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.'"
Congratulations (Score:2, Insightful)
Congratulations Al! (Score:2, Insightful)
All part of the plan (Score:2, Insightful)
2. Win Nobel Prize
3. Announce candidacy for US presidency.
4. Profit.
Re:No confidence (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:No confidence (Score:2, Insightful)
What exactly is wrong with this decision? apart from the fact that you may not like al gore?
Re:No confidence (Score:5, Insightful)
Should've gone to Bush, actually... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:So the IPCC... (Score:4, Insightful)
Its more of a popularity contest now. (Score:2, Insightful)
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?
Here's what this has to do with peace (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Gore: "Climate change requires YOU to adapt" (Score:2, Insightful)
A Well-Deserved Honor (Score:2, Insightful)
Surprising with recent controversy (Score:2, Insightful)
British schools ordered [foxnews.com] to provide balance when showing the movie.
But the Nobel Peace price isn't political....
Re:No confidence (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:Gore: "Climate change requires YOU to adapt" (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:No confidence (Score:1, Insightful)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/11/gore_errors/ [theregister.co.uk]
But nevermind.. this whole topic has gone into religion-mode - no further objective discussion possible.
Re:A Well-Deserved Honor (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:No confidence (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Should've gone to Bush, actually... (Score:2, Insightful)
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. [nytimes.com]
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.
Re:Congratulations (Score:3, Insightful)
His stance goes in stark contrast to Bush's idea that carbon emission reductions should be pretty much be defined by the economic desire of the US, rather than long term requirements.
Re:No confidence (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Jumped the shark they have... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Here's what this has to do with peace (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Surprising with recent controversy (Score:4, Insightful)
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).
I can't believe it... (Score:1, Insightful)
I can't believe they'd give someone that high of an award based on lies.
And, no, this isn't political - this is a matter of truth vs propoganda. In 10-50 years, when the media is crying about the coming ice age, maybe then...nah - they'll "forget"...
If someone spends 10 minutes researching the issue, instead of eating the cornbread and drinking the kool-aid, we'd have a lot of people asking questions that need to be asked.
Winning must be sweet. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Should've gone to Bush, actually... (Score:1, Insightful)
Clinton signed the treaty, even though a Senate advisory vote went 95-0 against it [senate.gov]. Clinton KNEW the treaty would never be ratified, but signed it as a cold-blooded political maneuver. All Bush did was decide to stop wasting time on it.
Sorry if that wrecks your fantasy, but it's true.
The Constitution [emory.edu]: It's not just a good idea. It's the law.
Re:Here's what this has to do with peace (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:idiots with mod points ? (Score:3, Insightful)
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).
Re:Gore: "Climate change requires YOU to adapt" (Score:4, Insightful)
"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.
Re:No confidence (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:No confidence (Score:1, Insightful)
The whole world will be destroyed through cataclysmic global warming, is certainly an extraordinary claim - so have the IPCC produced extraordinary proof . . . or even ordinary proof.
Their evidence for ANY global warming is very thin: they ignore antarctic temperature records which disagree with their theory. The temperature records they do accept fail to account for the urban heat island effect and they apparently feel they can dismiss the most exhaustive and accurate measurements available (NASA satellite temp readings) with a wave of the hand and a vague accusation of partiality.
If they can't even produce any substantial proof that the worlds temperature has risen do you think they can they produce proof that this is caused by CO2 or that increased CO2 is the result of human interference - don't make me laugh.
Anthropogenic global warming MAY be happening, just as there MAY be intelligent life on some other planet . . . who the f**k knows? There's no evidence for either.
And no I don't have better information of more experience than the IPCC scientists, but neither do I feel the need to abandon my critical faculties in the face of some "authority" with impressive credentials.
Re:No confidence (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:That'll be a kick in the nuts... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:You're having a laugh right? (Score:1, Insightful)
In Medicine, physics and so on, the Nobel prize is considered more or less the highest academic achievement possible. This is because the prize is always way behind the cutting edge. It is given to people who's discoveries has already stood the test of time, peer review and practical application, which makes the whole process much more clear and objective.
