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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.
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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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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.
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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.
1) Congress is responsible for ratifying treaties. President Clinton didn't even bother submitting Kyoto knowing it was dead on arrival.
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.
3) Russia only signed onto Kyoto because their CO2 levels were set before the huge decline in industrial output there so they had credits to spare that there were hoping to make a buck on selling.
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.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
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.
First, the Kyoto Protocol, and any treaty, needs to be ratified by Congress, not the President (read up on the Constitution). The President, however, needs to sort of say, "yeah this is something we'll look at". So, why haven't we looked at Kyoto?
Well, quoting Wikipedia...
Not to mention, Bush has made his statement about Kyoto with a valid criticism...
Of course, since that quote was made, China became the #1 CO2 emitter.
Meanwhile, is it better to sign a treaty you can not support or not sign one you know you can't? Nations like Germany can't seem to follow the Kyoto requirements. So, they are failing in their part of the Treaty.
At the same time, Bush has pushed for more funding of alternative fuel automobiles and nuclear power plants.
So stop being a partisen fucktard who only reads sound bites off of MoveOn.org and Media Matters and repeats them until you turn blue. Get a clue.
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.
No the OP, but here are my thoughts:
... to stop global warming ... or global climate change ... or whatever."
-He's being awarded for raising environmental awareness. Now, if opinion polls reveal that people believe extremely exaggerated versions what the IPCC said, did that mean he really raised "awareness" by spreading falsities? Would they revoke the prize?
-If the claims in his movie turn out to be wrong, or the solutions to have caused worse problems, or other problems to get much more severe, or the need to reduce global CO2 leads to a war with China and India, would the prize be revoked?
-What event would prove the IPCC wrong? If the earth gradually got colder over the next 40 years, would that justify carbon subsidies? It's not very scientific to say, "Whether the earth gets warmer or colder, it's absolutely vital that you reduce use of high-yield energy sources
-Typically, prizes aren't awarded until enough time has passed to show the long-term effect of what someone did. That hasn't happened.
Flame away.
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...happened! The USA didn't sign it. Yeah, he did pretend he was in favor, but... He should have done more when he was Vice-President!
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
"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.
You can't be serial.
so you think that everyone who believes that there is man made climate change also believes we all need to live in mud huts?
methinks you have been watching too much fox news. Its perfectly possible to live a modern lifestyle and not destroy the environment. It means you might not have air conditioning, but actually open a window, might not wear a t shirt in winter with the heat blasting full on, and means you might need to get used to the sight of the odd wind turbine and solar panel, but your assumption that green == mud huts is just farcical, and certainly not 'insightful'.
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.
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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).
I just don't understand what a propaganda file chock full of inaccuracies, misleading data, and outright falsehoods had to do with the promotion of peace?
How about the following court findings (thank you Great Britain)
* The film claims that melting snows on Mount Kilimanjaro evidence global warming. The Government's expert was forced to concede that this is not correct.
* The film suggests that evidence from ice cores proves that rising CO2 causes temperature increases over 650,000 years. The Court found that the film was misleading: over that period the rises in CO2 lagged behind the temperature rises by 800-2000 years.
* The film uses emotive images of Hurricane Katrina and suggests that this has been caused by global warming. The Government's expert had to accept that it was "not possible" to attribute one-off events to global warming.
* The film shows the drying up of Lake Chad and claims that this was caused by global warming. The Government's expert had to accept that this was not the case.
* The film claims that a study showed that polar bears had drowned due to disappearing arctic ice. It turned out that Mr Gore had misread the study: in fact four polar bears drowned and this was because of a particularly violent storm.
* The film threatens that global warming could stop the Gulf Stream throwing Europe into an ice age: the Claimant's evidence was that this was a scientific impossibility.
* The film blames global warming for species losses including coral reef bleaching. The Government could not find any evidence to support this claim.
* The film suggests that the Greenland ice covering could melt causing sea levels to rise dangerously. The evidence is that Greenland will not melt for millennia.
* The film suggests that the Antarctic ice covering is melting, the evidence was that it is in fact increasing.
* The film suggests that sea levels could rise by 7m causing the displacement of millions of people. In fact the evidence is that sea levels are expected to rise by about 40cm over the next hundred years and that there is no such threat of massive migration.
