The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to Al Gore, the former American vice president, and to the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for their work to alert the world to the threat of global warming.
Gore, “is probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted,” the Nobel citation said. The United Nations committee, a network of 2,000 scientists, has produced two decades of scientific reports that have “created an ever-broader informed consensus about the connection between human activities and global warming,” the citation said.
In New Delhi, Rajendra Pachauri, an Indian scientist who leads the United Nations committee, said he was overwhelmed at the news of the award. “I expect this will bring the subject to the fore,” he said.
“I’m only a symbol of a much larger organization, the IPCC, and it’s really the scientific community that contributed to the work of the IPCC,” Pachauri said, according to Reuters. “They’re the real winners of this award,’” he said.
Pachauri has it right. Living in a nation where politics and superstition are damned near inseparable, I’m pleased to see prestige and political stature offered to work that suggests science should lead ideology.
#80 – Frank IBC,
By sitting on our asses and blogging, obviously.
#79 – actually he did both. Before the Internet you never heard about global warming and in fact, the big fear was global cooling. You could logically infer then, that the Internet caused global warming.
If Gore runs for president again, he may want to make sure that the state he lives in and represented in the Senate, would vote for him in the first place. That did not happen in 2000! Maybe Tennessee knows something that the rest of don’t! Just a thought…..
#61 no smear campaign, a fact. If you don’t like nor want to see that fact about the nobel prize, I cannot do a thing about it.
#83 – Dan,
So, you think it’s a serious issue that W didn’t win Maine??!!? I don’t. I have many other issues with him, but not that.
I may be wrong, but President Bush is from Texas, correct? He may have grown up there but is was the Gov of Texas, correct?
I memory serves me right, Mr. Gore was raised in Tennessee and his father was in Congress from Tennessee too, correct?
Not sure about Gore. I consider W to be from Maine and be somewhat of a phony for the Texas accent. I could be mistaken about that though. His political career is all Texas, AFAIK.
#85
Why not lambaste Bush for not winning CA in 2000? That would be equally irrelevant. Gore was a senator from Tennessee in addition to it being his home State. Had Bush not won Texas you might have a comparison. The fact of the matter is that had Gore convinced his fellow State citizens to vote for him, he probably would have won in 2000.
[Message deleted - Violation of Posting Guidelines. - ed.]
#88 – Thomas,
“Cause W’s from Maine not California.
So much rancor and division, and for what? Some complain about Kyoto, some rant over an old election, some complain about the prize itself, some complain about how we can’t predict the future, and some just lay blame. Is any of this even relevant?
The fact is that Al Gore raised awareness about climate change, and was working towards this end far before it was hip to do so, and since climate effects food and water availability, a common cause of wars, it was an appropriate prize. Regardless of whether it was caused by us or not, it is beyond argument by the sane, what with the northwest passage open now, that the climate is changing. Even worse, our ability to predict how it would change is very poor, and it is changing much faster than expected. Greenland, in particular, is melting so fast that it is experiencing earthquakes as the thinner ice relieves pressure on the crust If it continues at this pace, we’ll all have to deal with billions of environmental refugees worldwide within just a few years. Reducing CO2 is neigh futile, we need to start building cities and greenhouses inland as quickly as possible to save lives. But change is hard, and embracing change is even harder.
I am confident mankind can survive, unless some fool chooses to create an Armageddon because he thinks he can order the heavens about. We are very clever, after all, and a bit of adaptation is not beyond us.
Did anyone comment, yet, that Al Gore is on the Board of Directors of Apple? Will there be a limited edition Nobel Prize iPod?
#90
How do you figure that he is “from Maine”: just because his family has a summer home there? That’s idiotic. Bush was born in Texas, spent most of his time in Texas and was governor of Texas. He has lived in Texas from the time he got out of Harvard in 1977 until he was elected in 2000. The man comes by his accent honestly.
It was laughable that Gore did not win his own State in 2000. You simply barked up the wrong tree for a rebuke. It would have been safer to state that Gore was removed from Tennessee for eight years prior to the 2000 election and thus was not as connected with the people of Tennessee as Bush who was the presiding governor of Texas at the time of the election.
Over ninety comments? Damn. Did I read them all? Nah, just the first three or four, and yeah, this whole deal goes off my creepy scale.
#84, pedro;
Apparently you are confused over the difference between a “fact” and an “opinion.”
Your comment was the latter.
#93, Thomas;
Actually, you’re wrong. Bush was born in Connecticut.
…Which doesn’t help the rest of your argument.