Did Al Gore and the IPCC deserve the Nobel Peace Prize? Discuss.
According to the eponymous Alfie, a Nobel Peace Prize should be awarded 'to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses'.
So what's it doing in the hands of Al Gore and the IPCC, wonders Dr Jon Barnett in the latest edition of the journal Climatic Change.
Sure, Gore and Co. opened society's eyes to the dangers of global warming, but climate change research has also given the world a jolly good excuse to gear up for war, he points out. War. As in the opposite of peace.
Why? Because an apocalyptic vision of climate-induced chaos is music to the ears of thumb-twiddling national security forces in the West, opines Dr Barnett, an associate professor at the University of Melbourne's Department of Resource Management and Geography.
'Security and defence agencies require problems to justify their continued existence in a world where the threat of war has diminished since the end of the cold war', Dr Barnett suggests. 'They seem to be appropriating the dangers of climate change to serve these institutional agendas'.
To illustrate his point, Barnett cites a report commissioned by the US military, which eagerly warned that climate change will 'potentially destabilize the geopolitical environment, leading to skirmishes, battles, and even war due to resource constraints'. (More money, please.)
Of course, none of this is the fault of Al Gore and the IPCC: they are but pawns in a wider geopolitical game. As Al Gore said in his Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech about something entirely different, 'we never intended to cause all this destruction, just as Alfred Nobel never intended that dynamite be used for waging war.'
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" opines Dr Barnett, an associate professor at the University of Melbourne's Department of Resource Management and Geography"
Australia....
Hmmm.
Isn't that the place where the government sacked a scientist who said that AGW was real?
I wonder if Jon/Bish/Laz/Frank et al will come on here and say of Dr Barnett that he would say that, since he's just parroting what his political masters want him to say at the risk of losing his job for defying them...
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And why is it "Al Gore and Co" rather than "the IPCC and Al Gore"?
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Discuss? Here there is only yelling....
Pity really. It was shaping up to be a good blog for a while.
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Hey, Bish, you may have to move away from denial of AGW. Someone on that side is rude:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/climatechange/2009/07/dont_trust_a_stressedout_scien.html#P82639314
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I never really understood why he was awarded the PEACE prize. I would have thought that the Peace Prize that year was rather mis-targeted.
Craig
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In what way?
Have you read what reasons the PEACE prize you seem, by emphasizing it by YELLING it, is given out for?
Most of them not for making peace or for peacemakers.
So no, it isn't misplaced.
Your ideology is, though.
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A UK judge found 9 inconvenient errors in Gore's film:
Gore: Low-lying inhabited Pacific atolls are already being inundated because of anthropogenic global warming.
Judge: There was no evidence of any evacuation having yet happened.
Gore: Polar bears had already drowned swimming long distances - up to 60 miles - to find the ice.
Judge: The only scientific study found four polar bears have recently been found drowned because of a storm." [Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]
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try telling Irena Sendler that gore deserved the prize
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re 8: Why?
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"A UK judge found 9 inconvenient errors in Gore's film:"
And 73 in "The Great Global Warming Swindle".
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PS I didn;t know that "An Inconvenient Truth" was the entire Climate Modelling work of the last 80 years...
And there was me thinking that this:
http://www.ipcc.ch/
Was the science of climate...
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Ref 7. Jack_Hughes_NZ
The High Court Judge rejected the lawsuit brought by a father seeking withdrawal of the film from schools. In his ruling, permitting the continued showing of the film to schoolchildren, Justice Burton concluded:
"The Film advances four main scientific hypotheses, each of which is very well supported by research published in respected, peer-reviewed journals and accords with the latest conclusions of the IPCC:
- global average temperatures have been rising significantly over the past half century and are likely to continue to rise (climate change);
- climate change is mainly attributable to man-made emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide (greenhouse gases);
- climate change will, if unchecked, have significant adverse effects on the world and its populations;
- and there are measures which individuals and governments can take which will help to reduce climate change or mitigate its effects.
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Hi Richard_SM and welcome to this blog !
You correctly note that the judge said some positive things about Gore and his film.
But why did Gore include things in his film that were untrue ? Did Gore know that the "pacific island evacuation myth" was untrue ? Or did he not bother to find out ?
Some interviews with "evacuees" would have dramatised the film - trouble is there were no evacuees.