* The film claims that rising sea levels has caused the evacuation of certain Pacific islands to New Zealand. The Government are unable to substantiate this and the Court observed that this appears to be a false claim.
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
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been established by WMO and UNEP to assess scientific, technical and socio- economic information relevant for the understanding of climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation. It is currently finalizing its Fourth Assessment Report "Climate Change 2007", also referred to as AR4. The reports by the three Working Groups provide a comprehensive and up-to-date assessment of the current state of knowledge on climate change. The Synthesis Report integrates the information around six topic areas.
The entire organization is nothing but a group that goes through vast quantities of research and makes conclusions based on that research, this includes discussions of potential solutions.
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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.
Al Gore has done good, tireless work on an important issue for a long time. However, I don't think his merits were sufficient for the Nobel prize.
Again, I think the Nobel prize committee wanted to send George Bush a message: "You are wreaking destruction and death; see how much better some other people are spending their energies." So this was as much an anti-war Nobel as it was a peace Nobel.
We Finns have been wondering why our Martti Ahtisaari has not been considered worthy by the Scandinavians in the Nobel prize committee. Ahtisaari has been instrumental in the independence of Namibia, negotiating an end to the NATO-Serbia war and bringing peace to Aceh. He has also participated in other efforts like bringing Kuwait on its feet after the first Gulf war and trying to find a settlement between Serbia and Kosovo.
There's no question that the earth is going through some sort of warming trend. However, it's far from conclusive that that warming is man-made. In fact, there seems to be evidence that global warming is occurring on other planets in the solar system, too, suggesting that the cause is the Sun getting warmer:
http://motls.blogspot.com/2006/05/global-warming-on-jupiter.html
So, why are they giving Gore the Nobel Prize for giving out misinformation about a natural event that we can't do anything about?
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.
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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.
Exactly. The environment is like a series of ice boxes and beer cans. Only the other day I received two environments, and not wanting to clog up the ice box with too much beer, I just drank them instead.
which is totally what she said
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...
That's nice. You misunderstand an accurate and gramaticly correct sentince and after all this time you still think it's funny.
Please go to some other corner of the internet and share your stupidity with someone who cares.
PS: invent means:
1. To produce or contrive (something previously unknown) by the use of ingenuity or imagination.
And yes he is one of the key figures in creating and shaping the internet.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
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.
l On October 21, 1999, gearing up his campaign, Al made a flat-out, scouts-honor, 100%-guaranteed, cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die pledge to end oil drilling off the California coast: "I will take the most sweeping steps in our history to protect our oceans and coastal waters from offshore oil drilling. I will make sure that there is no new oil leasing off the coasts of California and Florida."
The very next month, the Clinton-Gore administration granted oil company requests to extend 36 drilling leases in California coastal waters. Oil companies were $2 million donors to Gore and the Democratic Party for the 2000 election.
l In 1992, candidate Gore pledged that the new administration would be a ferocious defender of America's vanishing wetlands. Yet with direct subsidies and lax EPA enforcement, the administration has encouraged the sugar industry to continue destroying the Everglades. Among the sugar daddies, Alfonso Fanjul and his Flo-Sun sugar empire in the Everglades have sweetened Clinton and Gore's various money pockets with more than $300,000 in contributions.
Also, despite Al's pledge, another 500 acres of sensitive New Jersey wetlands are set to be destroyed by an upscale shopping center and entertainment complex being built by the Mills Corporation. Various federal agencies opposed the construction, but the Council on Environmental Quality, which was closely affiliateded with Vice President Gore, brokered the dirty deal for Mills Corp. Less than a week later, contributions totalling $43,000 came to the Gore 2000 campaign fund from the grateful folks at Mills.
l In 1996, as part of his "reinventing government" flim-flam, Gore achieved what Nixon and Reagan could not get Congress to sit still for: privatizing the Navy's strategic oil reserve, known as Elk Hills. This huge oil field near Bakersfield, California, is big-time black gold, and the industry has drooled over it for decades, just as environmentalists had fought to prevent its development. It was the largest privatization of federal property in U.S. history.
The winning bidder in the sell-off was Occidental Petroleum Corp. Just coincidentally, Al and Occidental go waaaay back. Indeed, the major source of the wealth amassed by Gore's father came from his long relationship with Occidental and its legendary chairman, Armand Hammer. Gore has extended the familial ties to the company; he currently owns about a million dollars worth of Occidental stock, and also enjoys a unique neighborly relationship to the corporation.
