I am as pleased as the next man that big Al was won the "Nobel Peace Prize".
In previous years it has certainly been won by those less deserving.
However, we have covered "the inconvenient truth" and the rigmarole surrounding it in depth over the last year and there is only so much one can take.
Hence, here are a few links to those still with the energy to go over all of it again. The TIME article is one of the best.
Gore's Nobel: A Green Tipping Point [TIME]
Climate scientists are obsessed with finding tipping points, the levels at which the momentum for change becomes unstoppable. For environmentalists, 2007 is likely to be remembered as the tipping point when public understanding of the existential threat of climate change reached a critical mass.
It is true that the launch of this blog last September was propitious timing. TIME trot out the old "what peace got to do with it" line:
Gore's win was widely expected, but there may still be those who wonder how an environmentalist could be, as the Peace Prize's description goes, the person who has "done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations." They shouldn't.
The best thing about this award is the credit given to the IPCC who provided the data and raw materials for Gore to use to get "climate change" into the living rooms of the general public (especially in the US).
TIME provide a good final quote:
But the final war on global warming will be fought not with PowerPoint but with politics, and it will be fought in the halls of power around the world. The scientists represented by the IPCC have spoken — what we need now are passionate, even partisan political soldiers to lead the way and push the final tipping point from awareness to action.
I can think of a pretty good general.
This post cannot pass without comment on the impressive timing of the "British judge" who found 9 errors with the "Inconvenient Truth". Convenient timing don't you think.
There is something fantastically British about some of the judges statements.
When Gore talks of 20 foot rises in sea levels that would swamp San Francisco to the Netherlands to Bangladesh the judge said this was "distinctly alarmist".
None of the errors are fatal but it is good to see the judicial system getting their teeth into a bit of "climate change".
U.K. Judge Rules Gore's Climate Film Has 9 Errors [Washington Post]
But he also said Gore makes nine statements in the film that are not supported by current mainstream scientific consensus. Teachers, Burton concluded, could show the film but must alert students to what the judge called errors.
The judge said that, for instance, Gore's script implies that Greenland or West Antarctica might melt in the near future, creating a sea level rise of up to 20 feet that would cause devastation from San Francisco to the Netherlands to Bangladesh. The judge called this "distinctly alarmist" and said the consensus view is that, if indeed Greenland melted, it would release this amount of water, "but only after, and over, millennia."
Burton also said Gore contends that inhabitants of low-lying Pacific atolls have had to evacuate to New Zealand because of global warming. "But there is no such evidence of any such evacuation," the judge said.
Another error, according to the judge, is that Gore says "a new scientific study shows that for the first time they are finding polar bears that have actually drowned swimming long distances up to 60 miles to find ice." Burton said that perhaps in the future polar bears will drown "by regression of pack-ice" but that the only study found on drowned polar bears attributed four deaths to a storm.
Other links:
Gore and U.N. Panel Win Peace Prize for Climate Work [New York Times]
If Gore wins the Nobel Peace Prize, will he run for president?[Slate]
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