This morning I was all fired up to write something petty, like "Al Gore now has made the same contributions to peace as have previous winners Yassir Arafat and Henry Kissinger." Later, I considered a long and drawn out post on the inaccuracies of "An Inconvinient Truth", but I really have already done that in long form here and in short form here. In truth, the Peace prize process has for years been about a group of leftish statists making a statement, and often it has been about tweaking the US, rather than a dispassionate analysis of true contributions to peace made with the benefit of some historic distance (as is done with the scientific prizes). Further, most folks I argue with don’t really care about the specific inacuracies in Gore’s movie, their response typically being something in the "fake but accurate" line of reasoning.
So instead I will say what I told a reader by email a few hours ago. I tend to be optimistic about the world, and believe that we are approaching a high water mark (so to speak) for the climate catastrophists, where we will look back and see their influence peak and start unwinding under the presure of science and the reality of the enormous cost to abate CO2. Gore’s Peace prize, in the same year as his Oscar and that global warming music festival no one can even remember the name of 3 months later, feels to me like it may be that high water mark. The Peace Prize certainly was the high water mark for Jimmy Carter’s credibility, not to mention that of Henry Kissinger and a myriad of others. Think of it this way — if the guys who made the peace prize decisions were investors, and you knew what they were investing in, you would sell short. Seriously, just look at the group. Well, they just invested in Al Gore.
Update: One thing many commenters have not pointed out is that Al Gore is really manuevering the US and China and India (and the rest of the developping world) into a position that, if he has his way, conflict is going to occur over who gets to grow and develop, and who does not. CO2 catastrophism has the ablility to be the single most destabalizing issue of the 21st century. This is peace?
So Gore stirs up hysterical fear of global warming… Then gets Kyoto to implement restrictive carbon caps… Then encourages us all to buy carbon offsets… From companies such as one he owns… And makes money by the barrel while the billion poor are forced to stay in poverty…
And he gets the Nobel PEACE Prize for that?
http://scottthong.wordpress.com/2007/10/12/follow-the-clues-is-al-gores-promotion-of-global-warming-hysteria-merely-a-scam-to-make-him-money/
“One thing many commenters have not pointed out…”
I am a nobody, but I have for a long time been saying that this (along with the anti-immigrant stuff) is part and parcel of the continuing War On Brown People.
The “carbon offsets” scam is a (no better than) zero-sum game. In order for the fat cats to keep operating in their multi-plane, multi-huge-SUV, multi-megawatt palatial life styles is for a LOT of people to keep cooking their meals on a dung fire int he corner of their dark hovel.
Cannon fodder for the cartoonists!
http://scottthong.wordpress.com/2007/10/14/al-gore-2007-nobel-peace-prize-editorial-cartoons/
I’m with Glen Reynolds (Instapundit) on this: I’ll start to take AWG seriously as soon as Al Gore does.
When his carbon footprint is smaller than mine, I’ll start to listen to his preaching. Not one minute before.
With this award, the Nobel committee has permanently lost my respect. The award’s only significance is that by making it, the committee has proudly proclaimed to the entire world its complete disregard for science and truth.
I think we should admire the brilliance of Gore. Here we have a man with no political future, who jumps on the warming bandwagon and becomes the driver, and now he’s worshiped by zillions and scams a Nobel Prize. Millions of people in this country would vote for him in an instant.
Is it all *just* luck?
Of course it’s not luck, any more than Charles Ponzi became rich due to sheer luck.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Ponzi
While the GW cult may be at their zenith, powerplant construction in the US has abandoned coal, our most plentiful natural energy source, and is moving to natural gas. (Heaven forbid nuclear)
We will continue to pay for this unnecessary shift in technology for 20+ years. Tragic. So much for energy independence.