Breaking News from ABC News:
OSLO, Norway Feb 1, 2007 (AP)- Former Vice President Al Gore was nominated for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his wide-reaching efforts to draw the world’s attention to the dangers of global warming, a Norwegian lawmaker said Thursday.
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From the article
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“A prerequisite for winning the Nobel Peace Prize is making a difference, and Al Gore has made a difference”
Why not Science? Chemistry?
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Hell, Dr. DOBSON has ‘made a difference’, but nobody’s nominating HIM anytime soon!
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Please explain how a movie about global warming has led to an advance in world peace – it’s just as likely to cause a war with China!
It’s hard to notice amongst all of the other awful things that are caused by dependance on fossil fuels, but it’s there. Take the Iraq war, for instance. Or our first Gulf War. Or the Iran/Iraq war. And so forth.
Yes, I see it now.
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(And don’t go off about Romney, Reilly, Mihos, et al – because this is a FEDERAL project)
persons who have done the most or the best work in bring cooperation and patnership between the nations. In the case of global warming, it does pass muster.
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Dobson on the other hand …. don’t think divisiveness applies.
because Al Gore didn’t make the most important discovery or invention/improvement in the fields of physics or chemistry.
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Repackaging known information into a power pointkeynote presentation is not a discovery, invention, nor improvement.
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He is eligible for the peace prize, however, because (a) the peace prize does not require a resolved status, unlike the other prizes, and (b) it can be argued that Vice President Gore’s work has ” done the most or the best work for fraternity among nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”
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As Global Warming is by definition an international problem, encouraging awareness and action has led to fraternity among nations. Helping to resolve this before fossil fuels become either so scarce or so detrimental to international health that military action becomes more prevalent* helps reduce standing armies. Peace Congresses — I don’t really know what that even means.
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you’re suddenly not eligible for a Peace Prize?
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Considering that most of the past recent prizes involve a small handful of nations with problems that may or may not have long term global ramifications, I’d say that Gore’s mission more than outdoes the recent community of nations requirement.
The movie is a propaganda piece with lots of misleading and wrong statments=.
CEI
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Don’t know if you recall the web adds they put out there. I though it was an SNL skit when I first saw them. It’s the “we call it life” streams.
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Here’s the jist:
Keep burning coal and oil or we’re going back to the stone age and going to die…!
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ExxonMobile is probably not your best resource.
I can understand having issues with the source. However, most sources for this subject are tainted by politics. Why not challenge the statements?
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Tell you what, we can ignore the “One-side”, “Misleading”, “Exaggerated” and “Speculative” points that are called out in this source. Can you tell me the CEI is incorrect about any of the 18 items they point out that are out right “Wrong” in an Inconvenient Truth?
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Despite Al Gore’s propaganda piece, there is no consensus among scientists that Climate Change is man induced.
When the scientific community has reached a consensus about global warming, why do you take the opinion of ExxonMobil? That’s the question you should be asking. So when there was a debate about smoking were you push the “evidence” put together by RJ Reynolds?
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You defined the movie as propaganda, why is that because of a single source that was paid for by an oil company? You ae going to do a little better than that.
Why are you ignoring everything I posted and just attacking me? Because this is easier then actually understanding the science?
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I DO NOT take the opinion of ExxonMobile, I am forming my own opinion based on the science. I have reviewed MANY different sources for information. I have read numerous papers from both sides of the debate and have formed my opinion based on that.
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I sited the CEI document because it is a nice, concise, ACCURATE review of the movie from a technical stand point. Not every line is irrefutable, that is why I asked “Can you tell me the CEI is incorrect about any of the 18 items they point out that are out right “Wrong” in an Inconvenient Truth?”
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I will repeat my previous statement “there is no consensus among scientists that Climate Change is man induced” That is just a simple FACT that you seem to want to ignore. Now this may change, the ICPPs latest assessment report summary is due out Monday. However, that source has also been extremely politicized (just like the CEI) and I will reserve judgment on that report until it is peer reviewed.
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If you would like some additional sources that scientist are still in debate as to the cause of Climate Change, fine, try this article in Science Daily or maybe this one.
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I call this movie propaganda because it was deliberately slanted to influence the opinion of the viewers and not report the facts in an impartial way. Instead of attacking me and accusing me of not doing my homework why not offer some reasoning as to why I am wrong? And please provide sources as I have.
