Sunday, October 14, 2007

Who Should Have Won the Nobel Peace Prize?

Some Reflections on the Nobel Peace Prize.

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Greg-a-Logue – Who Should Have Won the noel Peace Prize

JAWA Report does a background check on these 5-Nobel Peace Prize judges and the out come is, well, interesting if only because of my last “Move On.org blog. The left is proving to be extreme in the real sense of the word. SO what has JAWA found out? Let’s see (emphasis mine):

So, how come Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize? I think this explains it all:

The Norwegian Nobel Committee, whose five members are appointed by the Norwegian Parliament (Stortinget), is entrusted both with the preparatory work related to prize adjudication and with the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize.

So, who are … people who think so highly of the U.N. and for whom the world is misled into thinking are simple neutral observers? Four out of them are politicians, and one is a historian with a distinctly European view of the US.

…. Berge Ragnar Furre (Member) Historian, Professor of Theology, and politician from the Socialist Left Party. The Socialist Left Party is left by European standards--it was formerly a Communist party. Today though, like most formerly communist parties, the Socialist Left Party is part of the Red-Green coalitions so common in Europe.

Sissel Marie Rønbeck (Member) Deputy Director, Directorate for Cultural Heritage. Former director of the Social Democratic Youth (Labour's youth group) and a former cabinet minister in the Labour led government. The Labour Party has long been a main political party in Norway and was founded as a Marxist party, but are now merely socialists and advocates of an extensive welfare state. They now govern Norway as part of a center-left-green alliance…..

….

Michelle Malkin, Hot Air, and Macker have pretty good posts up as do so many others. PJ Media has a nice reaction roundup here.

Czech President Vaclav Klaus has been an outspoken opponent of the Global Warming crowd. In fact, he entered the debate on Gore’s awarding of the Peace Prize (Michelle Malkin props):

Czech President Vaclav Klaus

Czech President Vaclav Klaus, a rare vocal global- warming sceptic among heads of state, is “somewhat surprised” that former US vice president Al Gore received the Nobel Peace Prize, the president’s spokesman Petr Hajek said in a statement.

“The relationship between his activities and world peace is unclear and indistinct,” the statement said. “It rather seems that Gore’s doubting of basic cornerstones of the current civilization does not contribute to peace.”

Klaus said in a recent speech that environmentalists’ efforts to halt global warming “fatally endanger our freedom and prosperity.”

The Czech president publicly expresses doubt on what scientists, including those participating in the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, also this year’s Nobel Peace Prize laureate, deem very likely - that global warming is caused by humans.

He also said that rising temperatures may not matter enough for governments to throw funds at halting the process.

In a newspaper interview earlier this year, Klaus said that only Al Gore, and not a sane person, would say that mankind is ruining the planet.

I posted just recently about a British Court calling for schools to let the students know that An Inconvenient Truth is a political film with many errors. This particular British Judge listed nin major errors in Gore’s film, which are listed below:

British judge lists 9-lies in movie

Here are the nine inconvenient facts the judge listed in contradicting Mr. Gore’s film:
- - - - - - - - -

Error one
Al Gore: A sea-level rise of up to 20 feet would be caused by melting of either West Antarctica or Greenland “in the near future”.

The judge’s finding: “This is distinctly alarmist and part of Mr. Gore’s “wake-up call”. It was common ground that if Greenland melted it would release this amount of water — “but only after, and over, millennia.”

Error two
Gore: Low-lying inhabited Pacific atolls are already “being inundated because of anthropogenic global warming.”

Judge: There was no evidence of any evacuation having yet happened.

Error three
Gore: The documentary described global warming potentially “shutting down the Ocean Conveyor” — the process by which the Gulf Stream is carried over the North Atlantic to western Europe.

Judge: According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), it was “very unlikely” it would be shut down, though it might slow down.

Error four
Gore: He asserted — by ridiculing the opposite view — that two graphs, one plotting a rise in CO2 and the other the rise in temperature over a period of 650,000 years, showed “an exact fit”.

