Al Gore and UN win Nobel Peace Prize

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Al Gore, UN Panel Share Nobel for Peace

By DOUG MELLGREN and MATT MOORE

My Way

October 12, 2007

This is a real head-scratcher.

What in hell does weather have to do with peace?

I find it ironic that the inventor of dynamite's prize is going to a clamor for less technology as a form of encouraging peace. I prefer boom for the bad guys, like dynamite does.

There was a time when this prize meant something. One may not like Mother Teresa or Kofi Annan or even Jimmy Carter, but they at least had some connection with social matters, which is what peace is concerned with. I remember a time when this prize went to men of stature in the eyes of social hurricanes like Martin Luther King and Lech Walesa and Elie Weisal and Mikhail Gorbachev and Middle East leaders.

The Nobel prize committee has just stripped the peace prize of all cognitive content (by removing society altogether) and any need for dealing with accurate facts. The committee has made the prize a badge for being well-connected and nothing more.

Armand Hammer coveted this prize at the end of his life. According to the present standards, there is no reason he should not have been awarded.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

It's a joke. At least Gore will now be able to pay the electricity bill on his Tennessee mansion for a few months.

--Brant

[BaalChatzaf]

Before we go about exclaiming: I'm shocked, shocked!, please recall that Yasir Arifat won the peace prize too. The Nobel Peace Prizes are exercises in Political Correctness and they always have been. Recall that Nobel created a substance (dynamite) that has killed more people than nuclear weapons. His Peace Prize was gooey salve to put on his conscience.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Robert Jones]

So, now I suppose Al Gore is a Nobel Savage.

[Chris Grieb]

Maybe the best comment about the Nobel Peace Prize is at least they didn't give it to Pil Pot when he was alive. I agree with Baal.

Edited October 13, 2007 by Chris Grieb

[Greybird]

Well, he's walking in the steps of his fellow war criminals: Theodore Roosevelt, Jimmy Carter, Le Duc Tho, Henry Kissinger, Yasser Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Mikhail Gorbachev, Menachem Begin, Anwar Sadat, Cordell Hull, George Marshall, Charles Dawes, and — above all, the man most directly responsible for at least 150 million dying as a result of statist terror, bullets, and starvation — Woodrow Wilson.

Gore thus joins a large, illustrious, State-worshipping, murderous company, extending over a century, made bloody in every footstep by them and by those who abetted them.

I cannot think of any more cosmically profound, bitterly dismaying joke than the roster of the recipients of the Nobel Prize for Peace.

Now, the man is going to become insufferable CUBED. At least he can no longer be involved in ordering men and women to their deaths. Though he will try to further commandeer their wallets and destroy the technology on which their lives depend. And given the spinelessness of politicos in all parties, throughout the cowardly Western world, as to not resisting pseudo-science, he's probably going to succeed.

That some genuinely productive, peaceful people have gotten the prize — the one I've actually met, agricultural scientist and fellow Iowan Norman Borlaug, comes to my mind — doesn't mean that the process isn't utterly politicized, following the trends of save-the-world fads.

The Norwegian Parliament was just as utterly bamboozled nine decades ago in giving it to the supposed "savior of Europe," the Archangel Woodrow (thank you, H.L. Mencken), as it is now by being fashionably "green."

I rarely find much reason to be even the slightest bit abashed at my cultural heritage. Yet when the Storting's appointed committee coughs up such choices, I blush for a few days at being one-fourth Norsky.

Edited October 16, 2007 by Greybird

[Roger Bissell]

Check out this article by George Will in the October 22, 2007 issue of Newsweek:

An Inconvenient Price by George F. Will

I don't always agree with Will's views, but this is one of those times when I think he has completely hit the nail on the head. I have been especially incensed that Al Gore got a Nobel Peace Prize for his statist views that, if enacted, would surely harm humanity more than simply doing nothing (or what we are doing now). Will explains quite clearly how the Law of Unintended Consequences will bite us in the butt if we try to put such measures into effect. He concludes his piece, "As nations concert to impose antiwarming measures commensurate with the hyperbole about the danger, the damage to global economic growth could cause in this century more preventable death and suffering than was caused in the last century by Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot combined. Nobel Peace Prize, indeed." Hear, hear!

REB

P.S. -- By the way, Greybird, that was a ~fabulous~ post!

[Ross Barlow]

Check out this article by George Will in the October 22, 2007 issue of Newsweek:

An Inconvenient Price by George F. Will

...