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Yeah_whatever, I am not sure why you attacked me, stating that "my ideology . . . is misplaced". I merely offered my opinion on the matter at hand, whether Al Gore deserved the PEACE prize. I emphasize the word "peace" in that Al might have deserved some other prize, but "Peace" still seems mis-targetted??
Notwithstanding your attack against me, you didn't address my concern. The Peace Prize is designated to go "to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses."
This doesn't seem to me to apply to Al Gore, whether or not one agrees with his ideology.
Craig
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Having quickly read this report it looks to me just a great bag of generalisations designed to grab a headline. I personally don't think Al Gore and the IPCC deserved the peace prize, but not for the speculative reasons outlined in this report, but for the simple reason that they have demonstrably done nothing towards helping to pacify any previous conflicts or to prevent any in the future, although unlike this report I don't particularily think they have exacerbated any future situation either.
All in all this report seems rather confused in its purpose and poorly written ( it refers to something called the IPCCC).
I think the author should have taken heed of the only sensible statement I spotted in it:
"A major problem with the popular discourse on climate wars is that it is excessively general, and poorly if at all informed by evidence"
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because irena sendler was a couragous woman, who was up against Gore for the nobel peace prize and a much more deserving winner
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irena_Sendler
http://www.auschwitz.dk/Sendler.htm
that's why
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And Ultravox "Vienna" was beaten to the #1 in the pop charts by Joe Dolche's "Ah shaddupa ya face".
Joe doesn't have to apologise to Midge.
We don't have to tell Midge that Joe deserved the #1 spot.
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"but for the simple reason that they have demonstrably done nothing towards helping to pacify any previous conflicts or to prevent any in the future,"
Richard Feynman got a nobel prize.
He didn't get it for pacifying a conflict or prevent one in the future.
Look at what the other prizes are for.
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"Yeah_whatever, I am not sure why you attacked me, stating that "my ideology . . . is misplaced". I merely offered my opinion on the matter at hand, whether Al Gore deserved the PEACE prize."
I'm not sure why you attacked the IPCC and Al Gore.
Your ideology is misplaced because you seem to think that the Nobel Peace Prize must only be given out to peacekeepers or peacemakers.
That is wrong.
It isn't just for that.
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"But why did Gore include things in his film that were untrue ?"
Might as well ask you the same thing!
And they weren't untrue, they weren't proven or they were over-simplifications.
Rather like your continued attempts to say it's cooling by saying the temperature now is lower than some picked temperature before was.
That a lower temperature is cooler is true.
But it doesn't mean it's cooling.
Which is a lie.
But YOU seem happy to continue to say it, even after it being pointed out.
So if Al Gore is bad because of telling such lies, you are saying you are bad for doing the same thing.
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Ref 13. Jack_Hughes_NZ
You wrote: "But why did Gore include things in his film that were untrue ? Did Gore know that the "pacific island evacuation myth" was untrue ? Or did he not bother to find out ?"
It was true. I know Tuvalu have announced evacuation plans. There's another small group of islands that have been evacuating for some time as well.
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Ref 13. Jack_Hughes_NZ
November 2005: the Pacific Carteret atolls are being evacuated because of climate change. The islands are expected to be completely submerged by 2015. Two uninhabited Kiribati islands, Tebua Tarawa and Abanuea, disappeared underwater in 1999. You could have googled it yourself.
There you go.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2005/nov/25/science.climatechange
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Hi Richard,
Gore's exact words in the film were: "That's why the citizens of these Pacific nations have all had to evacuate to New Zealand. "
I live in New Zealand and there has not been an evacuation of Pacific islanders here.
The Guardian piece mentions 2 uninhabited islands. This means that nobody lives there.
It also mentions the Carteret Islands. There are several views about why the inhabitants are abandoning these islands. The key thing is that the Carteret Islanders are moving to nearby Bougainville - not New Zealand.
The judge looked at the evidence and found the pacific evacuation claim to be false.
From wikipedia:
The Carteret islands likely consist of a base of coral that sits atop an extinct volcanic mount. In the usual geological course of events first proposed by Charles Darwin, such islands eventually subside due to weathering and erosion, as well as isostatic adjustments of the sea floor. It has also been speculated that dynamite fishing in the Carterets such as occurred in the island during the prolonged Bouganville conflict may be contributing to the increased inundation. Coral reefs buffer against wave and tidal action, and so their degradation may increase an island's level of exposure to those forces. Another suggestion is that tectonic movement may be causing the gradual subsidence of the atoll.
