Look who got himself nominated...
Leslie Carlson
...for a Nobel Peace Prize. Think he has a chance of winning?
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12:34 p.m.
Feb 1, '07
Those things are notoriously political, so, yes, he has a very good chance. If the Nobel committee wants to make a serious contribution to addressing global warming, they could do worse than choosing the biggest global warming advocate in the biggest polluter in the world.
(Global warming advocate? Hmmm. Okay, what should he be called?)
12:40 p.m.
Feb 1, '07
Kind of like people who say they're "raising money for cancer"... I always reply, "Cancer needs help?"
Maybe 'global warming opponent'?
Feb 1, '07
Maybe "global warming alarmist." It works no matter what your political perspective.
(Al, where did all the hurricanes go?)
Feb 1, '07
might help his chances at the Presidency if he changes his mind. Nobel Laureate runs for President...
Feb 1, '07
Rush Limbaugh was nominated too...
Feb 1, '07
This seems a bit weird, frankly. It's kind of like nominating the owner of a baseball team for Most Valuable Player.
Feb 1, '07
When they gave a Nobel Peace Prize to Yasser Arafat I realized the award no longer had any meaning for any category.
Bob Tiernan
Feb 1, '07
Might be Al's year. Wins an Oscar for his movie. Wins the Nobel prize. Should he go for the trifecta? I'm hoping so, as I sure am getting tired of all this Hillary-Obama talk.
3:31 p.m.
Feb 1, '07
Lin Qiao, This seems a bit weird, frankly. It's kind of like nominating the owner of a baseball team for Most Valuable Player.
Nobel has always defined this broadly--Grameen Bank this year, Doctors Without Borders one year, etc. Global warming will actually kill a lot of people through famine, drought, disease, and weather, not to mention the potential state-state conflicts that could result, so addressing it is definitely an act of peace.
4:21 p.m.
Feb 1, '07
Of course he will win. And the once venerated Nobel Prize will take another step down the path to irrelevance. Yassir Arafat, Jimmy Carter, Al Gore?
No matter what your political perspective, I would think any honest person has to acknowledge the blatant falsehoods in Gore's movie. Twenty foot rise in sea levels, showing dramatic simulated maps of Florida flooding, when the IPCC itself estimates that the rise in levels by 2100 would be 20 inches.
So Al Gore will win an Oscar and maybe a Nobel prize for propaganda. What a joke.
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." - H.L. Mencken
Feb 1, '07
Jeff Alworth makes a very good point about the broad definition of a Peace Price recipient, but I don't see how Al Gore is analogous to Doctors Without Borders. One's an organization, the other's an individual. And it's not as though (or maybe it is??) Gore has a foundation for his work on behalf of raising awareness of climate change.
Feb 1, '07
Rob Kremmer--
So, you've seen his movie? Actually watched it?
Feb 2, '07
hey kremer,
have you heard of a worst case scenario? actually, gore's 20 foot rise is not even worst case, 40 feet is.
"Climate models indicate that the local warming over Greenland is likely to be one to three times the global average. Ice sheet models project that a local warming of larger than 3°C [5.4°F], if sustained for millennia, would lead to virtually a complete melting of the Greenland ice sheet with a resulting sea-level rise of about 7 m [23 ft]."
IPCC Summary for Policy Makers (2005)
if we stabilize at 2° we're might be ok for a while, if we don't Greenland's going to go much faster, and so is antarctica. the most recent IPCC report--which estimates a rise 5 and 23 inches--does not take melting ice sheets in greenland and antarctica into account for it's projections.
Quoting CNN: "The prediction being considered this week by the IPCC is 'obviously not the full story because ice sheet decay is something we cannot model right now, but we know it's happening,' said Stefan Rahmstorf, a climate panel lead author from Germany who made the larger prediction of up to 55 inches of sea level rise."
now grade school version:
ice sheet decay is occuring in greenland and antarctica.
ice sheet decay is something we cannot model right now.
ice sheet decay is not included in the IPCC prediction.
therefore, predictions based on ice sheet decay over this coming century are necessarily going to be sketchy, but a worst case scenario is just what it sounds like: worst case.
Feb 2, '07
Rob:
It really seems like you're just cutting and pasting stuff from some Exxon-funded anti-global-warming advocacy website. Someone accused you of that a week or so ago. I chose to suspend judgement until I saw more evidence -- especially since you and I have had fruitful and intelligent correspondence about CIM/CAM.
But at this point, I find it hard to believe that all these things are true:
1.) You watched the Al Gore movie (or saw his presentation live).
2.) You read IPCC reports. By the way, which report was it, precisely, that predicted 20" sea level increase? Which of their reports is your favorite? Or are they all equally good?
3.) You read enough other, highly technical climate reports and studies that you can quote from one issued in the 1980s. Do you have a copy nearby? Or did you memorize parts of it?
At any rate, I'm a little disappointed. You should be too. You're being played by people who have a strong financial stake in sowing doubt about climate change.
I don't know your views on the Iraq war. If you were one of the people who was convinced Saddam had WMDs and helped train 9/11 hijackers, only to discover that neither of those things is true and now we're stuck in an unwinnable fiasco, the same thing is happening here. You're being used.
If I'm wrong -- which I may be -- if you really are a climate-science junky (hey, some people have weird hobbies), send me an email off-line. I will certainly make a public appology.
7:36 a.m.
Feb 2, '07
And it's not as though (or maybe it is??) Gore has a foundation for his work on behalf of raising awareness of climate change.
While I don't know whether he has a foundation, my sense is that Gore is not out giving his Power Point presentation for money. In fact, it may actually be costing him money to travel around the world to groups ranging from those in the dozens to thousands.
And let's not forget that he is in the process of training 1,000 people (among the first: Oregon Secretary of State Bill Bradbury) to give his Power Point to even more people. While he may not have a foundation per se, this work of his has had--and will contintue to have--wide-ranging public impact.
Feb 2, '07
If Gore wins, I'm sure he'll fly his private jet to the ceremony. Then, fly it back to his 10,000 square foot home in Nashville, or maybe his 4,000 square foot home in Arlington, or maybe his other home in Carthage.
All the while on his cell phone asking Paramount Pictures to pay for more renewable energy credits.
Then, he'll take a peek at his family's huge controlling interest in Occidental Petroleum.
Then, he'll consider adding a veranda to his house constructed of old growth doug fir, just like he did for the VP's mansion.
<h2>Good thing Gore sold that Zinc mine that dumped tons of pollutants into the Carney Fork river.</h2>