The Peace price is often fairly current though. It's given to people for their efforts rather the their results, and sometimes the results turn out to be not so great. It's an "A for effort" kind of price.
Re:Gosh, that's stange (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [wri.org]
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.
Re:Congratulations Al! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Should've gone to Bush, actually... (Score:1, Insightful)
Or in other words, if you'd taken the same amounts of efforts in the USA as the EU, we'd be in a less serious position now and be in a hell of a lot better position to argue against India and China that their free pass is over and they damn well start doing something to solve the problem as well.
Re:Gore: "Climate change requires YOU to adapt" (Score:4, Insightful)
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?
Unhinged Priorities (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:No confidence (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Here's what this has to do with peace (Score:2, Insightful)
How does a person get a PEACE prize for FURTHER POLARIZING the issue? I see both sides digging in deeper with their positions, not coming together to deal with the problem, or at least to PEACEfully disagree.
I have a problem awarding such a significant prize based on hypotheticals like "this event might, someday, lead to conflict." By the committees logic the prize should also go to GWB for the hypothetical "Iran might get Nukes which will lead to violent conflicts. SO lets raise awareness about whether Iran is trying to get Nukes, even though some people disagree with my position."
personally I think his internet work more profound (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:I can't believe it... (Score:5, Insightful)
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...
Re:Gore: "Climate change requires YOU to adapt" (Score:1, Insightful)
No, for Gore, the goal is more fame and control, not so much making himself rich; "paying" his own company does make it easier for him though.
Exactly which inconvenient things has he advocated?
Everything other than: a carbon tax capturing the ascertainable damage from carbon emissions + paying people to sink it from the atmosphere.
Under that condition, people will only do those things where the ecnomic benefit exceeds and its applied toward the environmental cost.
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.
Yes it is inconvenient for me. I don't like the light. Telling me that it "saves money" is misleading. It would likewise "save money" to only eat enriched gruel. Why don't you do that?
While it's all fun and games to bitch about short-sighted Americans who can't think beyond the upfront price (AKAImBatman: price point), that won't work on me: I fantasize about 13% pre-tax RORs. CFLs would give me over a 100% untaxed ROR. Why do you think I don't do it?
Driving a more fuel efficient vehicle an inconvenience? It too, at $3 a gallon, is an investment that pays for itself.
No, as everyone points out when someone makes this argument, it doesn't even save you money.
Much of what Gore advocates people do will actually save them money if they do it. It's called enlightened self-interest.
Then he's inconsistent. If the only difference it makes in my life is that it increases my disposable income and decreases the energy I consume in those actions, I will apply the saved money elsewhere. Why non-energy-using end to you think I'll apply it to? What do you think participants in the energy market will do as a result of me lowering my bid for energy?
What's it all about then?
Control. There are simple, near-painless ways to solve the problems of CO2 if the supposed harms are taken at face value. No one wants these solutions (the tax plus sink listed above) because it doesn't wreck capitalism and doesn't achieve environmentalists' broader goals.
Re:Gore: "Climate change requires YOU to adapt" (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Why x = stupid people (Score:1, Insightful)
Then something is seriously wrong with you...
And DON'T say his movie has helped raise awareness and thus saved lives in danger of global warming. Because his over-hyping, and questionable statements merely clouded the arena and debate; creating more controversy and less positive action.
I actually believe we need to reduce pollution, clean-up our act, become resource efficient. But every time I hear someone being an alarmist and quoting questionable figures I get upset. Because that hurts environmentalism by putting off a large portion of the populace rather than working toward a common ground.
A good example of such a working were the actions Jean-Michel Cousteau who's appealed to President's own nature and found common ground - the result the nation's largest national park and first marine national park was created.
This is a much better method than Al Gore's...
So you want us to live in huts too? (Score:2, Insightful)
spoken like a true nazi. Bush is only responsible for the government, of which there is too much. You are responsible for your own energy usage.
