Al Gore and IPCC share peace prize
Cross posted from The Great Beyond
Al Gore will share this year’s Nobel Peace Prize with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. They were awarded the prize for “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”.
The prize committee declared Al Gore “one of the world's leading environmentalist politicians” and said the IPCC had “created an ever-broader informed consensus about the connection between human activities and global warming”.
“Action is necessary now, before climate change moves beyond man’s control,” says the committee (press release).
This may take some of the sting out of the UK court ruling Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth movie will have to carry caveats when shown in schools – a ruling based in part on perceived differences between Gore’s stance and the scientific consensus outlined by ... the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (see the updated blog posting on the ruling).
This is not the first time a prize has been won by an institution. In 2005 the International Atomic Energy Agency took half a prize, and other winners include the UN in 2001 and Médecins Sans Frontières in 1999. The real question is who will get the money at the IPCC?
The question for Gore is slightly different. The impressive Fiona Harvey at the FT has a very good piece up already, noting that the prize was perhaps unsurprising but "reinforced his reputation as the world’s foremost champion of environmental issues." It “also added to speculation that Mr Gore would be persuaded to have another attempt at the US presidency”.
UPDATE
“It’s every scientist's dream to win a Nobel Prize, so this is great for myself and the hundreds that worked on their reports over the years. It is perhaps a little deflating though - that one man and his PowerPoint show has as much influence as the decades of dedicated work by so many scientists,” said Piers Forster, of the University of Leeds School of Earth and Environment (via the Science Media Centre).
Cross posted by Olive Heffernan
Comments
Al Gore, congratulations on winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Now it is time to announce your wish to become America's president, take your seat in the White House, and be the leader we have all been waiting for to move beyond the corrupt system of Empire and towards Earth community. Kudos to the Nobel Committee for realizing that sustainability is peace.
Posted by: Erol | October 12, 2007 02:20 PM
AL GORE, IPCC, AND THE 2007 NOBEL PEACE PRIZE VERSUS SCIENCE
Al Gore and the IPCC are to be congratulated for their efforts to use scientific knowledge for the benefit of mankind in the struggle against climate change.
However, good intentions do not excuse poor science.
Al Gore and the IPCC have championed the cause of man-made climate change (AGW), while far more careful scientific studies have shown that changes in our climate are mostly caused by sudden shifts in the solar inertial motion (SIM) as the Sun travels in an epitrochiod-shaped orbit about the centre-of-mass (barycentre) of the solar system [Journal of Costal Research, SI 50 (2007) 955-968].
http://www.griffith.edu.au/conference/ics2007/pdf/ICS176.pdf
The jerky orbit of the Sun over a period of about 179 years' duration is shown in Figure 1 on the second page of the article, page 956.
On the next page, page 957, it is noted that this uneven motion of the Sun could not be the reason for variations in solar activity with the Sun's epitrochiod-shaped orbit -- IF THE SUN WERE HOMOGENEOUS.
Precise measurements on meteorites, planets, comets, the solar photosphere, the solar wind, and solar flares since 1960 have clearly shown that shown that OUR SUN IS THE HETEROGENEOUS REMAINS OF A SUPERNOVA, with a surface covering of diffuse Hydrogen and Helium over a dense Iron mantle that surrounds an exceedingly high-density neutron star at the core [See references 1-6 below].
Solar surface activity arises from deep-seated magnetic fields [4].
Changes in our climate are linked with changes in magnetic activity at the solar surface (e.g., sunspots and solar eruptions) because sudden acceleration and deceleration of the Sun along an epitrochiod-shaped orbit shifts the location of the high-density core relative to the surface.
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Emeritus Professor
Nuclear Chemistry
University of Missouri
Ph: 1-573-647-1377
http://www.omatumr.com
http://www.ballofiron.com
REFERENCES:
1.) "Strange xenon, extinct superheavy elements and the solar neutrino puzzle", Science 195 (1977) 208-209.
http://www.omatumr.com/archive/StrangeXenon.pdf
2.) "Isotopes of tellurium, xenon and krypton in the Allende meteorite retain record of nucleosynthesis", Nature 277 (1979) 615-620.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v277/n5698/abs/277615a0.html
3.) "Neutron repulsion confirmed as energy source", J. Fusion Energy 20 (2002) 197-201.
http://www.omatumr.com/abstracts2003/jfe-neutronrep.pdf
4.) "Super-fluidity in the solar interior: Implications for solar eruptions and climate", J. Fusion Energy 21 (2002) 193-198.
http://www.omatumr.com/abstracts2003/jfe-superfluidity.pdf
5.) "The Sun is a plasma diffuser that sorts atoms by mass," Physics of Atomic Nuclei 69 (2006) 1847-1856.
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0609509
6.) "Isotopes tell origin and operation of the Sun," AIP Conference Proceedings 822 (2006) 206-225.
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0510001
Posted by: Oliver K. Manuel | October 12, 2007 07:01 PM
I have been puzzling as to why Al and the IPCC have been awarded the prize for "peace", though. Is it, do you think, because there isn't an Earth science Nobel category?
Posted by: Maxine | October 12, 2007 09:52 PM
Giving the Prize to Al Gore ("The life of humanity is at risk here") must be a slap in the face for everyone working in the current unstable regions of the world. Like Iraq, Iran, Israel/Palestine, Korea... There are many deserving this Prize a lot more than the Greatest Exaggerator of our time.
What has he actually done to the climate? Besides not telling the truth and wasting money that could be spent on something really useful!
Posted by: Gin Tonyx | October 13, 2007 03:56 PM
"that one man and his PowerPoint" ;-)
That´s the key: he don´t use powerpoint; he uses Apple´s KeyNote
Posted by: Sayonara | October 13, 2007 05:44 PM
If the IPCC has done such a great job on the Science of Climate Change, shouldn't it have been awarded with the Nobel Prize in Physics, instead of getting the Peace Prize for its political activities?
Posted by: Maurizio Morabito | October 14, 2007 12:21 AM
For Dr. Foster, be free of deflation. It has taken two complementary efforts to raise the curtain on AGW. The first, of course, has been the tremendous scientific effort; the second has been communicating the findings. Mr. Gore is a skilled communicator, but would have nothing to communicate if not for the combined efforts of skilled scientists.
Posted by: robert | October 14, 2007 07:13 AM