Al Gore, U.N. panel win Nobel Peace Prize

[Richard Tafoya]

LA Times:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-nobel13oct13,0,4578640.story?coll=la-home-center

Former Vice President Al Gore and the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (http://nobelprize.org/) in Oslo today for their campaigns against global warming.

The citation said Gore's "strong commitment, reflected in political activity, lectures, films and books, has strengthened the struggle against climate change." The Norwegian Nobel Committee (http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/) also said Gore was "probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted."

Gore's decades-long crusade against climate change was captured in the 2006 Oscar-winning documentary "An Inconvenient Truth," an Academy Award-winning film seen as a major force in shifting the debate from whether the burning of fossil fuels is warming the planet to what should be done about it.

In a statement, Gore said he was "deeply honored" to receive the award and that he and his wife, Tipper, would donate all of the proceeds to the Alliance for Climate Protection, a nonprofit group in the United States dedicated to changing public opinion about the urgency of climate change.

"We face a true planetary emergency," Gore said. "The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity. It is also our greatest opportunity to lift global consciousness to a higher level."

The head of the Geneva-based Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, made up of working groups of 2,500 scientists from 130 countries, said he was "completely overwhelmed" by the honor.

"This prize belongs to the international U.N. community and the states that support us," Rajendra Pachauri told Norwegian television, adding that Gore was a worthy co-winner.

[SparkleHugs]

I keep hearing people speculate him running for president based on this award. I have no idea how one has to do with the other and why winning this might point to a presidential run. Makes absolutely no sense.

But I congratulate him, he has certainly worked hard for such an honorable award.

[Richard Tafoya]

I'd be very surprised if he shifted toward a political career again at this point. He's got no policy platform to run on - where is he on education? On entitlement programs? On national security? On economic policy? On taxes? On foreign policy?

We know where he was years ago, but not now.

[Incident]

Yasser Arafat

[LesterX]

^How predictable.

Mother Teresa
Lech Walesa
Elie Weisel
Desmond Tutu
MLK
...

Overall, I'd say Al is in pretty good company

[pinky]

Yasser Arafat
Along with Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin the same year.

Leslie, you failed to mention Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi, the Dalai Lama, Doctors without Borders, Andrei Sakharov, Albert Schweitzer, Teddy Roosevelt, and Linus Pauling, among many others.

[LesterX]

Yep! I figured I'd made my point and was too lazy to type more...

[db44]

The Republicans' two favorite people now, no? Carter and Gore?

[Lola]

Good for him.

[ConnieB]

Gore DOES NOT deserve it. First of all, he's no scientist or expert on this issue, which means he hasn't done any experiments or studies of his own,so he's being spoon fed this garbage. Secondly he used quotes from scientists who then turned around and spoke out against him, and third, if we are in such a "crisis", then why isn't he practicing his own advice... flying in his own jet around the country, and his monthly cost for energy at his home is about $30,000...I won't take some one seriously unless they practice what they preach.

I'm not saying our climate is not important, but we are going way overboard with this. The Earth is going through cycles that we can not stop, so why waste all this money and effort on something that we can't stop. I think there is more important things to concentrate on because this is a no win situation.

[ConnieB]

More and more people are becoming aware of his junk science.

Misleading links between weather events and climate change: Climate is the average of weather conditions over long time periods; because the climate system is inherently variable, individual weather events are not indicative of trends. Nonetheless, Gore overwhelms the reader with many individual events, claiming this is global warming in action: a European heatwave, record daily highs in U.S. cities one summer, hurricane Katrina, floods in Europe and China, and more. To address the issue of climate change, all such events must be considered over time. As it turns out, in several cases such analysis refutes any claims of recent trends (for example, with regard to floods).

In other cases, the scientific community is engaged in much research and debate. Gore claims that there is "an emerging consensus" that hurricane activity is on the upswing due to global warming. The reality is that this is the subject of much debate in the scientific community: different researchers have produced contradictory conclusions, but the factors involved are far more complex than Gore admits, and research is continuing.

