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Al Gore Shares Nobel Peace Prize with UN Panel
eldavojohn writes "Former US Vice President Al Gore has been announced as a co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his work on environmental awareness & climate change. He shares his award with the the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 'Speaking in Washington, Mr Gore praised the IPCC, "whose members have worked tirelessly and selflessly for many years". "We face a true planetary emergency," Mr Gore warned. "It is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity." He said he would donate his half of the $1.5m prize money to the Alliance for Climate Protection, reported the news agency Reuters.'"
Congratulations to the recipients. They've earned it. As with all peace issues, there is much much more work to do.
Al Gore certainly deserves this award, but I think I speak for all geeks when I say that I wish he would be a little more accurate. I have a hard time recommending his film An Inconvenient Truth due to his factual errors and exaggerated claims. Nonetheless, he has performed an invaluable service in bringing climate change to the center stage.
1. Deny you're running for president. Nobel prize committee wouldn't want to be seen as endorsing a particular front runner.
2. Win Nobel Prize
3. Announce candidacy for US presidency.
4. Profit.
Free the Quark 3 from asymptotic confinement! Bring your charm! Don't get down! All colours and flavours welcome!
You mean you had any confidence after they gave one to Arafat?
So instead of just hurling that out there, maybe you would like to explain why they do not deserve it? feel free to show us how the scientists on the IPCC are all wrong, and you have better information, and more experience on these issues.
What exactly is wrong with this decision? apart from the fact that you may not like al gore?
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Why? The work that Al Gore has done to raise awareness of our current planetary climate crisis is second to none. The Peace Prize goes out to individuals who raise global awareness of issues that affect the peace of the entire world, right? Wouldn't you say that climate change is in that category?
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If there's one person who made the entire world aware of the dangers posed to the environment; with his stubborn attitude - it's got to be Mr. Bush himself. By not ratifying the Kyoto protocol, by stonewalling global efforts to reduce emissions etc. ... the list is long of Mr. Bush's singular contributions to environmental awareness.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
As ignorant, self-serving and ossified as our Congress tends to be, if Gore hadn't argued and lobbied as hard as he did for those crazy DARPA people there probably wouldn't have been an internet. At least, not one that America "controls". I get your joke but it's sooo old. Maybe you should start getting the paper delivered to your parent's basement.
There are many people more deserving of the award who actually work towards peace, most at the risk of their lives. However I seriously doubt the Nobel committee would dare cross China or even some Islamic factions to award these types of people.
Couldn't this have been rewarded in a science category or were they afraid that that category would get mocked for what the award is about?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
People that don't read (and digest) TFA will wonder what climate change has to do with peace.
The committee said it wanted to bring the "increased danger of violent conflicts and wars, within and between states" posed by climate change into sharper focus.
If climate change happens as some expect there will be mass migrations, and territorial and resource wars. Like now, but only more so.
Free the Quark 3 from asymptotic confinement! Bring your charm! Don't get down! All colours and flavours welcome!
Ought not a Nobel Peace Prize winner practice what he preaches?
It is a rare event in this world that a good person doing a good thing is recognised. Except for the odd right-wingers who will respond to this (as an anonymous coward, no doubt), everyone on this planet owes Mr. Gore a debt of gratitude. Even if you don't believe in the human-influence on global warming (something I accept), you must admit that it's pretty obvious that all the pollution and greenhouse gases that we humans cause to be put into the atmosphere cannot be a good thing. Anything that causes us NOT to soil our nest is to be applauded. Mr. Gore is part of the force of good and I applaud him. Worked on his 2000 campaign in Council Bluffs too. Damn shame that he lost to the current asshat Bush by a vote of 4 to 5.
A judge in the UK calls it political
British schools ordered to provide balance when showing the movie.
But the Nobel Peace price isn't political....
Just remember - if the world didn't suck, we would all fall off.
"The Peace Prize goes out to individuals who raise global awareness of issues that affect the peace of the entire world, right? Wouldn't you say that climate change is in that category?"
No. What is affecting the peace of the entire world at the moment is war. There are wars between nations, wars of nations against their citizens and wars between ideologies.
This is just silly. Pure PR and marketing. Even the group Gore is giving his share to is a PR firm. They're mission is to do nothing more than tell people about climate change. No research, no solutions, just PR.