Historically other populated islands, for example Tuanaki in the Cook Islands, are known to have sunk entirely and relatively suddenly for causes unrelated to rising sea levels.
The Gore 'Pacific Island evacuation to NZ' claim was false.
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"The Gore 'Pacific Island evacuation to NZ' claim was false."
Just like your claim that it's been cooling since 2001.
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See
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x323892
for how many lies TGGWS had.
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When there was flooding on the Thames, the headline for the newspapers was "Thanes Valley Homes Evacuated".
Yet the Thames Valley is HUGE. Only a small section of the longest river system in England was affected, and not all the homes in the affected valley were evacuated.
Was that FALSE too?
Or just journalistic technique to get a headline?
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"The Guardian piece mentions 2 uninhabited islands. This means that nobody lives there."
That's what happens when you evacuate a place: nobody lives there.
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High Court Judge, Justice Burton B-U-S-T-E-D Al Gore's claim that a Pacific Island had been evacuated to New Zealand.
We can (and do) go round in circles with the science and the temperature measurements. But we can all see when someone's telling porkies about events that just did not happen.
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And you claim of cooling B-U-S-T-E-D by your own dataset!
PS: are you saying nobody was evacuated from a pacific island?
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"We can (and do) go round in circles with the science and the temperature measurements. But we can all see when someone's telling porkies about events that just did not happen."
Yes, we can. Like when you told porkies when you said that it's been cooling...
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@yeah_whatever
#17 you're comparing apples and pears
Sendler directly saved the lives of 2500 jewish children, putting her own life on the line on each and every occassion
Gore formed Generation Investment Management to invest in green technology and earns a salary to enhance his life
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"#17 you're comparing apples and pears"
Uh, no.
If you want to say it, then I'm comparing apples to pears when someone is talking about different types of fruit.
If Sendler only did that because she wanted the Nobel Peace Prize, then I could understand her being upset. Then again, I wouldn't care about her disappointment.
If Sendler did it to save lives, they remain saved whether there's a prize or not.
So why #8?
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#25
something we agree about!
TGGWS was rubbish, but that does not mean AGW is true
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
"TGGWS was rubbish, but that does not mean AGW is true"
Uh, now you're comparing apples to eyrinies.
The truth of AGW doesn't depend on TGGWS being wrong.
It depends on the science being right.
Which it is and TGGWS failed to prove wrong.
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The truth of AGW doesn't depend on TGGWS being wrong
nobody said it did, what i said was "TGGWS was rubbish, but that does not mean AGW is true"
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seems somebody complained #34 so is this better?
the fact remains, Gores prize was a political statement that was thoroughly undeserved, especially when you consider the other 181 contenders
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"The truth of AGW doesn't depend on TGGWS being wrong
nobody said it did,"
Then what does this have to do with anything:
+++++++++
33. At 1:03pm on 10 Jul 2009, MangoChutneyUKOK wrote:
#25
something we agree about!
TGGWS was rubbish, but that does not mean AGW is true
+++++++++
???
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"the fact remains, Gores prize was a political statement that was ,IN MY OPINION, thoroughly undeserved"
There, fixed that for you.
The people who decide who gets it had a different opinion.
And there's no need for them or anyone to do as you ask in #8.
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nobody said it did, what i said was "TGGWS was rubbish, but that does not mean AGW is true"
Actually, it does.
If TGGWS wouldn't prove the science of AGW wrong without lying, then the science of AGW is right.
Therefore, since AGW is based on the science of AGW, it is true.
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Ref 13. Jack_Hughes_NZ
"Did Gore know that the "pacific island evacuation myth" was untrue ?"
It doesn't matter where you live. It's irrelevant. Neither does it matter where they were evacuated; New Zealand; New Guinea or New York. That's irrelevant as well. What is relevant is the claimant lost his case. The film has now been shown to hundreds of thousands of British schoolchildren and will be seen by many more in future. The world has moved on since then; what a few people in New Zealand think is also irrelevant.
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Yeah_whatever, please get your facts straight. One can't use Richard Feynman's receipt of a Nobel Prize for Physics to justify Al Gore's receipt of the Prize for Peace.
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yeah_whatever, you are really desperate for attention. I'm sure all the smart alecky answers give you a feeling of intellectual superiority. But the attention seeking look-at-me antics are a clear indication of a desperate need for validation. Just as your inevitable smart alecky comeback will be. I understand, you won't be able to stop yourself.