Misrepresentation of data: Of the various graphs and other data Gore presents, some of it is misrepresented. Gore presents one graph, said to be temperature data derived from ice cores, to support the controversial claim of one research group--Mann et al.--that current temperatures are higher than anytime in the last 1,000 years. The graph is not the ice core data, however, but the Mann et al. data derived from tree rings and other proxies. The broader claim is questioned by many scientists as well--much research suggests that temperatures around 1100-1300 AD were about as warm as today--as well as the methodology used to support such claims. Gore uses another set of ice core data to claim that carbon dioxide concentrations have driven global temperatures for the last 600,000 years. He admits the actual relationship is "complicated", which is as close as he comes to admitting the fact that the temperature changes came first, and probably helped drive the carbon dioxide changes.

These aren't the only cases of sloppiness with data: Gore claims the hottest year on record was 2005, but in reality existing observations don't have the accuracy to discriminate between, say, 2005 and 1998, a hot year due to an extreme El Nino event. He claims that the increasing closures of the barrier's on Britain's Thames River show sea level is rising, but doesn't mention that the British government recently changed the rules for such closures, including closing the barriers to deal with low sea level; and he claims that a particular bird species is "in trouble" in the Netherlands due to climate change, but researchers report no change in this bird population. He cites a peak in tornadoes in 2004 as further evidence, but this peak came from new technology permitting the counting of more weak tornadoes than ever before; comparison of consistent data shows no trends in tornadoes.

Exaggerations about sea level rise: Gore claims that potential melting of ice sheets in Greenland and West Antarctic will force the "evacuation" of millions of people to escape sea level rise of 6 meters (20 feet). This flatly contradicts even the worst-case scenarios described by the scientific community. Most research indicates that such melting, even if it could occur, would take 1,000 to 5,000 years; the minimum timescale described by any researcher for such melting is still centuries. Even the United Nations' IPCC, source of the "consensus" analysis which still overestimates future warming, only predicts sea level rise of 0.1 to 0.8 meters (4 to 30 inches) in the next 100 years.

to read more and see sources go here.
http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/environment/gore.html

[SparkleHugs]

Gee, what a surprise. Another ignorant unfounded response that was clearly drawn from whatever someone fed her. I had a biology professor telling me this stuff years before I ever heard Al speak of it. I am going to take the word of the Doctor in Physical Science more than yours Connie. The fact that the Arctic glaciers are melting at an alarming rate, and there is unequivical proof of that, means absolutely nothing I guess.

Ridiculous.

Why dont you go back to the thread you were posting in previously and answer the questions you convienantly avoided

[db44]

She lost her credibilty on her second sentence: The Peace prize isn't for science... :rolleyes:

[pinky]

Her source for all her claims is a doctoral student in physics, specializing in radiation belts. Sounds good, even if it's only tangentially related to climatology (if at all), except he is also a blowhard who enjoys expounding on all types of topics in which he holds no qualifications at all. He has published opinions on abortion, the number of civilian deaths in Iraq, entitlement spending, school vouchers, gay rights, and a host of other topics about which he is NOT qualified by training or experience, but rather by opinion only.

Yet Connie unquestioningly accepts all he has to say, while accusing the rest of us of being wrong for doing exactly that with our sources.

[alan]

Hasn't the global temperature been flat for the last decade?

[Sunflowergirl]

I'm not saying our climate is not important, but we are going way overboard with this. The Earth is going through cycles that we can not stop, so why waste all this money and effort on something that we can't stop. I think there is more important things to concentrate on because this is a no win situation.
You have no effing clue what you're talking about, do you? The debate over whether global warming is man-made or natural is pretty much moot. The earth is heating up. Now, why oh why would so many earth scientists be concerned about this? Hm, maybe because we live here? Maybe because the climate could catastrophically impact human society? Unless the "more important things" you're referring to include founding a civilization on some other planet? But whatever, you're not going to read this. Just continue spouting junk from self-proclaimed experts, if that's what works for you.