India and China are home to over 35% of the World's population; but it appears they do not have much of a scope to reduce consumption. The US consumes more than 15 times the energy per person consumed in India; and there is a huge scope for reduction. Inaction by the US govt. is dangerous for the entire planet, including India and China.
Guess what, those people in India and China are FUCKING POOR AND HAVE NOTHING. What you are advocating is that the people of the USA go back to living in the same kind of crappy lives that people live in the third world. How much more proof do you need to see that you are advocating the injection of a massive level into the USA in order to make the world more equal. Faced with such stark choices, and stark facism by the enviro-left wing, how can any sane person not think that g.w. is a massive left wing lie designed to bring about socialism.
Re:No confidence (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Peace Prize != Good Science (Score:4, Insightful)
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?
Re:No confidence (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:No confidence (Score:3, Insightful)
you fail to understand the real issue (Score:4, Insightful)
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
Re:All part of the plan (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Who Mentioned War? (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:Proof the Nobel Peace Prize is a Crock of Shit (Score:3, Insightful)
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 [newscientist.com]
Re:A Well-Deserved Honor (Score:1, Insightful)
MOHAMED ELBARADEI? Yeah, he's really helped stop the proliferation of nuclear arms. It's been under his ostensible watch that we've had more proliferation than at any point since the 50's.
JIMMY CARTER JR., Yeah, the great peacemaker. Actually the great underminer, since he's done his best to undermine every administration since he got booted out. Reagan, Bush 41, Clinton, and Bush 43 all had to put up with this bitter, meddling old man.
KOFI ANNAN...another abject failure. He sure helped deliver peace in Rwanda! Kofi and the Rwandan genocide [wikipedia.org] YASSER ARAFAT...oh, my aching side. Yeah, great idea, lets give a mass murdering terrorist a Nobel Peace Prize. Question: did violence increase or decrease after Oslo?
In any given year, the Nobel committee has about a 50-50 shot at naming a worthy individual, or naming a joke. This year they chose a joke. Even if you are a ardent believer in environmentalism, it has nothing to do with peace between nations.
When did he encourage us to buy big SUV's?? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Should've gone to Bush, actually... (Score:3, Insightful)
mod parent up (Score:2, Insightful)
FYI (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Peace Prize != Good Science (Score:2, Insightful)
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.)
Re:Congratulations Al! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:No confidence (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:No confidence (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Gore: "Climate change requires YOU to adapt" (Score:3, Insightful)
Or maybe like trying to link your political opponents to frequently loathed figures like Hugo Chavez and Karl Marx? How is your hackneyed red-baiting anything but a shameless attempt to control others through fear? At least with global warming, the concern is grounded in a real and important global phenomenon.
Nuclear power is not the solution. It's not the cheapest, it's not the cleanest, it's not the safest. It's a much more mature industry than solar or wind power, so we can't expect to see the costs of nuclear power falling the way solar and wind have. Nuclear energy also has foreign policy issues, since only the countries on Santa's nice list are allowed to enrich their own fuel or reprocess their own waste. Nuclear energy requires the effective and intrusive government oversight of the entire energy sector, to keep The Bad Guys from getting a hold of radioactive material. It is hugely subsidized by the government, in the form of unlimited insurance that nobody in the insurance industry is crazy enough to provide. Finally, at the moment it is far cheaper to reduce demand for electricity than to increase supply.
You can argue over any specific point if you like, but there are legitimate concerns to be raised. You're also ignoring the falling cost of solar and wind, along with the untapped potential of geothermal [slashdot.org]. Anyone who says that anyone who does not take nuclear power seriously should not be taken seriously should not be taken seriously.
Yeah, I'm pretty proud of that last sentence.
Re:Here's what this has to do with peace (Score:1, Insightful)
I am now forced to preemptive refuse my Nobel Prise.