Thanks for posting that link, Roger. I also am not a big fan of George Will, but this is a great essay. Being in Newsweek, it be read quite widely.

.

-Ross Barlow.

[Chris Grieb]

Roger; It is a very good article. George Will can very good and sometimes he can awful. This time he was very good.

[Roger Bissell]

Here is a news release by Newsmax regarding John Stossel's 20/20 show debunking Al Gore's global warming nonsense....reb

================================================================================

John Stossel Exposes Global Warming Myths

Wednesday, October 17, 2007 8:58 PM

By: Newsmax Staff Article Font Size

"20/20" co-anchor John Stossel is going on the attack against "experts" who warn about manmade global warming - along the way berating Al Gore for saying the debate over climate change is over.

In a release from ABC previewing Stossel's report on Friday's "20/20," the veteran newsman and Newsmax pundit - who won 19 Emmys exposing scammers and con artists - says:

"This week on '20/20' (in our new 8 p.m. Eastern time slot) I say 'Give Me a Break!' to our Nobel Prize-winning Vice President.

"Mr. Gore says 'The debate is over,' and those who disagree with his take on global warming have been 'purchased' in order to create 'the illusion of a debate.' Nonsense. It's as if the Vice President and his allies in the environmental movement plan to win the debate through intimidation. I interview some scientists who won't be intimidated, even though one has had his life threatened for speaking up.

"The Vice President's much-applauded movie, 'An Inconvenient Truth,' claims warming is man's fault and a coming crisis! While the earth has certainly warmed over the last century, plenty of independent scientists say scientists cannot be sure that man caused the warming or that warming will be a crisis.

"They say the computer models that are used to predict the disasters don't include important variables because scientists don't fully understand them. For example, warming may cause cloud formations that reflect sun and cool the earth. The computer models cannot know. These scientists call global warming activism more of a religious movement than science."

Gore's film is filled with "misleading messages," says Stossel.

"It suggests polar bears are disappearing and that 'sea levels worldwide would go up 20 feet.' I interview children who are scared. They believe the polar bears are already going extinct and that the oceans will soon rise even higher than 20 feet, drowning them and their parents.

"But polar bear populations appear to be steady or increasing, and a 20-foot rise is a theoretical possibility that wouldn't happen for millennia. The IPCC, the group that shared last week's Nobel Prize with the Vice President, says in 100 years the oceans might rise 7 to 24 inches, not 20 feet. Now a British judge has ruled that British schools must disclose to students nine inaccuracies in 'An Inconvenient Truth' if they play the movie in class."

Stossel said it's "nonsense" for Gore to suggest that we can stop global warming by doing things like changing light bulbs and driving less.

"The only practical thing we can do today that would make a difference in CO2 output is to launch a major shift toward nuclear energy. But the environmental movement rarely utters the word nuclear.

"I suspect that next year's government boondoggle will be massive spending on carbon-reducing technology.

"It reminds me of George Mason University Economics Department Chairman Don Boudreax's suggestion that such schemes really mean 'government seizing enormous amounts of additional power in order to embark upon schemes of social engineering - schemes whose pursuit gratifies the abstract fantasies of the theory class and, simultaneously, lines the very real pockets of politically powerful corporations, organizations, and "experts."'

"He is so right. The abstract fantasies of the theory class will soon send huge chunks of your money to politicians, friends, activist scientists, and politically savvy corporations.

"The debate is over? That makes me say GIVE ME A BREAK!"

© 2007 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

[Roger Bissell]

Opinion Editorial

The Global Warming Debate Is Hardly Over

By John Stossel

Oct 29, 2007

First he won the Oscar - then the Nobel Peace Prize. He's being called a "prophet."

Impressive, considering that one of former Vice President Al Gore's chief contributions has been to call the debate over global warming "over" and to marginalize anyone who disagrees.

Although he favors major government intervention to stop global warming, he says, "the climate crisis is not a political issue. It is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity." [1]

Give me a break.

If you must declare a debate over, then maybe it's not. And if you have to gussy up your agenda as "our greatest opportunity to lift global consciousness to a higher level," then it deserves some skeptical examination.

Everyone has heard that Earth's atmosphere is heating up, it's our fault, and it's a crisis. No wonder 86 percent of Americans think global warming is a serious problem and 70 percent want the government to do something now.