And congratulations to Gore, I guess.

[Sunflowergirl]

Hasn't the global temperature been flat for the last decade?
That all depends on what you mean by "global temperature." Do you mean global average temperature, over all seasons and all localities? Anyway, temperature is really not an accurate indicator of global warming.

[Incident]

She lost her credibilty on her second sentence: The Peace prize isn't for science... :rolleyes:

But the peace prize didn't lose its credibility when they gave it Yassar Arafat?

[Venisenvy]

I do not think he deserved it just because I don't think his work to bring awareness and help to global warming is working for "peace".

[tiger_rascal]

Can someone later be stripped of their Nobel Peace Prize, kinda like Milli Vanilli were stripped of their Grammy?

[alan]

That all depends on what you mean by "global temperature." Do you mean global average temperature, over all seasons and all localities? Anyway, temperature is really not an accurate indicator of global warming.

Thanks Sunflowergirl. I stand corrected. I'm new to this stuff.

[alan]

Why did it take so long for this pertinent Global Warming issue to take front and center?

Why isn't Hillary Clinton on board with this issue? Hillary, in my opinion, is the next President of the United States?

Will the necessary money needed to halt Gobal Warming be spent when it comes time for the vote? I know at least our democratic leaders will come thru for us.
Who knows Hurricane Katrina may have never happened if Global Warming had been dealt with by this administration?

[tiger_rascal]

I think its like playing God.

They talk about how each person can do small things to help combat "Global Warming", and hopefully that will add up to make a difference. But in reality, changing global weather patterns to the point of stopping things like massive storms is on the scale of God.

Just my opinion.

[DoubleEdgeSword]

That's the L.A. Times and the American view, "Global Warming," a term that seems to be not only confusing, but highly politicized and contentious. In the European press, on Al Gore's site, and even the Nobel Prize itself, uses the term "climate change," a term which I think more accurately describes the current phenomena.

The prize goes to:

INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE (IPCC) and ALBERT ARNOLD ( AL) GORE JR. for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.



http://www.almaz.com/nobel/

[DoubleEdgeSword]

Congratultions, Mr. Gore and the IPCC.

[SparkleHugs]

I do not think he deserved it just because I don't think his work to bring awareness and help to global warming is working for "peace".

Do you think maybe it's because they are really making a global effort to bring awareness, creating that global effort is really uniting many nations, and thereby creating peace? Just a thought. I do agree with you though, I think while the whole effort is a good positive thing for the world to be taking part in, peace is kind of a stretch.

[db44]

But the peace prize didn't lose its credibility when they gave it Yassar Arafat?

Considering it was given to Peres and Rabin at the same time and at that time greater strides were taken to try and end the conflict than ever before, no, it didn't.

[tiger_rascal]

INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE (IPCC) and ALBERT ARNOLD ( AL) GORE JR. for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.

I dont mean to get smart with you, but isnt that "global warming"?

Alright, I did mean to get smart with you. :tongue:

[Richard Tafoya]

Climate change is actually more accurate, because the result of these changes is not simply a warming trend, but a trend toward more extreme weather patterns which includes more extreme storms, more extreme cold weather periods, more extreme weather cycles overall.

Heat is a trigger, but not the totality of the situation.

[tiger_rascal]

I understand that Richard. But my concern is this. For so long this climate change problem has been titled "global warming". And the warming of the globe is alarming and is a root cause. Polar ice caps melting and all that stuff. The end result is extreme climate changes for the globe. For scientists, environmentalists and the general public who are aware of this problem we understand that. But what about others? They are still stuck on "global warming". Communication and education is very important or we will make no progress. When we decide to change from "global warming" to "climate change", we need to make the differences very well known. The media needs to focus on this rather than Britneys latest issues among other things.