Never acknowledges the indispensable role of fossil fuels in alleviating hunger and poverty, extending human life spans, and democratizing consumer goods, literacy, leisure, and personal mobility.
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Irrelevant, and future investment could provide all of those benefits without creating all the problems that fossil fuels have caused.
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Never acknowledges the environmental, health, and economic benefits of climatic warmth and the ongoing rise in the air’s carbon dioxide (CO2) content.
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That’s just dumb. Oooohh its warmer, so we’ll make more money. Wait, what? The added income will come from (a) less land above sea level, and (b) completely ignores the insane amounts of money spent to protect capital investments and (c) the capital investments lost to rising tides. This also ignores (d) the fact that the temperature isn’t uniform, and some places may lose average temperature, like Europe — causing additional costs.
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It’s just a dumb argument, with no basis in fact.
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Never acknowledges the major role of natural variability in shrinking the snows of Kilimanjaro and other mountain glaciers.
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Nor did it acknowledge the role that ash trees from New York played in the A’s – Giants World Series in the early 1990s. The point wasn’t to claim that Global Warming is solely responsible for anything, but instead that it is contributing to lots of problems, and that human action and inaction could alter the impact Global Warming is having on current systems of weather, population, etc.
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So, it starts off a big Oh for Three. I stopped reading.
You have three bullets from the normative part of the arguement yet you ignored the part of my question where I said lets talk about the positive part of the arguement (i.e. “any of the 18 items they point out that are out right “Wrong” in an Inconvenient Truth”).
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Two points I pretty much agree with. The third I think is valid. How do you point to the shrinking size of glaciers without acknowledging yearly variations in climate and natural process of glaciers. But this is besides the point, these are normative arguements and not based on the science.
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The main portion of my argument is and remains that there is no scientific concensous that Climate Change is man induced.
Give me a break. There’s a scientific community, and they reach consensus on just about nothing, in that there is never unanimity. But, unanimity isn’t the requirement for science to be relevant.
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Science works through peer reviewed journals. If you can’t get published in a peer reviewed journal, than the community of scientists think your work is crap. This could be for three reasons: (1) they’re all wrong because they’re not as smart as the author and don’t grasp the author’s complex arguments. Unlikely. (2) they’re all wrong because the author isn’t capable of demonstrating his (correct!) hypothesis due to his lack of writing and logic skills. Unlikely. (3) The author’s work is crap. Almost always the case for an article rejected from all publishers.
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Believe it or not, scientists have all sorts of political beliefs and religious beliefs. Their agenda is not to make Al Gore rich or to prove him right. Their agenda is good science, and frankly, any scientist who could convince his peers that Global Warming isn’t a problem would be able to land himself a fully tenured position at any university in the country.
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The fact is that there are millions of data which suggest (a) the Earth is warming, and (b) human action is encouraging that warmth. Now, generally speaking each item in (b) also has other possibilities, ranging from solar flares to micro bacteria to bad luck.
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Maybe the consensus of climatologists, atmospheric scientists, oceanographers, geologists, archaeologists, etc. is wrong. It’s possible. You’ll never have proof in science. If all but one of the combined pit crews of NASCAR, F1, Indy, Drag, Funnycar, NHRA, pinewood derby, and soapbox said my car didn’t run because I shot a rod, they might all be wrong — but I’m sure as heck not the right guy to argue that they’re not. Yet there’s a whole bunch of lawyers, real estate developers, radio talk show hosts, painters, postal clerks, et al making these claims that the scientists are wrong or that they don’t agree.
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It’s just denial, and it’s stupid.
Stomv,
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I have not said that man induced climate change is not a valid theory because there is not unanimity by scientists by the theory. I have been challenging the assertions made by others, including yourself in the above post, that the “scientific community has reached a consensus” that man is responsible for climate change.
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I understand your point on peer review, that is why I have said that the IPCC assessment report may change some of my believes/positions on the subject but I will reserve judgment on that report until the whole report is released, not jus the summary for policy makers, and my self and other scientists have reviewed the report. As far as what you said about not being able to be published, you are correct, but that works the other way too. Scientists that are paid by oil companies but do work that is deemed worthy to get published in peer reviewed journals still produce good, valid science.