Look here for a brief summary:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/11/gore_errors/
But nevermind.. this whole topic has gone into religion-mode - no further objective discussion possible.
Climate change, even that not created by man, has the potential to cause more strife than oil ever could. It would be hard, but people can live without oil. People can't live without water or food. Small changes in climate can cause dramatic and rapid changes in local climates.
The prize in medicine is also not restricted to those who actually cure disease -- it can also be awarded to those who find ways to prevent disease.
The logic here is that the destruction of resources caused by climate change would lead to global conflict, so preventing climate change would prevent war. And world leaders will never make the commitments necessary to resolve the problem unless the electorate is informed.
There might be reasons to disagree with this logic, but I don't think it should be dismissed out of hand.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
Or Kofi Annan? He didn't seem too inclined to work for peace during the Rwandan Genocide.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
The whole global warming issue is cyclic. It even follows the pattern of the sun. His data is flawed, his platform is based on media frenzy and hype.
I can't believe they'd give someone that high of an award based on lies.
And, no, this isn't political - this is a matter of truth vs propoganda. In 10-50 years, when the media is crying about the coming ice age, maybe then...nah - they'll "forget"...
If someone spends 10 minutes researching the issue, instead of eating the cornbread and drinking the kool-aid, we'd have a lot of people asking questions that need to be asked.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win."
I read "Earth in the Balance" in October before the 2000 presidential election just to get an idea of what Gore was like. Perhaps slashdotters might be better able than the average joe to appreciate what writing a book requires: thinking about something. Questions, hypotheses, research, thinking. The philosopher Ortega wrote that the act of thinking about things instantly puts you in the minority; most people don't do it. Well, Gore does it. Maybe his personality isn't suited to the job of presidency, although it's hard to imagine that he would have been worse than Bush. But just maybe this role suits him better. He deserves the recognition he is getting now. Bush vs Gore: I know whose legacy I'd rather claim.
Oh, yeah, it's not easy to pad these out to 120 characters.
Then I see your Subject "Idiot with mod points" and think, "oh good, I'm not alone." Then I read your message and totally disagree with you!
OK, maybe it shouldn't have been marked as Troll. Maybe Off Topic or Overrated. But certainly not informative. Definitely Modded DOWN (in my humble opinion).
there's always been change in climate and we have dealt with it, changes which have been far more then small.
No changes this fast, and not with this number of people in the world, and this percentage of planet area changed due to agriculture...
it's just alarmist nonsense your pushing there.
The science supports him, not you.
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof"
The whole world will be destroyed through cataclysmic global warming, is certainly an extraordinary claim - so have the IPCC produced extraordinary proof . . . or even ordinary proof.
Their evidence for ANY global warming is very thin: they ignore antarctic temperature records which disagree with their theory. The temperature records they do accept fail to account for the urban heat island effect and they apparently feel they can dismiss the most exhaustive and accurate measurements available (NASA satellite temp readings) with a wave of the hand and a vague accusation of partiality.
If they can't even produce any substantial proof that the worlds temperature has risen do you think they can they produce proof that this is caused by CO2 or that increased CO2 is the result of human interference - don't make me laugh.
Anthropogenic global warming MAY be happening, just as there MAY be intelligent life on some other planet . . . who the f**k knows? There's no evidence for either.
And no I don't have better information of more experience than the IPCC scientists, but neither do I feel the need to abandon my critical faculties in the face of some "authority" with impressive credentials.
Or Kissenger? Or ask any Korean how they feel about Theodore Roosevelt winning the prize...you aren't likely to get a very positive response.
Monstar L
Now don't get us wrong, but we love the freedoms you Euros have. Right now, we have shackled ourselves to the point where we might as well declare martial to make it a formality.
Before 911 hit the bricks, the only major issue we 'netters had to deal with was the ack-acks. Now we have to deal with illegal monitoring of our 'net traffic, wiretapping at-will, surveillance on all levels, et al.
Oh, and police breaking up (and using weapons, nonlethal or otherwise in doing so) peaceful, and with all the right permits, gatherings.
Makes one want to immigrate to Switzerland or Denmark.
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
The peace price has always been the red headed stepchild of the whole Nobel thing.
In Medicine, physics and so on, the Nobel prize is considered more or less the highest academic achievement possible. This is because the prize is always way behind the cutting edge. It is given to people who's discoveries has already stood the test of time, peer review and practical application, which makes the whole process much more clear and objective.
