Al Gore has for a long time been one of the world’s leading environmentalist politicians. He became aware at an early stage of the climatic challenges the world is facing. 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 greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted.
By awarding the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 to the IPCC and Al Gore, the Norwegian Nobel Committee is seeking to contribute to a sharper focus on the processes and decisions that appear to be necessary to protect the world’s future climate, and thereby to reduce the threat to the security of mankind. Action is necessary now, before climate change moves beyond man’s control.
Well, we knew it was gonna happen, right? Or perhaps “feared” is the better word.
So. The next question: Will he run?
Interesting times, indeed.
I hope some people pay attention. I know our president at the Whine House doesn't think there is such a thing as Global Warming and won't unless Texas is flooded. His faithful gnome, Karl Rove, taught him that.
ReplyDeleteGood for Al Gore.
Ah, Abraham. We'll have to agree to disagree. Coz it's apparent our views are about 180 degrees apart. Bush has acknowledged Climate Change exists and just held a global conference on Energy Security and Climate Change.
ReplyDeleteGore, on the other hand, has spent his time evangelizing (and falsely, at that) about the terrors of "global warming."
No one doubts there is climate change. There are two issues, as I see it.
(a) what's causing it?...is it part of the "normal" cycle? Or is it Anthropogenic? And if it's the latter, to what degree? There is NO consensus on these questions, regardless of Gore 's claim, which goes back to 2004, and were repeated again during congressional hearings this year.
Further on this point is the attempt on the part of Gore and Co. to muzzle people who haven't yet converted...or drunk sufficient amounts of the Kool-Aid. I find Gore's statements on this particular point reprehensible.
(b) what to do about it. And it's(b) where I take issue with The Goracle. I don't like either his "science" or his solutions and his prescriptions. There are alternatives.
As I said at the beginning...we should agree to disagree.
20 Years in Environmental Health work taught me several things....the main one was....Global Warming is a political issue, all about power and money.(the temperature has risen by 0.74 degrees in the past 100 years)...Al Gore and his "scary movie" are a joke, as is the Nobel Peace Prize, remember, they gave one to our very own Neville Chamberlin....JIMMY CARTER.
ReplyDeleteProof enough that Al and the Prize Committee are to be ignored.
Sad part his Buck, the world and the US in general are sheep being led down the path of Socialism and economic disaters....
{stepping down off my soapbox}
Isn't it wonderful that we are teaching our children and the world that you can win such an honor by telling a bunch of lies.
ReplyDeletePersonally, it says to me that a Nobel Peace Prize doesn't mean jack shit. It's just cheapened the prize.
Gore should really stop telling everybody the matter is "settled." That's the whole problem, it IS settled. One has only to re-phrase what exactly global warming, now known as climate change, really is to show what's taking place.
ReplyDeleteThe measurement popularly called a "global climate" is defined only for the purpose of selling things. It can't have any real scientific meaning, to the point you can ask someone with the computational resources "what is the global climate?" and have them answer you, with perfect syndication between inquirer and responder about what is being measured. For that to happen, you'd have to use the "Morgan's Celestial Blender" test. You take a blender about 15,000 miles wide and 40,000 miles high, toss the earth into it, grind up the contents into a puree and then stick a thermometer into the soupy mixture. That's somewhere between 8,800 and 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
Obviously, not what Al Gore's talking about.
But all other (two-dimensional, surface-based) interpretations are subjective. Measure the air only? Measure the soil? Measure the sea water? Down to what depth? An average out of tens of thousands of temperature reading stations? Okay, how do you compute the average? Should different stations carry different weights as you compute the average? Why or why not?
But more to the point, as we measure this global climate across generations, should any one of the answers to the above change...are the authorities going to disclose this as they put out their many big, scary reports about climate change? There's no reason to think the answers don't change. There's no reason to think that if they do, the authorities are going to be sincere about it. After all, we have no controls in place to force them to disclose. We just have a bunch of squabbling scientists like what we have on every other matter of science, and some former politician is running around making movies telling us not to look at the squabbling scientists, to believe that they all agree.
Who we gonna believe? The Wizard of Oz telling us to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, or our lyin' eyes?
But it isn't just the methodologies that change. The technology changes as well. And this is what "climate change" really is; it is the improvement of climate measuring instruments, making tenths of a degree meaningful now, when a century ago it was not measurable. Similarly, a variance of a few hundredths of a degree has a detectable meaning now, that it didn't have before. So it definitely is man-made, insofar as what we're talking about is the ability of climate measuring devices to register what they couldn't before. This gives us a new realization that the earth is a living thing, and has a rising & falling temperature just like any other living thing.
Some politicians are in the process of using that...to freak people out. They're making a brand new science out of the art of drawing graphs that look scary. While being able to say the graphs are "accurate." About half the time they screw up Dan-Rather-style, get nailed on it, and then they turn this new science into more of an art form, as they direct us not to pay attention to certain things. But they'll get better at it as time goes on.
Personally, it says to me that a Nobel Peace Prize doesn't mean jack shit. It's just cheapened the prize.
Agree. And I'll go one further: It's a disqualification. In a sensible United States of America that looked out for it's own interests like any other civilized country is expected to, should Gore decide to run for President in 2008, this would be a scandal. We'd have a debate about how a candidate can possibly be expected to win the trust and honor of that office, if he's a Nobel winner...just like if he cheated on his wife, sold his grandmother to the mafia to pay his gambling debts, or ground up children to butter his bread. He'd have to apologize for it. A lot.
We seem to be on the same page, most of us.
ReplyDeleteYou're free to mount the soapbox any ol' time in these parts, Pat.
Point well-taken, Jenny, and agreed...in spades.
And Morgan, you hit the nail dead-center when you say:
We'd have a debate about how a candidate can possibly be expected to win the trust and honor of that office, if he's a Nobel winner...just like if he cheated on his wife, sold his grandmother to the mafia to pay his gambling debts, or ground up children to butter his bread. He'd have to apologize for it. A lot.
I don't think he's gonna run though. I read something not too long ago (today) that Gore thinks Hill has it "locked up." He may or may not be right about that...just like most of the things he says these days.
I think Jenny said it perfectly. Every time I heard a news report on Gore today, I thought, "So much for the Nobel Peace Prize."
ReplyDelete