Adjacent to the Gores' bucolic, old family farm back home in Tennessee, right along the Caney Fork River that Al talks of so wistfully, he owns another farm--less bucolic but far more profitable--that he prefers not to talk of at all. This chunk of farmland is rich in zinc, and it was sold to Al in 1973 in a sweetheart transaction by Armand Hammer. "Mr. Green" turns out to be a zinc miner! As a by- product, he also turns out to be a polluter--some environmentalists say that run-off from the mine is getting into his beloved Caney Fork.
Gore draws annual zinc royalties that have totalled some $500,000 since he acquired the land from Occidental, and he has also mined more than half a million dollars in campaign funds from Occidental since he became vice president--including $50,000 that came after one of Al's infamous telephone solicitations from the White House, and another $100,000 wad that rolled in after Occidental's CEO had enjoyed two nights in the Lincoln Bedroom.
These cozy connections caused industry eyes to roll when it was announced that Occidental had won the bidding on Elk Hills. Writing in The Nation, Alexander Cockburn reports that the company was viewed as a bankruptcy waiting to happen until it got its hands on this sensationally profitable oil reserve.
Normally, the Department of Energy would decide whether a national asset like Elk Hills, the military's largest strategic fuel reserve, should be sold off. Instead, Gore arranged for a private consulting firm named ICF
"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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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.
/. for over 6 years now. I've worked with high-end graphics stations from Silicon Grpahics and HP over 10 years back.
Are you aware that you are replying to someone from India? WE don't HAVE NOTHING. I'm in the IT industry for over 18 years now (Unix SVR3 days, DOS 2.0 days), and posting on
Believe me, life is not crappy here... certainly not so bad as you make it out to be.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
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
there's always been change in climate and we have dealt with it, changes which have been far more then small.
it's just alarmist nonsense your pushing there.
You got your degree in climate science where? You've been studying this topic for how long?
I actually have friends doing research on the topic, both in the lab here in the US on the global climate model an in the field in the Antarctic. They are more alarmed about current trends than is filtering through to the media. The rate at which permafrost and glaciers have begun melting recently is sending shock waves through the scientific community. We are now only beginning to discover environmental feedback mechanisms that likely mean the scientists have UNDERESTIMATED the rate and impact of global warming, not overestimated it.
We used to talk about the climate problems our children and grandchildren will be dealing with. Guess what, the bill came early. Now YOU will likely be suffering the consequences. We are seeing the leading edge of it now with shifting weather patterns and encroachment of invasive species... just as the models predicted, only sooner. Because of climate deniers like you, it is probably now too late to stop it, but we still must do everything we can to slow the change and give our society and economy time to adapt.
Alarmist? Hardly. If anything the message from the scientist has been overly softened and toned down.
BTW, the friends I mentioned work at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and on the global climate model at Argonne National Laboratories, in case anyone is curious.
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Ouch. I'd feel sorry for the GP, were it not for the fact that to all appearances he is so full of self-righteous aggression there no room left for embarrassment.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
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.
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.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
He used the word creating, as in to bring about the internet as we know it now, by pushing for funding. He did NOT use the word inventing.
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Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
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
*folding arms across chest, frowning*
If China and India don't have to eat their vegetables, I'M NOT GOING TO EITHER!
*feet stomping, teeth gnashing, screaming*
God knows, the US would never show initiative and do anything pre-emptively, without the support of other nations, right?
We emerge from our mother's womb an unformatted diskette; our culture formats us. - Douglas Coupland
I don't recall that memo...
Yes, the United States consumes more per capita. But we also produce more per capita also. Simple Economics 101.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
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.
There will never be an end to the number of people who will fight any mention that humans are causing climate change. No one is saying we are the ONLY factor. But we are a big part of it, and we can control our actions, compared to trying to control other natural factors. Shouldn't we do so... just in case?
I always notice that in my local paper, when they publish articles from global warming skeptics... these individuals are often the heads of various organizations and groups, professors, history buffs, basically anything but actual climatologists or environmental scientists. Not always, but often. I find that interesting.
The MAJORITY of climate scientists agree that humans are contributing to warming. I'm going to go with that conclusion because it's better to be safe than sorry, and because I can see the proof with my own eyes.