The Peace price is often fairly current though. It's given to people for their efforts rather the their results, and sometimes the results turn out to be not so great. It's an "A for effort" kind of price.
"2) The US has actually done much better in reducing green house gas emissions compared to most Kyoto signatories. Name me one country that will actually meet its obligations."
Theree are 2 ways of looking a this - the US is already the largest consumer of energy per person... way too high compared to most other nations.
http://earthtrends.wri.org/text/energy-resources/variable-351.html
Some clips: 2003 2000 1990
Asia (excluding Middle East) 991.2 911.3 753.7
North America 7,844.1 8,113.1 7,544.8
China CHN 1,138.3 946.4 791.7
India IND 512.4 501.4 425.7
United States USA 7,794.8 8,109.0 7,543.4
India and China are home to over 35% of the World's population; but it appears they do not have much of a scope to reduce consumption. The US consumes more than 15 times the energy per person consumed in India; and there is a huge scope for reduction. Inaction by the US govt. is dangerous for the entire planet, including India and China.
And on a more personal note:
4) President Bush's home in Texas is actually a surprising green residence while Gore's pool house consumes more power than the average person's home.
It doesn't matter if Mr. Bush lives in a thatched shed and uses biogas to light up his dwelling. He is responsible for the energy consumption of the entire USA, not just his hut.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
It's a shame that so much focus is placed on a rise in temperature of a few tenths of a degree along with a whole bunch of unsubstantiated scare stories about consequences, to the exclusion of all of the other problems there are in the world. Deforestation, over-population and over-fishing are probably an order of magnitude worse for the biosphere than a small temperature increase (which may well have more positive benefits than negative in terms of bio-diversity). Perhaps it would be better for Gore to spend his time promoting the spending of an annual 1/4 trillion dollars on those things (even half that amount would fix a whole lot). If you really want to see how sound are the calculations and peer-review processes involved in all of this climate hand-wringing, check out climateaudit.org. You'll be very surprised at what you find.
The Nobel prize was for Al Gore and the IPCC, what Al Gore chooses to do with his share is his prerogative, and personally I think his choice was an excellent one. There's plenty of research out there already, what is lacking is the connection between that research and the commoner's ear.
Best. Webhost. Ever. Dreamhost.
People joke about Al Gore creating the Internet. But it was his sponsorhip of the 1988(?) Information Superhighway Bill that changed computer networks from an academic toy into a world wide force. It encouraged several existing subnets to adopt national standards and financed a high speed backbone that universities, companies, and government could all share. Six years later the NSF Supercomputer Center freeware release of Mosaic jump-started the application software side of the Net. And the internet pretty much became self-financing and important economic engine.
I think the Internet has had a more profound effect on human affairs than climatic change so far. And Al was an important contributer to the former. But there arent Nobel prizes for legislation.
If you think creating an inaccurate politicized & overly hyped documentary and merely being it's spokesman (ie: the Ronald McDonald clown for Globally Warmed Burgers) is more prize worthy than a woman who risked her life to save 2,500 lives during WWII.
Then something is seriously wrong with you...
And DON'T say his movie has helped raise awareness and thus saved lives in danger of global warming. Because his over-hyping, and questionable statements merely clouded the arena and debate; creating more controversy and less positive action.
I actually believe we need to reduce pollution, clean-up our act, become resource efficient. But every time I hear someone being an alarmist and quoting questionable figures I get upset. Because that hurts environmentalism by putting off a large portion of the populace rather than working toward a common ground.
A good example of such a working were the actions Jean-Michel Cousteau who's appealed to President's own nature and found common ground - the result the nation's largest national park and first marine national park was created.
This is a much better method than Al Gore's...
doesn't matter if Mr. Bush lives in a thatched shed and uses biogas to light up his dwelling. He is responsible for the energy consumption of the entire USA, not just his hut.
spoken like a true nazi. Bush is only responsible for the government, of which there is too much. You are responsible for your own energy usage.
India and China are home to over 35% of the World's population; but it appears they do not have much of a scope to reduce consumption. The US consumes more than 15 times the energy per person consumed in India; and there is a huge scope for reduction. Inaction by the US govt. is dangerous for the entire planet, including India and China.
