Political Correctness: The front-runners for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize are a couple of global warming alarmists. With dozens of wars raging, the committee couldn’t find a single person laboring honorably for peace?
Once a symbol of distinction, this honor has plumbed shameful depths in recent years. A county fair blue ribbon has more significance. Since 1990, winners include terrorist Yasser Arafat, fraud Rigoberto Menchu, foreign-policy incompetents Jimmy Carter and Kofi Annan, unreconstructed communist Mikhail Gorbachev and the useless Mohamed ElBaradei.
Each year, the Peace Prize committee has a chance to redeem itself, yet it never seems up to the task. It looks like 2007 will be no exception. Later this week, say reports, it will name as this year’s co-winners Al Gore and Sheila Watt-Cloutier, a Canadian who has drawn attention to what she believes are climate change’s effects on Arctic communities.
It will be interesting to see how those two will be linked to anything resembling the promotion of peace…….
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
If the Nobel people give it to Gore they’ll lose what remaining credibility they have.
See http://newparty.co.uk/articles/inaccuracies-gore.html for a list of inaccuracies in Gore’s film. Not inaccuracies cited by scientists but determined by the British High Court.
Excellent! Thanks for the link, John.
Ms Cloutier has already announced that she’s seeking to set up her own foundation.
I guess that’s a good tax shelter for the Nobel loot.
If Gore gets anything from the Nobel committee, the whole Nobel enterprise will become the equivalent of the Oscars for ‘entertainment.’
Nobels have gone to sludge before, but giving one to Gore would be well below the lowest part of the barrel.
Neo-barbarism pollutes everything.
John
now that’s weird. We had the recent court case in the USA where a state wanted to force car manufacturers to do their part to reduce GHG output. The court decided it was not the appropriate body to make decisions on matters of science. Wise heads here nodded in agreement with this opinion.
Now a court makes a finding on science. Courts are now the correct place to determine science. ?????
As to that list, I don’t believe it.
* The film claims that melting snows on Mount Kilimanjaro evidence global warming. The Government’s expert was forced to concede that this is not correct.
That myth is the result of misrepresenting a paper that stated it was due to several reasons, one of which is global warming.
* The film suggests that evidence from ice cores proves that rising CO2 causes temperature increases over 650,000 years. The Court found that the film was misleading: over that period the rises in CO2 lagged behind the temperature rises by 800-2000 years.
The film shows how CO2 is associated with temperature rise. Given how much confusion the whole CO2 lag has caused here, it was apparently decided to not go into too much detail about the relationship. It has never been claimed that CO2 caused the rise, but CO2 is associated with the hotter periods in the earths climate.
* The film uses emotive images of Hurricane Katrina and suggests that this has been caused by global warming. The Government’s expert had to accept that it was “not possible” to attribute one-off events to global warming.
Gore did not say Katrina was caused by global warming, he said more powerful hurricanes are associated with global warming, which is true. This year is a good example, where small hurricanes spun up to CAT5 in a very short period of time. Fortunately, they hit relatively uninhabited parts of Mexico. A direct hit on populated areas of the USA would have been devestating.
* The film shows the drying up of Lake Chad and claims that this was caused by global warming. The Government’s expert had to accept that this was not the case.
Dessication of parts of the earth is associated with global warming, we have an excellent example of that right here in Australia, Spain is experiencing the move of the Sahara to it’s own shores.
* The film claims that a study showed that polar bears had drowned due to disappearing arctic ice. It turned out that Mr Gore had misread the study: in fact four polar bears drowned and this was because of a particularly violent storm.
Polar bears are under threat, and there is plenty of science to back that up.
* The film threatens that global warming could stop the Gulf Stream throwing Europe into an ice age: the Claimant’s evidence was that this was a scientific impossibility.
A recent paper seems to say that this is once again a possibility. Such matters are hard to determine, but it is not impossible, apparently, so it is possible.
* The film blames global warming for species losses including coral reef bleaching. The Government could not find any evidence to support this claim.