Climate Myths Examined: http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/dn11462
As for Mr. Gore and the IPCC winning the peace prize... good for them. Someone is standing up and shouting about this. Yes, I feel Mr. Gore is a bit of a phony in his personal life, but his message isn't. If I had the choice I would have recognized Canada's Dr. David Suzuki ( http://www.davidsuzuki.org/ ) for his work educating the public about all kinds of environmental issues... and he does so in a more science based rather than hollywood-dazzle kind of way. He recently toured across Canada giving talks and raising awareness in a very locally focused down to earth way and he's been doing this for DECADES. He deserves this prize as much if not more than Gore.
Either way, I'm glad environmental issues get a nod of recognition here.
> 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.)
Here's something you might try: provide some examples of your accurate science, and proof of why your interpretation is correct.
And maybe offer up some credentials.
And opinions of respected peers.
Can you do that? Or are trolls allergic to due diligence?
(those last two are rhetorical, don't worry.)
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.
Perhaps you missed the last few sentences: During the last 1000 years, snow cover on Lake Baikal has been inferred from past diatom assemblages, and is closely linked to weakening of the North Atlantic Oscillation, allowing increasing intensity of the Siberian High to develop and during the 17th and 18th centuries. In the last 150 years, diatom species have been shown to be sensitive indicators of recent warming. However, impacts from future global warming will be complex, and are likely to impact not only on the balance between endemic and cosmopolitan diatoms throughout the lake, but on the balance between siliceous and non-siliceous algae, and sources of primary productivity. What I did not see is any reference to or debunking of human-generated carbon dioxide as a current forcing. That angle was helpfully added by the DailyTech writer you link from your journal entry.
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.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Yes, there is a middle class (in India), but there is a huge impoverished class that constitutes the majority of Indians. Don't forget them! Maybe they are not in your caste, so let me remind you of what wealth is and isn't.
Some facts for you to chew:
1. The middle class population in India is larger than the entire population of the US.
2. There is a system of reservation in higher education; which ensures that people belonging to lower castes get adequate opportunity. This system has been in place for over 40 years now, and there is visible improvement in prosperity among all levels. While there is still lots of poverty, it is not so alarming as the parent poster suggested.
3. I am from a family of seven. 30 years ago, it was about 20 rupees to a dollar, and our monthly income was about $75. This was sufficient for food, clothing, decent accomodation and English-medium convent education for all of us. All of us had an enjoyable childhood, and except for me, the rest are all employed in banks.
4. Personally, I have enough money to buy 3 cars without borrowing a penny, but I choose to use overcrowded public transport as a matter of principle. The same applies to my brother and sisters as well; none of us own cars. It has not diminished our enjoyment of life's joys, however.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
I think, though, that you're making a faulty inference and therefore grossly mischaracterizing his argument. I took his argument to be that since the US consumes much more energy per capita than India, it's a lot easier for the US to make reductions. Furthermore, your point, that the US has much more affluence on average, only reinforces his position: one benefit of having wealth is having more choices. We can, for example, choose to shift some money from consumption into investment, whereas a country having trouble meeting the basic material needs of its citizens has a higher fraction of its wealth pegged to consumption.
The most important problem I have with what you are saying is that you are equating energy consumption with standard of living, as if somehow the two things were yoked together. They aren't. It is true that a smaller house uses less energy than a larger one, but all things being equal a better house uses less energy than poorly designed one.
It may also be that for many people, a smaller house could be as good or better than a larger one. It requires more thought though. It's easy to upgrade you lifestyle by buying more stuff, which in turn requires a bigger house. In turn it is easiest to heat and air condition that stuff whether your are actually using it. Once you've gone down that track, it's hard to turn back. It's like middle aged spread: we'd be better of exercising more and eating less, but once you're going there it's easier to keep going.
We tend to overestimate the importance of stuff in our lives, the degree to which having something gives us happiness and not having it makes us unhappy. Maybe higher quality in smaller quantities would amount to a better standard of living. But we can't get there if our minds are stuck on the rails of mindless consumption and disposal. Life is like an other art: it benefits from the creativity that dealing with realistic limits imposes.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
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?
...but there's this great section in Wikipedia on this:
"On July 25, 1997, before the Kyoto Protocol was finalized (although it had been fully negotiated, and a penultimate draft was finished), the U.S. Senate unanimously passed by a 95-0 vote the Byrd-Hagel Resolution (S. Res. 98),[65][66] which stated the sense of the Senate was that the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol that did not include binding targets and timetables for developing as well as industrialized nations or "would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States". On November 12, 1998, Vice President Al Gore symbolically signed the protocol. Both Gore and Senator Joseph Lieberman indicated that the protocol would not be acted upon in the Senate until there was participation by the developing nations.[67] The Clinton Administration never submitted the protocol to the Senate for ratification."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoto_Protocol
Maybe you should get facts straight before accusing him of anything. Looks like Gore was the only one in all of government who supported it.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
errrr what???????
source for this please. you are up against:
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change)
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
Joint science academies'
U.S. National Research Council,
American Meteorological Society
American Geophysical Union
American Institute of Physics
American Astronomical Society
Federal Climate Change Science Program (commissioned by bush)
etc etc. need I go on? Its farcical to suggest that only 13% of climate scientists support the IPCC conclusions. get real.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
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.
"No, the IPCC is composed of politicians, and politicized scientists, a large portion of whom resigned in disgust over the work that was being done there."
...
You must be referring to Chris Landsea who did indeed resign, in january 2005.
that's one guy out of how many?
"People from over 130 countries contributed to the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report over the previous 6 years. These people included more than 2500 scientific expert reviewers, more than 850 contributing authors, and more than 450 lead authors" (wikipedia)
so we are talking 1 in 850. In what space-time continuum does this represent a 'large portion'?
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
Tell your hurricane insurer to listen to this. It's a lecture on hurricanes and global warming from the University of Utah's Frontiers of Science series, delivered by a very well regarded scientist named Kerry Emanuel. According to him, AGW hasn't increased the frequency of hurricanes noticeably, but it has a huge effect on how strong they get and where they go. He also points out that most hurricane-attributable economic damage has occurred in the last fifteen years, simply because we've built more infrastructure in hurricane-prone areas (a trend unlikely to reverse itself).
I was at the lecture, and the charts he showed did not include the economic effects of Hurricane Katrina, which would have dwarfed everything that came before. But we can't prove that Katrina was actually made worse by global warming, so we must be safe, right? Right?
The energy carried by a hurricane is a function of the cube of the wind speed, and the economic impact has been estimated to be something like the seventh power of the wind speed. Throw in the fact that hurricanes are more frequently wandering into areas that have never seen them before, and whose building codes don't account for them. Despite your know-nothing rhetoric, hurricane fear is still very much in play.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
2005
MOHAMED ELBARADEI (Chairman of the International Atomic Energy Agency). He done such a good job covering for Iran.
2004
WANGARI MAATHAI. The Kenyan ecologist teaches that the AIDS virus is a biological agent deliberately created by the White Man.
2002
JIMMY CARTER JR., former President of the United States of America.
Was given prize for undermining the foreign policy of his own country. Has vouched for the bona fides of tyrants and murderers all over the world, and can be counted on to whitewash fake elections everywhere.
2001
UNITED NATIONS, New York, NY, USA, and KOFI ANNAN, United Nations Secretary General.
Among other things, they respectively served as the vehicle for, and presided over, one of the biggest frauds in history -- Saddam's Oil for Palaces scam.
1994
YASSER ARAFAT (joint winner), Chairman of the Executive Committee of the PLO, President of the Palestinian National Authority.
A cold-blooded murderer before and after receiving the award.
1992
RIGOBERTA MENCHU TUM, Guatemala. "Author" I, Rigoberta Menchu, which fraudulently claimed to be her auto-biography, but was actually communist propaganda fabricated by the wife of a noted French Communist.
1988
THE UNITED NATIONS PEACE-KEEPING FORCES New York, NY, U.S.A.
Failed to prevent genocide in Rawanda. Committed rapes and sex abuse in Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea and the Congo. Has not brought peace anywhere.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
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.
Look at the prize winners in other fields. There is no question as to their contribution to that specific discipline. Here, however, there is a very tenuous connection. They say that global warming will cause wars, and thus by preventing it will prevent wars. That relies off of a whole bunch of assumptions:
1) That global warming is human caused. I'm not interested in debating this, but realise that it is an assumption.