Guess what, those people in India and China are FUCKING POOR AND HAVE NOTHING. What you are advocating is that the people of the USA go back to living in the same kind of crappy lives that people live in the third world. How much more proof do you need to see that you are advocating the injection of a massive level into the USA in order to make the world more equal. Faced with such stark choices, and stark facism by the enviro-left wing, how can any sane person not think that g.w. is a massive left wing lie designed to bring about socialism.
This is my sig.
I love the way that, especially in the US, if people suggest even marginal regulatory improvements to the minimum fuel standards of vehicles (as happens every year in the US, and is hugely lobbied against), they get called "eco nazis who want to live in mud huts". Here in Europe, we have much more fuel efficient cars, yet amazingly do not live in mud huts.
Here in San Francisco I don't even need a car. I have a 10-minute commute to work on natural gas and electric powered buses. Because the climate is mild, I don't need an air conditioner and I rarely need to heat my home. I grew up in a suburb where me, my sister, and my parents each had a car and needed it. Compared to that, riding the bus isn't so bad. I wouldn't go back to the suburbs for anything. My carbon footprint is about a tenth of the average American's, but I don't feel like I've sacrificed a thing. So yeah, it pisses me off that for the past 60 years government policy has heavily tilted toward suburbs. It's an article of religious fait: Suburbs are just morally superior. Cities are a dumping ground for single people, the poor, ethnic minorities, and other undesirables that respectable families don't want messing up their neighborhoods. It becomes a vicious circle: Middle class voters flee the cities because government lets the infrastructure go to hell; government lets the infrastructure go to hell because middle class voters live in the suburbs. If we spent anywhere near as much per capita on cities as we do on suburbs, it would be more environmentally sustainable and most people would be much happier.
"By now, anyone who claims that there is a scientific concensus on man-caused global warming is either a "kool-aid drinker" or being highly disingenuous."
or perhaps they are a member of the intergovernmental panel on climate change,. made up of scientific experts from every country on Earth who have agreed that man is the factor.
Its true, the fact that we are causing climate change is such an 'inconvenient' truth, that people will get VERY annoyed and arrogant in attempts to deny what is really going on. Some will even rant on slashdot that the worlds climate experts have a 'poor understanding of the underlying science'.
No offence, but who the fuck are you that your scientific understanding trumps every respected climate expert alive?
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Global warming has nothing to do with peace. Global warming activists were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize specifically for their global warming activism. This is like giving Bret Favre the Olympic Gold Medal for the decathalon, and saying that he deserves it because he's a really good quarterback. Being a quarterback has nothing to do with the decathalon. Bret Favre might well be incidentally really good at decathalon, but his abilities as a quarterback are utterly orthogonal to winning the Olympic Gold Medal for the decathalon. Global warming activism is utterly orthogonal to winning a prize for Peace.
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
You're strawmanning. No one is saying that the world is going to "end" from warming/climate change. We're just saying that human settlement and living patterns have been set in place with regard to the current climate situation. A huge climate shift is going to force entire populations to move because of the way the world is going to change (it's too late to stop it now... the only question is whether we can delay it or lessen the negative effects). That's a HUGE logistical problem for a world like ours that is already overpopulated. It's not a doomsday scenario, but it's not exactly bunnies and rainbows either.
IAALS.
repeat after me, propagandized fool: you don't have to be a saint to point out a sin
i don't think al gore could adapt as mightily as he could to less emissions to the degree required for you to take him seriously, but that's a side issue. to shut you up effectively, let us suppose that your observation is 100%, and then let's pack on a few thousand more sins. let us suppose for argument here that al gore ran his own personal coal plant, that he is, for the sake of argument right here, the giant hypocrite you see him to be
EVEN THEN, his words on climate change are sound
do you understand that?
if al gore were a pedophile, a murderer, listened to cold play, or any other number of heinous crimes, real and imagined, that you could fling at him, guess what?: his argument on climate change remains untouched, remains true. you don't defeat an argument by attacking the arguer, by doubting his integrity and his conviction. all you do is wind up changing the subject
CLIMATE CHANGE is the issue, not AL GORE
do you get that?
