Al Gore : Nobel prize

limerickman

Former US vice president Al Gore and the UN climate panel have been awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize today for raising awareness of the risks of climate change. The Norwegian Nobel Committee chose Mr Gore and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to share the €1m prize from a field of 181 candidates. Mr Gore has urged action to slow global warming with his book and Oscar-winning documentary film An Inconvenient Truth.

Very good.

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.."But finally the last thing I’ll say to the people who don’t believe in cycling, the cynics and the sceptics. I'm sorry for you. I’m sorry that you can’t dream big. [I]I'm sorry you don't believe in miracles. You should believe in these athletes, and you should believe in these people. I'll be a fan of the Tour de France for as long as I live. And there are no secrets" - this is a hard sporting event and hard work wins it - Armstrong 2005 TDF
morelike hypocrisy.

jhuskey

Good subject matter to aware of, but Mr.Gore's office use to be just down the road from me about 50 km's and I know too much of him to admire him.

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Sobriety is over rated!

alienator

Good on ya', Al. It's too bad the current US "leadership" can't show the fortitude or spine to press forward and address the human impact on climate change.

Bro Deal

Seems really bogus to me. The Peace prize is always political and that cannot help but lessen the value of the other Nobel prizes that are based on real science. Giving it out for "raising awareness"? WTF is that? The award should be given out for accomplishments not publicity. Why not give one out to Morton Spurlock for raising awareness of the the bad effects of fast food? Why not give one out to the director of Thank You For Not Smoking for raising the awareness of propoganda from tobacco companies? How about Richard Gere for raising awareness of the plight of Tibet by encouraging people to send out positive waves?

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"You are like the wind and I like the lion. You form the tempest. The sand stings my eyes and the ground is parched. I roar in defiance but you do not hear. But between us there is a difference. I, like the lion, must remain in my place. While you like the wind will never know yours." -- Mulay Hamid El Raisuli, Lord of the Riff, Sultan to the Berbers, Last of the Barbary Pirates

alienator

It has no impact whatsoever on the value of the other Nobel prizes. Few in the public even know of the other prizes, and those that do know, i.e. those that work in those fields, understand the significance. I don't think Jimmy Carter's or Al Gore's Peace Prize diminish any of the significance of the Nobel Prize in Physics won by the gentleman down the hall from my office for his work in nonlinear optics, nor is the Nobel Prize in Physics won by another member of our college for his work studying the fine structure of hydrogen spectra any less monumental.

The Nobel Peace Prize is and always has been what it is: a prize, based on more subjective criteria as judged by the Nobel committee than the other Nobel prizes.

Al Gore's and the UN committee's award is significant and proper given the increase in awareness of and calls for action on global warming. I think it's doubly so given the efforts of one country's government to quash the release of its own data supporting the theory of warming and to censor its own scientists. Given the impact of global warming and the effects it's likely to have over the next 100 years, and given that it will affect every person residing on the Earth, it's an issue worthy of a prize. I certainly think Al Gore's efforts merit his share of the prize. And given that apparently, many others around the world agree on that point, it's no surprise that he won.

Bro Deal

I disagree. Mixing politics and science is a bad idea, especially in places like the U.S. where there is large anti-science component to the population. Long after the money is spent, the only thing that remains of value to something like a Nobel prize is the prestige, and that is affected by how fair the award process is viewed. Handing out prizes of the same name based on politics damages the Nobel "brand name," if you will.

One of the keys to maintaining a brand is not to dilute it. If the Nobel foundation wanted to give out a political based peace prze, they should have endowed a prize of a different name and a distinct organization that has nothing to do with their usual awards. Instead they risk tarring the reputation of their regular awards amongst people who disagree with results of their political ones. It may not matter to the scientists, but the man on the street might start to wonder just what candidates or discorveries were overlooked because of the politics of the day. Inevitably this leads to a decrease in the awards' prestige.

Al Gore is a particularly bad choice because of the politcal baggage he carries. It would be different if he had a real accomplishment that could be pointed out to justify the award. If he had brokered a treaty to reduce carbon output or if he had raised the CAFE limits on new vehicles, something objective that benefits the world, then he would be a much less controversial winner. I expect the Nobel prize to tatke a lot of flak in conservative circles over the choice of Al Gore; being tied together with the U.N. is not going to helpt matters either.

Instead of an objective accomplishment he is awarded based on a touchy-feely concept like "raising awareness," a term that brings up visions of hippies with love beads holding hands and thinking positive thoughts. Gore's attempts to bring the issue to the forefront have been hampered by his political past. Whenever global warming is brought up among conservatives, you get cracks about Al Gore. It's like Michael Moore attempting to cast light on something; no matter how good of a job he does, a significant faction of the population will dismiss him out of hand because of his past. A spokesman for a company or a cause should have the respect of the people he intends to communicate with. Al Gore does not have that.

If Al Gore really wanted to do something about carbon emissions, he should be championing nuclear energy instead of rehashing info that was better presented on Frontline and Nova.

