would therefore behoove us to hold our opinions lightly and tentatively, rather than with ferocious emotional commitments and hostile perceptions that too much of this debate manifests — especially on Mr Gore’s side, who have unfortunately been more the sinners here than the sinned against. I am particularly incensed by the tendency to accuse those who point out deficiencies in the AGW advocates’ case, of being motivated by bribes from the Oil industry, etc.
2] Focus on the merits, not the headlines and hype:
Much of the strongly voiced opinion we see is driven by the weight of headlines and the prestige and persuasiveness of spokesmen for one side or the other — not the substance of the case.
In any case, science — as a study based on inference to best current explanation of observations — is incapable of proof beyond revision or even abandonment. Computer models, especially the relatively crude ones used in GCMs, are even moreso incapable of proof beyond reasonable doubt. Indeed, as has been noted above and in links, there are still troubling empirical gaps between what the models say and what the data says.
In that context, headlining one-off events such as Hurricane Katrina, or the retreating of this particular glacier [and not the nearby one that is growing], or every heat wave — or cold one for that matter — simply acts to persuade, not to substantiate.
On balance therefore, there is an observation on current or recent climate trends, there are interesting explanations on offer, and there are concerns; some of them perhaps a bit overwrought due to hyping by enthusiasts and advocates.
3] Take reasonable and prudent actions:
My rule of thumb on CC-related action steps, is that we should take no action motivated by concerns over AGW that do not make sense on other grounds. Especially, if the actions have a high cost-to-benefits ratio.
For instance, I think the IPCC etc analysis suggests that Kyoto protocol actions would probably delay their projected trends by a decade. At the same time, too many of these actions may well have drastic and adverse impacts on economies. [And, economic depressions are a leading trend index of major wars, for many reasons. Not least, economically destabilised, desperate people are a lot less prone to think carefully before acting politically — just ask the Germans of the early 1930’s.]
4] Work on credible alternatives:
In the meanwhile, we can work harder on developing reasonable alternative energy technologies, e.g. Geothermal energy here in Montserrat. Such could cut our generation costs to competitive levels internationally, and take us out of the highly volatile international oil market for our biggest fossil fuel line item. Plus, we may have up to 900 MW of potential, from some estimates I have seen, raising the possibility of attracting energy-intensive industries and even electrical power export.
Longer term, I think dye-sensitised TiO2 photocells [maybe less than US$ 1/Watt capacity], Pebble Bed Modular Reactors [maybe less than US 2 cents/kWhr, or half current levellised generation costs], fuel cells and other emerging technologies offer interesting alternatives.
So do some of the proposals for Carbon sequestration and even the possible use of exhaust from power plants to make biofuels out of GM algae. (Transportation and Electricity generation are usually the top two fossil fuel users in an economy.)
Similarly, we have more than adequate reason to take prudent adaptation and where possible mitigation steps on climate related natural hazards. For instance, New Orleans should never be rebuilt to be as vulnerable as it was to a Cat 3 – 5 storm. Sooner or later one will come again. (Similarly, Plymouth, Montserrat, should never have been developed as it was as the principal centre for key infrastructure, right in the target zone of an active volcano.)
Thus, we can change the tone and terms of the debate, dramatically.
5] Drawing the lines back to the ID debate:
It should be obvious that science and politics in a context where the general public are ill-equipped to assess technical merits, is a volatile mix. One that invites hot-heads who like to throw in blazing matches. The resulting conflagrations throw out more heat and noxious smoke than light.
This is exactly what has happened with the design theory debate. Steps 1 – 3 and maybe 4 above, are again applicable. But, those who stand to lose power as the balance of the merits is not their way, will try to hot things up to suit their taste and interests. (The recent threads on Mr Dawkins and his ilk are sadly telling in that regard.)
So, let us note for ourselves what is going on, and refuse to be controlled by heat and smoke, not light.
GEM of TKI
PS: There has also been a lot of tossing around of the smear-word “fundamentalism,” recently in this blog — with the insinuation that “theocracy” [another loaded word] is not far behind. I think a pause to examine a more balanced look at some basic facts and challenges to those who wish to use this burning brand, will be helpful.
Additional:
On re-examining my vaults, I think we could all do with a read of the Roy Spencer article here.
Of the author it is written therein:
I make a few notes:
–> It is sad that he has to make a long preface on the oil money bribe accusation. Money quote:
–> His contrast between the infamous Hockey-stick graph that tried to do away with the Medieval Climate optimum and the results of the GRIP borehole project is also interesting: we don’t need to use “proxies” for temperature like tree ring measurements — there are actual temperature ‘measurements’ that go back over 1,000 years. Borehole temperatures are taken deep in the ground, where the seasonal cycle in surface temperature sends an annual temperature pulse down into the Earth. Dating of these underground temperature pulses from Greenland (Fig. 3) reveals much warmer temperatures 1,000 years ago than today.
–> Thus, the climate optimum is evidently real, and shows a temp spike that is significantly in excess of the current one. Thus, natural variability can be a key factor in what is going on.
–> To this, we can add the recent “kept quiet” correction to the temp records of the US over the past 130 or so years, which suddenly and significantly shifts the pattern of “warmest years.” As Lorne Gunter remarks in the National Post,The hottest year since 1880 becomes 1934 instead of 1998, which is now just second; 1921 is third. Four of the 10 hottest years were in the 1930s, only three in the past decade . . . . The 15 hottest years since 1880 are spread over seven decades. Eight occurred before atmospheric carbon dioxide began its recent rise; seven occurred afterwards.
–> To help us understand the rhetorical significance of that, Gunter asks us to imaginatively reverse the situation: Imagine the shrieking of the warmers if we had previously thought that hot years were scattered throughout the past 130 years, but after a correction the warmest years could be seen to be concentrated in the past decade . . . . They would blitz every news organization and talk show.
–> In that context, the quiet correction is highly, sadly revealing.
________________
In short, we need to cool down the temperature of the discussion, and act with cool-headed prudence and mutual respect [as my earlier comment, still in mod, observed], not hype and hysteria.
GEM of TKI
“President Bush has freed 50 million people in Afghanistan and Iraq from murderous thugs. ”
Of course the commander in chief won’t win the Nobel. You have to be properly French, like Al Gore. No one who has the fortitude to fight for God will win the Nobel Prize from the God-hating Europeans.
We should really outlaw Americans from accepting European prizes like the Nobel – just like Canada outlaws Canadians from accepting knighthoods from the Queen. It would sure make a good point to see if Gore would choose a Nobel and have to renounce his American citizenship to do it.
The night Gore won his prize, I heard an IPCC wag on The News Hour blame Katrina on global warming. Then today I read this:
Then he makes an observation that encapsulates how science is held hostage by politics nowadays: