Al Gore Shares Nobel Peace Prize with UN Panel 937
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.'"
Gosh, that's stange (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:That'll be a kick in the nuts... (Score:2, Informative)
Include Faux News in the minion category. I wanted to see if they would report Gore had won the Prize but at least for the hour I kept checking, they never did. Can't have some left-wing, tree-hugging liberal get recognition for their efforts, now can we?
Re:Gore: "Climate change requires YOU to adapt" (Score:5, Informative)
He was VICE PRESIDENT when the Kyoto treaty... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:No confidence (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Gosh, that's stange (Score:5, Informative)
and this has WHAT to do with peace (Score:2, Informative)
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.
Re:Surprising with recent controversy (Score:5, Informative)
Did you actually read what the judge said? Or did you only read what Fox News said?
The Times [timesonline.co.uk] covered this in rather good detail. The parts of the film that were considered unfounded:
* That sea levels could rise seven metres 'in the immediate future'
* That atolls in the Pacific had already been evacuated
* That CO2 levels and temperatures are 'an exact fit' - this, said the judge, overstated the case
* That the drying of Lake Chad, the disappearance of snows on Kilimanjaro, and Hurricane Katrina can be directly attributed to global warming
* That polar bears are known to be drowning as a result of melting ice
* That coral bleaching is due to climate change
Note what the judge did not dispute: he agreed 'that climate change is mainly attributable to man-made emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide ('greenhouse gases').' He further agreed that 'global temperatures are rising and are likely to continue to rise, that climate change will cause serious damage if left unchecked, and that it is entirely possible for governments and individuals to reduce its impacts'.
Re:Gosh, that's stange (Score:1, Informative)
Re:No confidence (Score:4, Informative)
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 [www.ipcc.ch].
Deserving but political (Score:5, Informative)
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 [wikipedia.org] 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.
Re:Gore: "Climate change requires YOU to adapt" (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Here's my problem (Score:5, Informative)
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/dn11642 [newscientist.com]
Re:So the IPCC... (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:Congratulations (Score:1, Informative)
What about the man's actions as VP? (Score:2, Informative)
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
Re:So you want us to live in huts too? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Here's what this has to do with peace (Score:4, Informative)
Are you a climate scientist? (Score:5, Informative)
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 [whoi.edu] and on the global climate model at Argonne National Laboratories [anl.gov], in case anyone is curious.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Here's my problem (Score:4, Informative)
And what part of "The Sun's energy output [metoffice.gov.uk] has not increased since direct measurements began in 1978" did you not understand?
A link to your own journal? (Score:4, Informative)
Perhaps you missed the last few sentences:
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.
Re:Christ, you forget about your own countrymen. (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:A Well-Deserved Honor (Score:2, Informative)
Except Gore doesn't campaign against pollution; he campaigns against CO2. Mr. Gore has by his escalating rhetoric first redefined "good," then "morality," and now, finally "spirituality," to all be based on environmentalism. This makes him a force of evil, not good.
Not that I seriously expect facts to affect your rhetoric, but regardless of what combination of Florida districts had be recounted, Bush would have won. So neither the Florida Supreme Court ruling nor the US Superem Court ruling overturning it ultimately had any impact on who won.
I know you don't like Wikipedia... (Score:3, Informative)
"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 [wikipedia.org]
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.
Re:Peace Prize != Good Science (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:Peace Prize != Good Science (Score:3, Informative)
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'?
Re:Proof the Nobel Peace Prize is a Crock of Shit (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Illustrious Company of Past Winners (Score:2, Informative)
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.
Re:No confidence (Score:2, Informative)
http://science.howstuffworks.com/question473.htm [howstuffworks.com]
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11385475/ [msn.com]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4720536.stm [bbc.co.uk]
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.
Re:No confidence (Score:2, Informative)
The CIA disagree with your analysis [time.com]. '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.'
Re:Sick of Skeptics. David Suzuki and Al Gore. (Score:3, Informative)
As a scientific question, there is (was) an entirely legitimate question of whether one race might actually be superior to another. But formulating the question requires concrete observable criteria (the word "superior" alone is meaningless), and the valid studies on those criteria that have actually been carried out do not show a statistically significant difference between races. As an ethical question on the other hand, asking about the superiority of one race over another is highly undesirable.
Besides the above, the personal beliefs of scientists have no relevance to science unless they are published in relevant journals, at which point they can be objectively scrutinized and debated.
In other words, if it's not published in a peer reviewed journal, then it's not adding to our scientific knowledge and doesn't exist as far as science is concerned. Once it is published in a peer reviewed journal, it is officially part of the debate, and can be settled when everybody agrees.
So if you want to argue that there's a scientific question about the veracity of the moon landings, then go ahead and quote the relevant scientific literature and show that all the published responses haven't settled the issue. (You have time until slashdot archives this discussion).