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.'"

Comments

Re:No confidence

[Lord Ender]

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.

Anti-AC crusaders have blood on their hands for all the elderly who die during Europe's infrequent heat-waves.

I'm all for green technology, but if you think I'm going to watch my grandma die of heat stroke so that you can end the "evils" of climate control, you are dead fucking wrong.

Re:A link to your own journal?

[Bemopolis]

The existense of a number of naturally-driven cycles is well known and well supported. But their existence does not supplant anthropogenic carbon as a forcing--rather, they interact with it. Natural cycles and carbon dioxide impacts are operating simultaneously, and understanding their interactions is one of the goals of computer modelling.

This reminds me of a simple filter I use when discussing AGW: I ask them to explain to me how (natural) global warming physically works, without appeal to references or citation. If they can, we can then discuss why they are skeptical about AGW on a rational basis; if they can't, and they try to rely on appeals to scientific expertise, I know I can win the numbers game; if they can't and don't rely on appeals from polemicists instead of scientific expertise, then I know I've already wasted enough time talking to an ideologue.

Ah, the sparse but satisfying advantages of being a scientist...