2) That Gore/the IPCC's proposals will cause it to be stopped. Just because they are proposing things limiting CO2 doesn't mean it'll be enough to affect global warming. There are a good number of alarmist types out there who say we are way past the critical point and we'd have to shut down like 90% of human industry to stop it, something that Gore fell well short of advocating.
3) That anything can be done. May be that no matter what we do we just aren't capable of preventing it.
4) That global warming will lead to bad things. Again this is an assumption, there are plenty of arguments to how a warmer globe will lead to more abundance, nor more scarcity.
5) That wars wouldn't break out anyhow in the same regions for different reasons. Sadly enough, the "issues" behind a war often aren't, they are simply an excuse for the behaviour, not the actual reason behind it.
So only if that's all true, if humans are causing global warming, if we can stop it with change, if what Gore is proposing is the required change, if that change will prevent scarcity and preventing scarcity will prevent wars, is his work actually peace related. Even if that's all true, it's still pretty tenuous. I mean someone might make an amazing discovery in physics that gives us nearly limitless energy, that allows for the improving lives everywhere. Still, that's be a prize for Physics, not Peace, even if we thought the ultimate result would be less war because of more abundance.
As such I'd say it is real tenuous to say he's helping peace. Sounds like your man is a much better candidate. It is entirely possible that Gore/IPCC's work is more important in the scheme of humanity, but that doesn't matter. This is an award for the work in peace, and Martti Ahtisaari seems to have done that, whereas Gore's work lies along another path.
As the climate changes, somewhere upwards of a billion coastal dwellers will be displaced. If melting arctic ice shuts down the gulf stream, the temperature decrease could reduce the productivity of farmland in Europe and North America by 75% or more.
Changes in the balance of resources can trigger the biggest wars of them all. How many wars has the world already fought over oil, food, water, or salt? (yes, salt, look it up).
Add to that the fact that the world will know in advance who is primarily responsible for the CO2 emissions that f*cked up their countries (1st world nations, most notably the US), and will be looking for someone to blame. If you think the world hates the US now, just wait until many great cities are underwater and half a billion have died, and they can point to a single nation for having emitted 40% of world's historical output of greenhouse gasses and having refused every treaty to try to reduce them. Al Qaeda will have a lot of friends.
Climate change may not be causing wars *now*, but many people believe it will likely lead to the worst worldwide wars in history. The biggest difference one can make to any war is to prevent it in the first place, and Gore is working as hard on that front as anyone is. He absolutely deserves the peace prize.
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
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.
1-2 meter? where do you have those numbers from? Did ya just pull em out of your arse? IF things go so badly that the ice on Greenland and Antarctica melts, see level vill rice about 68 meters, 61 from Antarctica and 7 from Greenland.
http://science.howstuffworks.com/question473.htm
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11385475/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4720536.stm
Mind you, this is what you would have found had you bothered to ask google
I doubt any scientist will say the question is what happens to the sea lvl if the ice on Greenland and Antarctica melts, but rather IF it will melt and if the rice we now see in temperature is man made.
www.aleo.no
It's even worse than that, he actually find 9 inaccuracies, he found 9 instances where there wasn't explicit proof that the comment was true. If you look at the issues it's a case of "there's not enough evidence to prove this yet", "while the sea level will rise to that level, it will probably take longer than indicated", and other such comments. I think that puts an Inconvenient Truth as a substancially higher credibility rate than an Encyclopedia, which we should all remember from the Wikipedi vs Britanica articles.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
The melting of the Laurentide ice sheet over North America at the end of the last ice age produced a 20 meter rise in sea level over roughly 500 years. Granted, it was larger than Greenland, but definitely it's on par with Antarctica. The volume of ice contained in Antarctica is 30 million cubic kilometers of ice. Spread that out over the ocean surface area of the world (362 million sq km) and you get about 80 meters before you account for the fact that ocean surface area increases as sea level goes up. Greenland's ice sheet is roughly 1/10th that of Antarctica (and is firmly on land), I'll let you do that math.
Actually, not quite true. The floating ice has a lower salinity than the ocean, meaning even in liquid form it's less dense. So it does contribute, just not as much as melting a block of ice that's firmly on land.
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!
The CIA disagree with your analysis. 'Drinking water, in fact, is shaping up to be the single most contested resource on the planet... it notes that almost half of the world's population will live in "water-stressed" societies. And that's going to drive a number of regional conflicts in the coming years.'