Judge: Although there was general scientific agreement that there was a connection, “the two graphs do not establish what Mr Gore asserts”.

Error five
Gore: The disappearance of snow on Mt Kilimanjaro was expressly attributable to global warming.

Judge: This “specifically impressed” David Miliband, the Environment Secretary, but the scientific consensus was that it cannot be established that the recession of snows on Mt Kilimanjaro is mainly attributable to human-induced climate change.

Error six
Gore: The drying up of Lake Chad was used in the film as a prime example of a catastrophic result of global warming, said the judge.

Judge: “It is generally accepted that the evidence remains insufficient to establish such an attribution. It is apparently considered to be far more likely to result from other factors, such as population increase and over-grazing, and regional climate variability.”

Error seven
Gore: Hurricane Katrina and the consequent devastation in New Orleans to global warming.

Judge: There is “insufficient evidence to show that”.

Error eight
Gore: Referred to a new scientific study showing that, for the first time, polar bears were being found that had actually drowned “swimming long distances — up to 60 miles — to find the ice”.

Judge: “The only scientific study that either side before me can find is one which indicates that four polar bears have recently been found drowned because of a storm.” That was not to say there might not in future be drowning-related deaths of bears if the trend of regression of pack ice continued — “but it plainly does not support Mr Gore’s description”.

Error nine
Gore: Coral reefs all over the world were bleaching because of global warming and other factors.

Judge: The IPCC had reported that, if temperatures were to rise by 1-3 degrees centigrade, there would be increased coral bleaching and mortality, unless the coral could adapt. But separating the impacts of stresses due to climate change from other stresses, such as over-fishing, and pollution was difficult.

Its apparently so bad that even the Unions are getting into the act… which means that it really is a giant hoax – Global Warming – from the Left.

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Union Leader.com

Five Norwegians gave a prize to Al Gore, and all the world is supposed to heed his counsel henceforth. No, thanks.

Alfred Nobel felt horrible about the uses to which his invention -- dynamite -- was put. So he endowed the Nobel Peace Prize and instructed that it go "to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses."

Al Gore has done exactly none of those things.

Gore, however, did write a book and make a film about global warming. He has become the second environmental activist to win the peace prize in the past four years. Wangari Muta Maathai won it in 2004 for planting trees.

Thus we have indisputable confirmation that the Nobel Peace Prize is no longer a serious international award. In 1994 the five Norwegian politicians who award the prize gave it to the murdering thug Yasser Arafat. Two years before that they gave it to literary fraud Rigoberta Menchu, whose autobiography was largely fabricated. (An example: The brother she supposedly watched die of malnutrition was later found by a New York Times reporter to be very much alive and well.)

On Friday the prize was given to Al Gore and the International Panel on Climate Change. Two days before, a British judge ruled that Gore's film, "An Inconvenient Truth," contained so many errors (read: lies) that it could be shown in British public schools only if accompanied by a fact sheet correcting the errors.

The Nobel Peace Prize is worse than a joke. It's a fraud. It is such a transparent fraud that the five Norwegian politicians who award it have been reduced to defending their decision by concocting elaborate rationalizations. This year they laughably claimed that Gore deserves the prize because, well, global climate change" may induce large-scale migration and lead to greater competition for the Earth's resources," and "there may be increased danger of violent conflicts and wars." (Emphasis ours.)

And Islamic terrorists may give up jihad and sing Kumbaya after listening to old Cat Stevens records. But that's no basis for distributing the world's formerly most prestigious prize.

If winning this useless medal prompts Al Gore to get into the presidential race, which we doubt, the irony will be that the American people will turn a more skeptical eye to His Smugness than the Nobel committee did.

The American public won't accept at face value Gore's self-righteous proclamations or his self-serving predictions of looming global catastrophy. And Gore has to know that, which is why he will almost certainly stick to the world of make-believe -- Hollywood and International Do-Goodery -- where he can pretend to be the great sage and savior he wishes he really were and left-wing Europeans and thespians try to convince us he is.