but in some people's minds, changing the subject form climate change to al gore means they have reaosn (in their deluded minds) TO IGNORE CLIMATE CHANGE
that's the problem with attacking al gore
the whole point is, assassinating al gore's character isn't the point. do you follow that? the point is climate change. and those who oppose al gore want to make al gore the subject matter INSTEAD OF climate change
but when you make al gore the subject matter, people forget all about climate change, and it becomes a giant retardfest of al gore did this and al gore did that. who cares about al gore?
al gore: "climate change is real"
porpagandized critic: "yeah but you pollute, therefore, i can ignore everything you say about climate change"
it is in fact a classic form of propaganda: rather than debate a speaker on his points, his argument, the issues, merely attack the speaker. as if that somehow nullifies the points he is making!
if al gore lived in a shack in minnesota, or if al gore ran exxon mobile, it doesn't matter; THE WORDS HE SPEAKS ON CLIMATE CHANGE ARE THE TRUTH. AND THAT IS THE REAL ISSUE
except to propagandizers like yourself, who want to make al gore the subject, rather than climate change
repeat after me, propagandized fool: you don't have to be a saint to point out a sin
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
So yea, we should totally have Al Gore also win the Nobel Chemistry Prize, Grammy Award for Best Record and while we're at it, a Gold Glove for best first baseman. It's not a simple matter of semantics. The awards are there to mean something and people who win are supposed to actually fit the description of the award. It's ridiculous to award Gore with a PEACE award when what he's doing is more related to Pollution. If we had a Nobel Anti-Pollution Prize, that might be more appropriate. But to say that "he deserves this because he's done good things even if the name doesn't fit at all" is nonsense.
You obviously have a lot of anger against Republicans (I'm a Democrat) and you're really choosing the wrong thread to argue about US politics. My argument first and foremost is that he doesn't deserve THIS award. He's done some good things, he's done some bad things. But as far as doing things to promote PEACE? I don't think he's done all that much.
Seriously, stop preaching and use a little sense that you accuse your opponents of not having.
So, it's a crock because the hurricanes never appeared (thank God) and that's all the proof you need right? And the fact that the North-West passage has opened due to record sea ice melting... well, that doesn't prove anything? *sigh*
Go ahead and latch on to anything you need to. I'll go with the majority opinion of climate scientists. Since I'm not one. Source: http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/dn11462
I don't recall that memo...
There is loads of evidence for global warming. To say there is no consensus is like saying that there is no consensus that smoking causes cancer. There may be a few maverick scientists who go against the consensus, plus the scores of industry sponsored mouthpieces but there certainly is a consensus.
The Indian middle class is almost the same size as the entire US population: about 250 million middle class Indians vs. about 300 million US residents total.
Granted, the nature of that wealth is somewhat different given their overall proportion of the country's population. That indeed would be a valid point. It would also be a good point to say that we should disaggregate the per capita figures to compare apples to apples.
On the other hand, you can't expect a country like India to make the same kinds of gross per capita energy use reductions that Americans could. There is much more opportunity for us to reduce our energy use because we use so much of it in ways that are just mindless habit left over from the days of cheap and abundant oil. For example, most households have multiple cars. My next door neighbor has a household of four, which is served by four large SUVs. If households with multiple SUVs replaced one of them with a fuel efficient sedan, they'd save more energy than a poor Indian family uses.
The problem isn't that we refuse to live in huts. It's our stubborn refusal to make even changes that pose no hardship at all -- even changes that would benefit us individually and collectively.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
> made up of scientific experts from every country on Earth who have agreed that man is the factor.
Lots of experts agreed about the corpuscular theory of light, and geocentric models of the universe too. Consensus counts for zilch in science, especially when the evidence is interpretive. The IPCC's consensus that "man is responsible" is meaningless without hard evidence -- not their interpretations of their own mathematical models. (And oh, the only reason climatologists can claim their models are "hard" with a straight face is because they aren't used to the standards of proofs that say physicists are.)
I wish I had mod points.
This is a salient point. Here in Dallas, we have summers that top 115 degrees F (46C), with relative humidity of over 60%. For about five months from late April to mid September (sometimes October) simply standing outside for a length of time will kill you. That's why Texas state law requires any and all business establishments to provide water free of charge to any person requesting it.
Something else to remember about those carbon credits. When Rwanda sells you theirs, they can no longer use them to put up any electrical generation tech beyond solar, which is staggeringly expensive and very low output. As a result of this policy, the vast bulk of Africa is trapped in a pre-industrial state, with no way to climb out. Also remember that this money goes directly into the pockets of the dictatorial governments there, and not into the hands of the people.