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You wrote “scientists have all sorts of political beliefs and religious beliefs. Their agenda is not to make Al Gore rich or to prove him right. Their agenda is good science.” This is true however, sometimes that believes do sway a scientist (we are human too) and this is called Confirmation Bias. This type of bias is what the IPCC has been accused of by Chris Landsea when he resigned because, in his words, “I personally cannot in good faith continue to contribute to a process that I view as both being motivated by pre-conceived agendas and being scientifically unsound.” To you last point in the same paragraph, there are scientists that believe that Climate Change is a natural process, a few that I have been exposed to that come to mind are Prof. Richard Lindzen at MIT and Terry Joyce Director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, one of the leading educational researchers in the country on atmospheric science and oceanography.
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You are correct that in most things, science will never be able to prove a theory. That is my science works on the premises of falsibility and better, competing theories. No while man’s influence on the current state of Climate Change has yet to be proven false, there is some evidence that has some scientists leaning in that direction. 1) The logarithmic relationship between carbon dioxide levels and temperature rise. (i.e. as the concentration of CO2 increases by X the temperature goes up by Y for the first X unit, but for each additional X unit of CO2 the temperature goes up by less then Y.) This makes it hard for me to believe that man introducing additional carbon dioxide is solely responsible for the current observed Climate Change. 2) Climate Change and carbon cycling has been shown by paleoclimatologists to have existed far back in the geologic record, well before man existed never mind started burning fossil fuels. 3) The competing theory of Climate Change being caused by fluctuations in the earth’s orbit and tilt on it’s axis is a more complete explanation for climate change given the observations by paleoclimatologists since this theory could be more universally implied instead of just applying to the last 50 to 200 years.
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By the way, I hold a degree in geology and chemistry from one of our great state schools here in Mass and have worked cleaning up the environment for about nine years now. I do not feel this makes me any more qualified to comment on this subjects then “a whole bunch of lawyers, real estate developers, radio talk show hosts, painters, postal clerks, et al.” The information that I used to develop my opinion does not require some special pass to see, but you do have to look past the IPCC and Al Gore’s propaganda piece and even newspapers and nonscientific magazines such as Time and People. My whole problem with this topic is that it has become so politicized that the science is being lost.
the basis of your arguement. It was not a personnal attack. The IPCC report has been released (reuters article).
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From Wiki – The IPCC reports are a compendium of peer reviewed and published science. Each subsequent IPCC report notes areas where the science has improved since the previous report and also notes areas where further research is required.
Here is the process for the preparation and review of the IPCC documents. To try and save some time, here is the part I have an issue with from a previous thread:
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“Because the panel works under the auspices of the United Nations, dozens of officials from governments around the world have been critiquing drafts, and details inevitably begin to slip into the press in the weeks preceding the formal release.”
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and
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“Scientists involved in writing the report said the leaks were damaging and potentially misleading, mainly because the final statements are likely to go through further changes.”
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The science from the ICPP starts off well but becomes politicized through the review process. Why should “dozens of officials from governments around the world” have any say in what the assessment report says?
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I have already pointed out that scientists disagree with the changes that get made and are subjected to pressures to slant the report. Some have resigned because of that.
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So until scientist not involved in the IPCC and the IPCC scientist themselves have reviewed the final report I will hold judgment on the validity of the report.
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for polishing up the post for me, still having hard time figuring out all the fancy graphics. even with the tips. call me
thick -headed I guess! I guess there’s no geek gene here.
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Some time it pays to pull an all-nighter,though. Best News Flashes seem to happen at 2 am just in time for the “early edition” front page.
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Al Gore has always been a fascinating man to me. I guess because I’m one of those that looks way beyond the surface. Politics is never a popularity contest for me.
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If you go back even to when it was Sen. Gore, TN he has always taken the road to making the world a better place to live
“Nobel Prize for being a High-Profile Democrat who Shows by Contrast How Much of a Pip Is George W Bush”
…I do pay attention to Nobel science prizes (physics, chemistry, medicine) but not peace prizes. The peace prizes are somewhat interesting, but it should be recognized that they are usually awarded not for actual accomplishments–like the science prizes–but to further what the Nobel committee believes might subsequently advance peace. It would be interesting to see the extent to which they have accomplished that purpose.