We're sorry your dad never loved you, but it doesn't make Global Warming real, or Al Gore a Nobel Prize Scientist. But in case you opt to go into denial overdrive let me pre-empt and save you repeating the same talking points again:
Natural variation...
Third hottest year on record...
IPCC says...
Climate Models Show...
Most scientists agreee...
Oil Company schills...
Yup, that about covers it. I'd like to believe that will leave you speechless, but I think we all know better...
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Well the USs first stab at climate legislation is probably going to lead to a trade war with China at a minimum. That said it seems that a PEACE prize was a little misguided.
What he deserves is the PIECE prize. You know,for being the biggest Piece of...you get it.
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My my - I can hardly stop laughing. Al Gore - Nobel Peace Prize - I still can't believe it.
ahh...No (he did not deserve it)
For what? being a hypocrit? I find it very intersting that Al Jr. has a much bigger following over in Europe than he does here in the US.
This has been discussed much here - the overall concensus is a resounding "No" - even from his supports.
(Nobel rolls over in his grave, again.)
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Maybe Gore's film should be called An Inconvenient Truthiness
Truthiness is defined as:
The quality of stating concepts one wishes or believes to be true, rather than the facts.
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"The quality of stating concepts one wishes or believes to be true, rather than the facts. "
You mean like your wish to believe that it's cooling when the facts say it's warming?
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"That said it seems that a PEACE prize was a little misguided. "
Why do we look for peace?
To save humanity from itself.
From it's rage, from its greed.
And pointing out AGW to those whose greed makes them ignore any danger, especially if it's to some poor people far away and quite possibly in a generation's time is as much an effort to save lives as any of the other peace prize contenders.
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This comment has been referred to the moderators. Explain.
" What a refreshing - to a total non scientist - experience it was."
Well, yes, it would be, since there was no valid science in it...
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Ive thought about the "Discuss" part of the title of this blog page.
I will try and contribute to its goal by saying that Al Gore and the IPCC are probably as worthy of the prize as Arafat and Begin were worthy of the prize.
But maybe not as worthy of it as John Hume and David Trimble were.
The latter pair, no matter how controversial the effort and division they probably had helped to overcome, attained some realistic base for a sustained peace.
The former pair have clearly not. The middle east is still in turmoil and issues adressed in that prize are now now used as points to explain turmoil spread from China to Russia to Europe as unresolved.
These two examples of winners of the Nobel peace committee prize seem to have a common example of speculative honour in their goal, the latest Gore/IPCC one is more cynical I think, it shows a simple minded imagination that hopes that good will be abstractly thought through the world because of its award.
A clear sign of a manaical award commitee overstepping reality, the Oscars can put on a show to justfy this megolomaniacal ambition, the Swedes (or Norwegians?) haven't been able yet.
Whether Gore and the IPCC are worth of a spit for anything other than empty smugness I have yet to have seen it justified yet
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"But maybe not as worthy of it as John Hume and David Trimble were."
Possibly.
Then again, climate change could kill billions. Much more than any war. And a war avoided would gain the person who orchestrated it the peace prize no problem.
I believe that was the thinking behind the assignment of a prize to the IPCC and Al Gore.
"Whether Gore and the IPCC are worth of a spit for anything other than empty smugness I have yet to have seen it justified yet"
And you never will. Since if any justification comes up, you'll ignore it.
Note as an ironic example the ironic smugness you have spouted with no justification...
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Mind you, looking up Dr Barnett's work, finding a paper he does that says climate change will cause conflict and tension is a very easy thing to do.
ALL his papers are how some climate thingy or other is going to cause war, tension or other conflict.
Given that, it's not too difficult to see why he's saying what is being reported here: he's said something along these lines for years and all his papers are on the subject.
He's been quoted saying what his papers always say and someone put it in the context of the IPCC and Al Gore and the peace prize. His thesis pre-dates all this, so we're just as valid saying that HIS papers are being paid for by those who want a good excuse to gear up for war.
In fact, probably more valid. His papers are specifically about war and climate change.
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Dear all,
A number of you expressed concern earlier that your posts were being removed. I've been in touch with the Mods, and everything should be OK now. Please try not to complain about each other's posts to the Mods - if that happens, a post will be removed but the author won't be sent an explanation.
Cheers,
Shanta
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