* The film suggests that the Greenland ice covering could melt causing sea levels to rise dangerously. The evidence is that Greenland will not melt for millennia.
Once again, there is more to this than is than is stated. Ice shelves also collapse, and this is highly unpredictable. Canada and the Antarctic are good examples of this.
* The film suggests that the Antarctic ice covering is melting, the evidence was that it is in fact increasing.
The Antarctic is a complex case, but parts are melting, and parts are growing.
* The film suggests that sea levels could rise by 7m causing the displacement of millions of people. In fact the evidence is that sea levels are expected to rise by about 40cm over the next hundred years and that there is no such threat of massive migration.
Gore is talking about what is possible, (which is a valid line to take with risk management), and 7m is possible. Given that uncertainty of predictions, it is best to know what the possibilities are. For some reason, when it comes to security, Governments are right up on all the possibilities and risks, and proudly telling us so, and spending million on advertising to keep hammering the point home. When there is a risk with climate, risks don’t seem to matter any more.
* The film claims that rising sea levels has caused the evacuation of certain Pacific islands to New Zealand. The Government are unable to substantiate this and the Court observed that this appears to be a false claim.
Rising sea levels are being measured, and there are islands at risk.
SJT
Explicitly point to which islands are at risk from rising sea levels, rather than waffling on with an inspecific generalisations.
Gore is a politician and like all politicians tends to confuse facts with fiction. Incidentally you seem to have little problem with Al Gore’s increase in personal wealth (US$100 million and still counting) from his marketing of the AGW scam.
And why is it that the far left are also associated with so much money? Heinz, Soros, Buffet, and now Gore.
And for your comment about collapsing ice shelfs – ice shelfs collapse as a result of the overwhelming pressure of the ice buildup forming them. Melting ice sheets don’t collapse – they just melt and recede landwards.
Really you have no idea at all, do you.
I have comment at all to make on Gore as a person. He is just a conduit for relating the results of valid scientific research.
Perhaps you could tell me the correlation between Al Gore’s bank acount and the global temperature anomolies.
If you want to find out more about the prospects of low lying areas, you could try reading the AR4?
http://www.gtp89.dial.pipex.com/06.pdf
It is quite detailed.
SJT,
I suspect your first sentence needs some editing – perhaps you meant “I have no comment at all on Gore as a person. “He is just a conduit for relating the results of invalid scientific research”?
I wasn’t commenting on Gore as a person – just noting, as others are, that he is making millions of dollars peddling his book, his documentary and from his appearance fees to speak.
I would have thought as a decent social democrat he would have forgone the expensive appearance fees, but seems not. Not even the press (media) can afford, or are allowed, to report verbatim on his speeches. So far he has ignored every offer to debate the issue. Isn’t that what your lot are on about? Meaninggul discussion?
And he is just a conduit? You mean he is being manipulated by the academic-global warming industrial complex to sell this global scam? Al Gore is just a mere puppet?
Well shiver me timbers, I would never have thought it.
Louis
is the politics of envy making a comeback? I thought John Howard had put an end to all that commie groupthink.
Don’t forget that Al Gore is willing to sell you carbon credits to put a few coins in his pocket, too.
you’re the apart of the reason why humans will die out as a species.
i bet you think only god can control the weather.
Anon It is usually God provence.
About that court case in California, it was thrown out because the attorney general couldn’t put a finger on any specific damages rendered by the automobile carbon emmissions.
He tried to claim lower rainfall. The judge wasn’t having any of it.
Then he tried to use glacier melt. The judge said “So how much do glaciers cost?”
So C3PO’s contention that “The court decided it was not the appropriate body to make decisions on matters of science.” is not accurate.
Did you just make that up?
So you place the postulations of a scientific THEORY over the ruling of the BRITISH HIGH COURT, There is plenty of evidence against the so-called global warming, its just that the government/scientists/aethiests don’t want you to find it.
In response to Al Gore’s work I have an old Scottish proverb, “Anything is possible if you do not know what you are talking about”.