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"You are like the wind and I like the lion. You form the tempest. The sand stings my eyes and the ground is parched. I roar in defiance but you do not hear. But between us there is a difference. I, like the lion, must remain in my place. While you like the wind will never know yours." -- Mulay Hamid El Raisuli, Lord of the Riff, Sultan to the Berbers, Last of the Barbary Pirates

alienator

Well, to each his own. Since the Nobel Peace prize is not a Nobel Prize in science, it matters little, to me and a lot of other scientists, that it is not based on objective matters. In fact, there can be no objective matter upon which a Peace prize is selected. Clearly, the holders of the Nobel brand, i.e. the committee, have different opinions than you. I'd say their opinions are the ones that count.

As for what conservatives think, I could care less. It's obvious what the conservative "opinion" is on the science supporting global warming. As such, the "opinion" isn't worth considering.

Political baggage is for politicians to worry about. I'm fully capable of seperating Gore's work toward increasing awareness of global warming, from any alleged baggage he has. And FWIW, any baggage is a wholly political opinion that is dependent on the political opinions of the person holding said opinions.

Championing awareness and action on global warming has nothing to do with nuclear energy. Seperate issues, and the mention of it is simply a red herring.

Touchy feely? Gee, have you looked at all the other Peace Prize winners? They were all judged on "touchy feely" criteria.

The Michael Moore comment is another red herring and completely irrelevant. The science behind global warming is solid, and the data supports the theory. The data that supports the theory is also increasing with the arrival of better tools for the study. FWIW, Michael Moore is not a documentarian. Never was. As such, it's not right to judge his films as documentaries. They cause people to think or to have some emotional reaction, which is their purpose. He admits as much.

The relevance of global warming to the world today is significant, and its consideration as a topic worthy of a Peace Prize and world discussion is obvious: there are very few issues in the world that have an effect on every person on the planet in the foreseeable future. Moreover, the awarding of the prize to Gore is doubly apropos given that the US is one of the largest contriubtors to global warming, and given that the elected "leader" of the US has steadfastly done nothing--except silence his own scientists on the matter and have reports on global rewritten to fit the "leader's" agenda. I don't see anyone else that has done more to raise the stakes and promote the issue than Al Gore.

I think it would be a mistake to dumb down the Peace Prize so that the "man on the street" either agrees or can understand it. That's not a consideration for the science prizes, is it? Has anyone else here studied the fine spectral structure of Hydrogen spectra? Does the man on the street have any clue why Steven Chu won the prize in Physics and how laser trapping is used to cool atoms or how that work allowed us to create Bose-Einstein condensates? It's been a while since I've heard anyone on the bus, in a restaurant, or on the street discussing Feynman's developments in quantum electrodynamics. Maybe those awards were awarded improperly since most people really don't understand what they're all about. Maybe they diluted the brand by being intellectually elusive to the average person.

Cycler6n

here comes another fight!

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“(Training) doesn't get easier; you just get faster”
-Greg Lemond

jhuskey

Maybe if he would sell a few mansion ,large suv's,jet skis etc,etc he would be more validated but I know enough on Al as a senator from Tennessee to invalidate him in my realty.
I however do not invalidate Global Warming. That is another matter but let the debators have it
Let the "mass debators" have it.
I am going out for my anniversary dinner with my wife, so...............have a nice day and or evening CF poster and Big Al ,inventor of the internet.

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Sobriety is over rated!

stilesiii

Nice to see Al in the same group as Arafat. What a great award

alienator

Golly, then. What you're saying must be true, because you say so. And heck, you even went to the effort of posting it twice, so you'd be doubly sure we'd be impressed by your intimate knowledge.

So, I'm guessing all the news agencies call you when they want the straight scoop, right?

Sooooooooo, I wonder what the folks in your town think they know about you.....hmmmmmmmm.

Cycler6n

So Alienater, are you agreeing that Gore should have gotten the award?

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“(Training) doesn't get easier; you just get faster”
-Greg Lemond

alienator

Not counting George Bush and his administration, global warming and its fallout are two of the greatest threats facing humans in the future. The threat only grows greater as more nations industrialize.

The idea that Earth is too large to be affected by man doesn't hold water. Scientists are already working out how we would terraform another planet--and that's something that would happen on a much slower scale--so why is so difficult to grasp that man can "terraform" our own planet? Hell, that possibility is written right into the Second Law of Thermodynamics: S=k*Ln(omega). It's the law that tells us that no process can be 100% efficient. The inefficiency manifests as heat, chemical byproducts of incomplete combustion, yada yada yada.

Meanwhile, people are content to sit around fat, dumb, and happy, completely unworried about what problems they'll leave for their children or anyone else. That attitude is a trademark of Americans in general.

The science is there, and the data fits.

DrunkenBiker

Blah, blah, blah.

Arguing about Global Warming is like re-arranging the chairs on the Titanic.