You really don't get what's coming next do you?
Wars over water, for one thing.
Chaotic conditions provide perfect opportunities for extremists of both the left and right to seize power. The biggest danger we face is not from the direct effects of global warming but the political upheaval that will follow.
I am confident that limited warming data about other planets does not contradict the theory that human emissions are impacting our climate.
I am confident that human emissions of CO2, methane, etc. are of at least some cause for concern because the basic mechanism of warming (pdf warning) has been well understood for over 100 years (that's "On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the Temperature of the Ground" by Svante Arrhenius, 1896, for you pdf-phobes). All the feedbacks, etc. are complicated; some enhance the warming, some dampen, but the first-order effects are well understood.
"It's complex" => "we don't know" => "business as usual is just fine" is a weak chain of logic.
Simple Unexpected Concrete Credible Emotional Stories
It's interesting that who we call "respected" depends on which side of the fence we sit. That goes for any argument with no definitive solution. Do we have an impact... I can only assume we have some impact. Is it 100% our fault? I find that difficult to believe given that we have not been collecting data for very long and we occupy such an insignificant amount of the surface of this planet it is ridiculous. The thing that is inconvenient, and what I find so alarming about this prize, is that Gore says a lot with his mouth but does little as far as curbing his own usage. An e-mail went around talking about this when Gore launched his book. As with most politicians... their mouth says one thing, their lives say another. It's the same reason I despise anything run by the government. They find a way to screw up the simplest of endeavors because they all have agendas other than the best interests of the people. So I say, who are you to be telling me which climate experts are respected?
Environmentalism has become like a religion and carbon credits are the modern form of "indulgences". So keep a look out for the "Martin Luther" of environmentalism to come along soon.
Improving fraternity between nations, reducing military forces and promoting peace are ACCOMPLISHMENTS. Modern politics is nothing but idiots slinging mud at each other and has nothing to do with real solutions to problems. In the past, the Nobel Peace Prize has been given to recognize people and groups who have made progress. By giving the prize to Gore and the IPCC, they are hoping that the committee's action IS the progress, in an area unrelated to the purported purpose of the prize to boot. Nothing but an attempt to give a black eye to those they disagree with. They want some action taken on global warming and are abusing their positions to attempt to force it.
Al Gore and the IPCC haven't done jackshit for fraternity between the nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies or for the holding and promotion of peace congresses, and the Nobel Prize committee should be fucking ashamed of themselves for veering away from the achievement based prize selections of the past.
Yes, the United States consumes more per capita. But we also produce more per capita also. Simple Economics 101.
What does the US produce which requires 10 times more energy than consumed in China, per person? Most computers and electronic goods are actually manufactured in China; even those consumed in the US. Most of America's wealth is actually services, not manufacturing.... and it's been like this for decades now.
Nothing warrants such disproportionate energy consumption in the US, IMO.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
That article in The Register is the bunk. The country-bumpkin judge who allowed a truck driver to prevent his kid's school from showing An Inconvenient Truth found NINE (9) inaccuracies in a mass-market movie that contained literally thousands of assertions of scientific fact. How many inaccuracies do you think you'd find in any given National Geographic special or any other educational film shown in a school?
The desperation of the right-wing to "debunk" the fact that a century of industrial and transportation pollution is seriously fucking up our environment is sort of sad.
It's all of a piece with the need to "debunk" evolution, and attack science generally. I guess, when you have a world-view that pretty much denies reality, you can't let things like facts take hold in the minds of your "base". So, you pretend that everything in the news is phony, all science is suspect, government is bad, etc, etc. It's like the Right is trying to home school the entire nation so we don't get our minds all corrupted by reality. It also explains why religious fundamentalists tend to lean to the Right. The more we learn about our universe, the harder it is to swallow fairy tales.
So, when the news from the War in Iraq is bad, it's easier to say "the news is all wrong" instead of admitting a fuck-up. When soldiers start coming home saying that things are going badly in Iraq, it's easier to say they are "phony soldiers" than to say maybe things really aren't going well. When polls say most Americans want some form of Socialized Medicine, it's easier to say "the polls are lying" than to try to fix a complicated problem. When scientists say that the pollution human society has been dumping into the world is messing things up, it's easier to say "the scientists are lying" than for a president to tell his corporate bosses they're going to have to stop dumping sulfur in the atmosphere and mercury in the water.
