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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.'"
You mean you had any confidence after they gave one to Arafat?
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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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.
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.
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Damn shame that he lost to the current asshat Bush by a vote of 4 to 5.
Environmentally speaking, the world may be better off with Gore having lost. Not because Bush did anything wonderful, but because of what Gore has been driven to do since then. If he had won the presidency, I'm afraid he never would have made it as far as he did. Back in 2000, many people felt Gore's commitment to environmentalism was merely the usual Democratic Party lip service, and it very well may have been. Today, he's actually working for a change beyond trying to win votes.
What?
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.
Right, and I'm a little surprised that didn't make slashdot in it's own right.
It was actually a very good court decision I think, and I say that as someone who is generally convinced by climate change - I dislike the scare mongering type of arguments since they have so many holes in them that sceptics tend to just dismiss them (and be less likely to take a rational argument seriously).
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"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.
Except Al Gore doesn't say,
"Reduce your carbon footprint OR 'buy' offsets from a company you have a large stake in."
He says,
"Reduce your carbon footprint."
Btw, the "carbon indulgence" sites I've visited claim that you can offset your carbon emissions, (i.e. the carbon externality) for an average family of four, for $200.
So why bother telling people all these inconvenient things to do, when they could just pay $20/month?
I'll tell you why: because carbon control has nothing to do with the environment.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
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
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.
"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....
Translation: Lying something to make sound scary is OK if it gets your message across. End justifies the means?
'buy' offsets from a company you have a large stake in."
Well, by your cynical reasoning, wouldn't he be better off advocating offsets?
So why bother telling people all these inconvenient things to do, when they could just pay $20/month?
Exactly which inconvenient things has he advocated?
Changing incandescent bulbs to compact fluorescents is hardly inconvenient. You pay more for the bulb up front but save many times that over the life of the bulb in reduced energy costs.
Driving a more fuel efficient vehicle an inconvenience? It too, at $3 a gallon, is an investment that pays for itself.
Much of what Gore advocates people do will actually save them money if they do it. It's called enlightened self-interest.
You're not going to find a lot of people who will pay an extra $20/month to keep doing exactly what they're doing. They'll just keep the money. Are you paying for carbon offsets? I don't. I use Compact Fluorescent bulbs, drive a car that gets over 30mpg, and buy my energy from a green provider.
I'll tell you why: because carbon control has nothing to do with the environment.
What's it all about then?
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
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.
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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 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.
Hmmmm, let's see the teams:
Believe humanity's activities have increased global temperature:Thousands of highly trained climatologists who have spent their entire professional careers researching the subject.
Don't believe humanity's activities have increased global temperature: You, who have no training and have apparently spent 10 minutes researching the issue.
Who to believe, who to believe...
Driving a more fuel efficient vehicle an inconvenience? It too, at $3 a gallon, is an investment that pays for itself.
That's WAY to naive or disengenuous (some basic math comparing the personal cost delta of keeping a car that gets 25mpg vs. having industry build for you and then buying a car that gets 30mpg shows that it's likely a money LOSER, rather than "paying for itself"). I'm thinking the latter, given the rest of your tone. And that makes the rest of your sentiment suspect, and suggests a merely political adherence to and support for Gore. However green you may be, you're ignoring the theatrical use to which people like Gore put much of this topic expressly so that they can re/gain political power. Creating a climate of fear, and then proposing feel-good-do-little/nothing measures, and riding the warm and fuzzy glow of having made those recommendations into political power is BS. But then, most politicians do it. What bothers me is that along with the power that the leftier side of spectrum is hungering for (say, to green-ify everything by edict) we're also going to get some lovely Marxist health care farms, or really swell relations with people like Hugo Chavez. You can't cherry pick what people like Gore and his supporters stand for, any more than you can with right-wing types. You just have to choose your battles. And to the extent that Gore's not out there, all day every day, preaching the need to produce 50 more nuclear power plants in the next decade, he can't be taken in any way seriously, except as a politcal manipulator.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
"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.
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
Actually, he's already doing financially pretty well for himself as a VC.
He's got fame, fortune, influence, and more importantly the freedom to spend his time at whatever he finds interesting and fun. If a political enemy wants to stir up hatred of him, Al Gore has a better defense than Teflon: the problems of the world don't belong to him. If some but straps a bomb to himself and blows a bunch of innocent people up, nobody is demanding what Al Gore will do. Al Gore doesn't own the mortgage crisis. Al Gore doesn't have to fight the health care industry over the the way costs are bleeding US competitiveness.
So if Gore wants to speak out on climate change, he's just a distinguished private citizen exercising his right to state his opinion. You have to be an accomplished hater to work up much resentment over that.
Mr. Gore is pretty much in the catbird seat: beloved senior statesman, wealthy entrepreneur, admired environmental sage. Personally, I wouldn't dream give that up to jump into the shit pile of presidential politics, where your every utterance or sigh is twisted into a weapon of character assassination.
The only personal reason he's got to throw his hat into the ring is to get the policies he wants enacted, and that only counts if he doesn't think the next president will agree with him.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
. Science fights fair too often and gets steam rollered by the lies of the opponents to science.
Science must 'fight fair' or it isn't science. If you distort the facts then it isn't science at all, it's a belief system.
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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.
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?
I think it's really disingenuous on the part of those arguing that Gore actually deserves this award. I'm not saying he's a bad guy, but just because you might be a cheerleader for him doesn't mean you should be happy at him receiving an award he doesn't deserve.
Gore has done nothing for peace. In fact, truth be known, he's done little for the environment. All he's done is talked about it, talked about how we have to make concessions in our daily lives, while making none himself.
Gore's movie was not about Darfur. If it was, and motivated people enough to help, it'd be an entirely different story. As such, all it is is a "see! look at the effects of climate change!"
Congratulating Gore is like congratulating your favorite soccer team because they won the world cup on a bad referee call, and knowing they didn't really deserve it, no matter how much you like the team or how great you think they are.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
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.