Re:Congratulations (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Here's my problem (Score:3, Insightful)
I am confident that human emissions of CO2, methane, etc. are of at least some cause for concern because the basic mechanism of warming (pdf warning) has been well understood for over 100 years [google.com] (that's "On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the Temperature of the Ground" by Svante Arrhenius, 1896, for you pdf-phobes). All the feedbacks, etc. are complicated; some enhance the warming, some dampen, but the first-order effects are well understood.
"It's complex" => "we don't know" => "business as usual is just fine" is a weak chain of logic.
Re:So you want us to live in huts too? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Peace Prize != Good Science (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Here's what this has to do with peace (Score:3, Insightful)
Not the case. If you avert the worst case scenarios, you avert a major global conflict on an unprecedented scale.
If you avert the conservative scenario, you avert a marginal increase in the rate of regional conflict. Over the course of decades, this amounts to quite a lot of conflict averted, but climate change will be an irrefutable sine qua non in few of those conflicts. Think Katrina: this is the kind of thing that happens more often under a climate change scenario. But it could happen without climate change. It also could be averted with even moderate climate change, if only people had been smarter and wiser than in the event proved to be.
If you avert the best case scenario, you don't avert anything at all, other than things that come from excessive consumption of petroleum: pollution, economic dependency on politically unstable regimes, mindless regional planning that wastes years of your life being stuck in traffic jams.
Re:Congratulations (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Surprising with recent controversy (Score:2, Insightful)
The difference being that those assertions are merely unfounded instead of provably false.
Re:No confidence (Score:2, Insightful)
Wrong, retard. (Score:1, Insightful)
Al Gore and the IPCC haven't done jackshit for fraternity between the nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies or for the holding and promotion of peace congresses, and the Nobel Prize committee should be fucking ashamed of themselves for veering away from the achievement based prize selections of the past.
Re:U.S consumption myth is misleading (Score:3, Insightful)
What does the US produce which requires 10 times more energy than consumed in China, per person? Most computers and electronic goods are actually manufactured in China; even those consumed in the US. Most of America's wealth is actually services, not manufacturing.... and it's been like this for decades now.
Nothing warrants such disproportionate energy consumption in the US, IMO.
Re:No confidence (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Peace Prize != Good Science (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Gore: "Climate change requires YOU to adapt" (Score:3, Insightful)
Wrong. Those vehicles cost substantially more to manufacture, and at least some of that cost is pushed onto the buyer at the dealership, with the rest being eaten by the manufacturers who have a marketing need to appear greener than the next guy. That difference is passed along to purchasers of their other products. And of course, you're ignoring the really ugly reality of the toxicity in the production and disposal of the batteries. Further, the people that buy these often do so because of some tax benefit they get for doing so. Which, again, is just them pushing that tax burden off onto other people, most of whom can't afford the hybrid penalty in the price of a vehicle.
hackneyed red-baiting
OK, so people like - just to pick a recent example - Sean Penn (who travel to visit with and celebritize Chavez in public appearances and talk about what a great guy he is, even as Chavez talks about what a fabulous brother Iran is to them in their battle against US imperialism blah blah blah) who loudly support people like Gore and Chavez simultaneously don't muddy those waters a wee bit? Why should I have to link people who support the leftier side of Gore's base with people like Chavez when they're doing it FOR me (well, doing it to all of us, is more like it). And it's not "red-baiting" to simply recognize that people like Hillary Clinton actually express their preferences for "taking those companies' profits" (vis-a-vis energy companies) and doing what she wants with them, policy-wise. Or, nationalizing medical care into the same mess that we see overseas, rather than recognizing the litigious stranglehold that our current environment has on letting doctors and hospitals work more cost-effectively. Pointing that crap out isn't baiting anyone - it's simply pointing it out.
at the moment it is far cheaper to reduce demand for electricity than to increase supply
Well, which is it? Reducing emissions, or reducing costs that you're most worried about? If you're willing to have people pay a multi-thousand-dollar premium on a vehicle purchase so that they can save $10/week on gasoline while pushing a tax subsidy for that person onto other taxpayers, why aren't you willing to reduce the amount of coal that we smoke in order to produce electricity? It's not either-or. Wind, solar, and geothermal won't even come CLOSE to keeping up with energy demand, even if enormous new efficiencies are introduced, and per-capita demand growth is sharply rolled back. Why? Because the population continues to grow, and their energy needs with it... and the most populous places on the planet are just getting started on using energy the way they're going to want to.