But is it a crisis? The globe is warming, but will it be catastrophic? Probably not.

In "An Inconvenient Truth," Gore says that "sea levels worldwide would go up 20 feet."

But the group that shared last week's Nobel Prize, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, says in a hundred years, the oceans might rise 7 to 24 inches. [2]

Gore also talks about drowning polar bears. He doesn't mention that the World Conservation Union and the U.S. Geological Survey say that today most populations of polar bears are stable or increasing.

And while man's greenhouse gasses may increase warming, it's not certain that man caused it. The most impressive demonstration in Gore's movie is the big graph of carbon-dioxide levels, which suggests that carbon levels control temperature. But the movie doesn't tell you that the carbon increases came after temperatures rose, hundreds of years later.

There's much more. A British court ruled that U.K. teachers could show Gore's documentary to students only if they also explain nine errors in the movie. [3]

I wanted to ask Gore about that and other things, but he wouldn't talk to me. Why should he? He says "the debate is over."

"It's absurd for people to say that sort of thing," says Paul Reiter of the Pasteur Institute. [4]

John Christy and Roy Spencer, who won NASA's Medal for Exceptional Achievement for figuring out how to get temperature data from satellites, agree that Earth has warmed. "The thing that we dispute is, is it because of mankind?" Spencer says.

Some scientists say the warming may be caused by changes in the sun, or ocean currents, or changes in cloud cover, or other things we don't understand. If it's all man's fault, why did the Arctic go through a warm period early last century? Why did Greenland's temperatures rise 50 percent faster in the 1920s than they are rising now? [5]

The media rarely ask such questions.

The media also treat the IPCC as impartial scientists, but Reiter and Christy, who were members of the IPCC, say it is not what the public thinks it is. Many of the people involved in writing its report "are not scientists at all," Reiter says. "They were essentially activists." Members of groups like Greenpeace were involved. Skeptics were often ignored.

Christy says, "We were not asked to look at a particular statement and sign our names to it."

Adds Reiter, "I resigned."

But the IPCC still listed him as part of the so-called consensus of scientists. He says he had to threaten to sue to get his name removed from the report, although the IPCC denies that.

Skeptics like Reiter, Christy, Spencer and Tim Ball, who studies the history of climate change and heads the Natural Resources Stewardship Project, are often smeared as "deniers," lumped in with Holocaust deniers and accused of being "on the take" from energy businesses. Gore impugns skeptical scientists by saying "the illusion of a debate has been purchased." [6]

But the scientists I interviewed don't get money from business.

Some get threatened. Ball received an e-mail that said: "You will not live long enough to see global warming!"

Is this what the global-warming debate has come to?

John Stossel is co-anchor of ABC News' "20/20" and the author of Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media (January 2005) as well as Myth, Lies, and Downright Stupidity: Get Out the Shovel - Why Everything You Know Is Wrong (May 2007), which is now available in paperback.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0060529156

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0786893931

[1] http://www.algore.org/

[2] http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Print_SPM.pdf

[3] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7037671.stm

[4] http://www.pasteur.fr/english.html

[5] http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2006GeoRL..3311707C

[6] http://www.nrsp.com/

[John Dailey]

~ Remember TWC's ostensible representative advocating how meteorologists who disagree with AGW should be officially treated?

~ Here's what TWC's original founder/creator has to say (love it, LOVE IT )...

TWC's 'founder' says AGW arguments are...crap (ok: he really only said 'scam').

~ Methinks there's a lot of Anthropogenic Bureaucratic Warming going on behind the scenes at TWC.

LLAP

J:D

PS: If you see more than one column, the relevent one is 'Nov 7'; but, the others are worth catching also.

Edited November 8, 2007 by John Dailey

[John Dailey]

~ Anyone notice how so many anti-AGW's (er, AGW 'deniers') are accused (well, insinuated) of being 'on the take' from some/any 'private' companies,

...yet, NO AGW proponent (say, Al Gore, for only one) is accused (well, innuended) of being 'on the take' from political/governmental favor-wielding money-bribers?

~ Who will protect us from our...'Protectors'?

~ U.S. --- or, no one.

LLAP

J:D

[BaalChatzaf]

Opinion Editorial

The Global Warming Debate Is Hardly Over

By John Stossel

Oct 29, 2007

First he won the Oscar - then the Nobel Peace Prize. He's being called a "prophet."

First he invented the Internet. We must not forget that.

Ba'al Chatzaf