The good news is that the bullshit doesn't seem to be holding up as well as it did a few years ago. Even the regular folks in flyover America who work for a living are starting to realize that the stuff we're being sold is starting to smell really really bad. And more and more, the pinheads who peddle nonsense are hollering into an echo chamber. Notice how even the most dependable right-wing trolls are starting to run out of gas, and their little sniffing comments just don't have the zing they used to? Hell, you go over to little green footballs or free republic and you'd think there was ambien in their cheetohs.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I've read the UN reports, and to me it's clear there's NOT scientific consensus on the _cause_ of global warming or what's going to happen 50 years from now.
My problem with Al Gore and the rest of the Chicken Littles is the way they frame the argument. It's a lot of "everyone agrees that we're most definitely causing the end of the world and we have to act this very second" as opposed to the truth. The truth is really pretty simple: Things are warming up. That warming is correlated to human activities. It seems likely that we're causing the warming, but because we're not doing a nice controlled experiment, there's no easy way to determine causality.
Science doesn't speak in absolute truths. Talking heads trying to scare people into action via sound bites do.
IMO the doomsday scenario arguments are poorly framed, and have enough holes that industry shills can obfuscate the issue so much that nothing gets done. As surprisingly few people have suggested, a lack of strong evidence for direct causality doesn't mean we shouldn't act immediately. Sure, it'll cost billions or even trillions of dollars to convert to alternative fuels. But even if there were only a 10% chance that anthropogenic global warming is real, it's worth the investment. Switching to clean energy has tons of side benefits, too, given that we'd be jump starting a whole new industry, diversifying our energy supply, lowering asthma rates in places with a lot of exhaust pollution, etc.
That just seems harder to argue with than scare tactics based on misinterpretation of science.
I love the way that, especially in Europe, people who live in moderate climates suggest that nobody should be using air conditioning. I would love to see you move to a hot, humid climate, and watch you in pathetic misery as you drown in your own sweat.
You dumb bastard, you've got it the wrong way round. The only reason you do live there is because of AC. Florida was a shitty swamp populated by nothing more than alligators, mosquitoes and a few crazy fishermen before AC became easy and cheap.
And you got modded insightful?
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
In real science, majority consensus is simply not good enough. There are real scientific questions about the causes of climate change and about the inherent variability of climate over time. These questions can take a long time to answer, because the problems are very complicated. In real science, you have to wait until everybody agrees among the scientists, and even then there has to be a rethink everytime somebody comes up with a new objection, even after everybody thinks it's settled, to understand how the new objection fits into the theory. That's science.
Needless to say, real science is slow, and there's no guarantee that it can answer any question you throw at it, no matter how urgently you want to hear the answer to it. Sometimes, you may have to wait four hundred years to get an acceptable answer.
What your argument is about has nothing to do with science, other than trying to use the authority of science to a political end. Your political goal is to prevent a danger for everybody that you believe in strongly, and that's laudable.
But you try and convince people to get on board by saying that science has the answers, even though you're prepared to skimp on the scientific process when it takes too long to your liking: so you say the majority of scientists more or less agree. But without the full scientific process, those majorities of consenting scientists may as well be high priests of Ammon Ra, explaining his latest edicts to the masses.
The other problem with your argument is that you want people to act on possibly flawed intelligence. You can't actually prove what you assert about the causes of climate change, but you still want people to act as if your claim is true because of the so called consequences. That's Pascal's wager.
Pascal argued that we can't really prove God is out there, but we should still act as if that claim is true, because of the tiny consequence of ending up in hell forever if the claim is true, which would be worse than anything else one could think of. That's what you're arguing with climate change, and your argument is just as unconvincing as Pascal's. Especially when that same argument has also been used with terrorism and WMD, and we all know how that turned out.
If you truly want to convince people to act, try listing all the benefits they will gain from it instead.
The NPP has not been about people working for actual peace for a long time. It's become a "we want to prop someone up but can't give them a science based prize", or perhaps as you intimate to poke at someone else.
The NPP has been a political pop gun for a very long time. I've not considered it a true honor for over two decades.
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.