Anyone who says that anyone who does not take nuclear power seriously should not be taken seriously should not be taken seriously.
You can't seriously be saying that serious person who seriously advocates a serious reduction in hydrocarbon fuel use wouldn't understand the serious repercussions of thinking that the tiny flow of juice that will come from even seriously improved windmills deployed by the tens of thousands (at over $1m each) would even slow the rate at which we're falling behind in keeping up with demand and distribution. Seriously. Build nukes right where power distribution already exists, rather than having to string up lines all over the country to take advantage of hilltop wind farms that the eco-nimby-types won't let you build anyway (see Ted Kennedy and his seaside view, for an example).
Re:Congratulations (Score:2, Insightful)
Have you looked around lately? Every single (public) entity on the planet seems to be doing this or that for climate change. There's a huge storm of attention for environmental issues and Al Gore deserves credit for a large part of it. (Although as usual with this sort of thing, he may just have been the guy riding the wave) I'm not saying it's all beautiful and perfect and we should all join in. To be honest, the whole thing feels superficial to me, and pushing past some very important and subtle points in all its momentum, however, there is a major surge in environmentalism, and Al Gore is the name that's associated with it.
As for the other point; no, Al Gore has done nothing for peace. In recent years, the Nobel peace price was has been extended to include other activism, such as environmentalism, fighting poverty, human rights, etc. Last year, Mohammed Yunus won it for the principle of micro-credit, which has greatly helped to reduce poverty. One of the possible winners this year, who was up for actual peace-related activities was Bono. I'll take Al Gore over that any day of the week. They even balanced it out nicely by giving to Al Gore for the public side of things, and the UN panel for the political side of things.
Re:No confidence (Score:3, Insightful)
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?
Re:Sick of Skeptics. David Suzuki and Al Gore. (Score:3, Insightful)
In real science, majority consensus is simply not good enough. There are real scientific questions about the causes of climate change and about the inherent variability of climate over time. These questions can take a long time to answer, because the problems are very complicated. In real science, you have to wait until everybody agrees among the scientists, and even then there has to be a rethink everytime somebody comes up with a new objection, even after everybody thinks it's settled, to understand how the new objection fits into the theory. That's science.
Needless to say, real science is slow, and there's no guarantee that it can answer any question you throw at it, no matter how urgently you want to hear the answer to it. Sometimes, you may have to wait four hundred years to get an acceptable answer.
What your argument is about has nothing to do with science, other than trying to use the authority of science to a political end. Your political goal is to prevent a danger for everybody that you believe in strongly, and that's laudable.
But you try and convince people to get on board by saying that science has the answers, even though you're prepared to skimp on the scientific process when it takes too long to your liking: so you say the majority of scientists more or less agree. But without the full scientific process, those majorities of consenting scientists may as well be high priests of Ammon Ra, explaining his latest edicts to the masses.
The other problem with your argument is that you want people to act on possibly flawed intelligence. You can't actually prove what you assert about the causes of climate change, but you still want people to act as if your claim is true because of the so called consequences. That's Pascal's wager [wikipedia.org].
Pascal argued that we can't really prove God is out there, but we should still act as if that claim is true, because of the tiny consequence of ending up in hell forever if the claim is true, which would be worse than anything else one could think of. That's what you're arguing with climate change, and your argument is just as unconvincing as Pascal's. Especially when that same argument has also been used with terrorism and WMD, and we all know how that turned out.
If you truly want to convince people to act, try listing all the benefits they will gain from it instead.
Re:Deserving but political (Score:3, Insightful)
The NPP has been a political pop gun for a very long time. I've not considered it a true honor for over two decades.