Interesting that you brought up human rights.

I was rooting for his co-nominee Canadian Sheila Watt-Cloutier. She is an inuit from northern Canada that has been raising awareness of this issue for years. She is most well known for her efforts to take legal action tying climate change to a human rights issue.

Inuit fight climate change with human-rights claim against U.S. | By Emily Gertz | Grist | Main Dish | 26 Jul 2005

It seems that though the committee has begun to take this stand as well, treating the health of the climate as a human rights issue.

Andrew

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Ethanol is a fabulous solution to our energy dilemma because it will provide more fuel for us to drive around and look for food.

-- Unknown

We live in a great world when one can pick up a peace prize for finding a trendy issue and pretending to care about it while simultaneously doing many things in your daily life that are completely at odds with your professed beliefs.

For instance, one can become the self-appointed champion of the environment while flying about in a private jet, squandering energy and natural resources at your mansion and deriving hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits from one of the most polluted mining operations in the nation.

Just warms the cockles.

Matt

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De duobus malis, minus est semper eligendum

In the old days you had to do something like feed a billion people to win the Nobel Peace prize, nowadays you can get it for blowing some hot air.

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I duck, therefore i cover.

How did the standards slip so far in just a few decades?

Less than 40 years ago, the Nobel prize for Peace went to a guy that saved the lives of hundreds of millions of people:



And today, we've got some Muppet who preaches one thing while doing another being elevated to the same status?

What a load of shit.

Here's an inconvenient truth for you Al - you couldn't carry Dr. Borlaug's briefcase on your best day.

Matt

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De duobus malis, minus est semper eligendum

I hate to mess up this thread if that is what i am about to do

this award to gore reaks of politics and nothing but politics

There will be immense humanitarian fall out from global warming. Imagine the crisis when the population-dense river basins, such as the one in Bangladesh, are submurged. With massive migrations comes violence, be it economically, religiously, racially, culturally motivated, or simply motivated from opportunism.

If someone could create a silver bullet to stop global warming she would be saving thousands, if not millions of lives. In lieu of that, I think that this award is justified.
Yeah, some people think that massive humanitarian crises are bad. Stupid politics.

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"Jesus said: I have cast fire upon the world, and behold I guard it until it is ablaze."
Gospel of Thomas

A lot of the information I have seen indicates that Climate change is a bigger threat to world peace than terrorism. The head of the AFP here in Oz considers it so - and the environmental refugee problem is beginning to look as if it will be very serious in our corner of the world.

Far more people are affected by climate change, and already the impacts are beginning to cause mass migration that exacerbate conflict.

yes - and considering in Britain they have stated that teacher's using Gores film need to provide alterbnative information as well, as there are several glaring errors in the film ....

I think its important its on the agenda, but I think Gore is over rated.

having said that though - despite his errors - he got it out there and raised public awareness - which is one of the most important steps in addressing the issue.

Personalities and politics aside - addressing climate change WILL save hundreds of millions of lives - if we act.

As I mentioned in another thread ... Yasser Arafat, the first, celebrity terrorist also won the Nobel Peace Prize, which makes it insignificant, in my opinion.

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"I miss the days when they made toys that could kill a kid."
- Jerry Seinfeld

I'm royally pissed off that the IPCC has to share this prize with that man.

Raising awareness is one thing. The IPCC does that with cold hard correct data. AG usurps the subject, sensationalizes it, drops the standard of the debate to subscientific levels with the result that this important issue will not be approached rationally but as just another wedge issue in regional politics (from a global perspective).

If anything, the man is harming the cause. What AG's approach will lead to are random, arbitrary and authoritarian measures who may or may not have a relationship with scienitific fact, something which will not even be considered, but will certainly be in line with his personal petty politics.

What Gore, by appropriating the issue has done, for local American politics is taking away the chance, small as it may be, that the big parties in the USA would cooperatively work on this issue in a calm and reasonable manner. By politicizing it, AG has given those of the Republicans that wish so, the motivation to shoot the whole thing down.

For the international forum, which should have been the concern for the Commitee in selecting the winner, Gore isn't all that important. The obvious choice from a global perspective is of course the globally cooperative IPCC alone.

@drgoodtrips: You didn't expect Gore to win the Physics Prize, did you ? Hank would stand a better chance.

I agree fully WOI - but I also think that we live in an age of celebrity.

Do you think that the IPCC winning the prize would get it out there - and put the discussion on the level of the breakfast table, and maybe we should buy green energy/hybrid cars/think about using public transport/demand our governments act?

I doubt it.

I don't think celebrities are a new phenomenon. It's the nature of the celebrities that's breaking all records downwards. And that's entirely the responsability of the marketeers whom aim at the lowest of the lowest.

The problem is what reaches the breakfast table. It's not the facts, it's The Day after Tomorrow (movie). When information gets dumbed down and travestied in order to reach that lowest quintile of the intellectual bell curve that is the target audience of the populist marketeers, the eighty percent that would get the facts is done a disservice.

And this is dangerous. When the measures don't match the facts, as is to be expected, not only will the issue not be addressed, but on top of that, there's another opportunity for th elite to take away freedoms from the general population as is the case with the exaggerated threat of terrorism.

Most people are perfectly capable of running their lives, their relationships, their businesses, their jobs, no matter how complex they are. Why the heck would they be incapable of understanding this issue as it is, without having to resort to the Hollywood version?

I agree. My feeling is that Gore has definitely contributed to the awareness of our climate, but id hardly think of Gore as someone who has a record of promoting peace. His record there sucks. This award should have gone to someone more like Watt-Cloutier.

Andrew

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Ethanol is a fabulous solution to our energy dilemma because it will provide more fuel for us to drive around and look for food.

-- Unknown

The health of our climate (and our security) is one of the most important issues we could ever face. Trendy issue? This issue is here for good. Do you really eel that the health of the life system of our planet is just a hollywood trend?

I agree with you that Al Gore doesn't quite get it, but his faults do hang much on the science that backs up the observations and the theory.

Your post is also one of the reasons that Al Gore should not have been chosen. He will just become the media focus of cheap partisan attack, and distract from the actual issue he is associated with.

Someone less open to cheap politics would have been a far wiser choice.

Andrew

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Ethanol is a fabulous solution to our energy dilemma because it will provide more fuel for us to drive around and look for food.

-- Unknown