In quotes: Nobel peace prize reaction

Reaction from around the world to the award of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize to former US vice-president and climate change campaigner Al Gore, and the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

PROFESSOR WANGARI MAATHAI, FOUNDER OF GREEN BELT MOVEMENT AND NOBEL PEACE LAUREATE 2004

When it was first announced that I would be receiving the peace prize in 2004, many people asked what does the environment have to do with peace?

By choosing Al Gore and the IPCC for the award in 2007, the Nobel Committee have rightly brought to our attention that climate change is the single biggest threat to world peace we have ever faced.

Of course [US President George W Bush] is happy for Vice-President Gore and happy for the international panel on climate change scientists who also shared the peace prize.

Obviously, it's an important recognition and we're sure the vice president is thrilled.

Al Gore has been inspirational in focusing attention across the globe on this key issue. The IPCC's work on the science of climate change has been vital and they are now leading a process by which all countries will work together to tackle the effects of climate change.

The Nobel Peace Prize Committee has today made it clear that combating climate change is a central peace and security policy for the 21st Century.

He is somewhat surprised that Al Gore got the Peace Prize, because the relation between his activities and world peace is unclear and indistinct.

It rather seems that Gore's questioning of the basic foundation stones of the current civilisation does not contribute to peace much.

I can't think of a better combination for this award - the previously unsung and much-falsely maligned legion of scientific whistleblowers, and their tireless chief advocate.

Perhaps now the shrivelling band of fossil-fuel-funded contrarians and car-enthusiast media stars will finally have the good grace to shut up with the ignorance they pedal about the threat we face.

This is a very welcome signal that the world is beginning to wake up to how environmental challenges are going to shape many aspects of human welfare long into the future. We hope that politicians everywhere will see this signal and take heed.

Al Gore doesn't understand the science behind climate change or he deliberately misrepresents it. Either way, that should disqualify him from a prize like this.

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.

The secretary-general notes that largely thanks to the IPCC's lucid and well-documented findings, it is now established beyond doubt that climate change is happening, and that much of it is caused by human activity. As a result, there is now unprecedented momentum for action on climate change around the world, and recognition of the UN as the forum for reaching agreement on it.

SHEILA WATT-CLOUTIER, CANADIAN INUIT ACTIVIST AND PREVIOUSLY TIPPED FOR THE PRIZE

Awarding it to Al Gore cannot be seen as anything other than a political statement. Awarding it to the IPCC is well-founded. [Gore's film The Inconvenient Truth has] some very obvious mistakes, like the argument that we're going to see 6m of sea-level rise.

They [the Nobel committee] have a unique platform in getting people's attention on this issue, and I regret they have used it to make a political statement.

[The recipients'] contributions to the prevention of climate change have raised awareness all over the world. Their work has been an inspiration for politicians and citizens alike. The European Union remains committed to its ambitious goals in the field. I call on all our partners to take this Nobel Peace Prize as an encouragement to approach this challenge even more swiftly, and decisively.

Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/europe/7041573.stm

1. “Surely anything that highlights this issue is a good thing?” Not at the cost of IRENA SENDLER
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1910471/posts

2. What has Al Gore done for world peace?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1910236/posts

3. In sum, she deserved it, not Al Propaganda. Courts in your own country identified 9 inaccuracies in his propaganda piece.

* The film claims that melting snows on Mount Kilimanjaro evidence global warming. The Government’s expert was forced to concede that this is not correct.
* The film suggests that evidence from ice cores proves that rising CO2 causes temperature increases over 650,000 years. The Court found that the film was misleading: over that period the rises in CO2 lagged behind the temperature rises by 800-2000 years.
* The film uses emotive images of Hurricane Katrina and suggests that this has been caused by global warming. The Government’s expert had to accept that it was “not possible” to attribute one-off events to global warming.
* The film shows the drying up of Lake Chad and claims that this was caused by global warming. The Government’s expert had to accept that this was not the case.
* The film claims that a study showed that polar bears had drowned due to disappearing arctic ice. It turned out that Mr Gore had misread the study: in fact four polar bears drowned and this was because of a particularly violent storm.
* The film threatens that global warming could stop the Gulf Stream throwing Europe into an ice age: the Claimant’s evidence was that this was a scientific impossibility.
* The film blames global warming for species losses including coral reef bleaching. The Government could not find any evidence to support this claim.
* The film suggests that the Greenland ice covering could melt causing sea levels to rise dangerously. The evidence is that Greenland will not melt for millennia.
* The film suggests that the Antarctic ice covering is melting, the evidence was that it is in fact increasing.
* The film suggests that sea levels could rise by 7m causing the displacement of millions of people. In fact the evidence is that sea levels are expected to rise by about 40cm over the next hundred years and that there is no such threat of massive migration.
* The film claims that rising sea levels has caused the evacuation of certain Pacific islands to New Zealand. The Government are unable to substantiate this and the Court observed that this appears to be a false claim.

if you look at the list of Nobel Peace Prizes http://nobelpeaceprize.org/eng_lau_list.html , you’ll see that in recent years it has often gone to people or organizations whose work, while often worthy, has little to do with the promotion of peace per se. Last year the prize went to a Bangladeshi banker and a bank for their efforts to make credit available to the very poor. In 2004, it went to Wangari Maathai for planting trees in Kenya.

One reason for this may be that the Norwegian Nobel Committee has had reason to be disappointed in the results when it has given awards to more traditional peacemakers.
- In 1994, the Nobel Peace Prize notoriously went to Yasser Arafat (along with Israel’s prime and foreign ministers) for signing the Oslo accords—which, far from establishing peace, enabled Arafat to set up a terror statelet in the West Bank and Gaza.
-In 1973, the Nobel went to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and North Vietnam’s Lu Duc Tho for negotiating the Vietnam peace accord—which, far from establishing peace, led to conquest, repression and mass murder in Indochina.
-In 1926, 1930 and 1931 the Nobel Peace Prize went to men involved in the Briand-Kellogg Pact, which “outlawed war.” By 1939 it was clear how well that was working out.

He joins the ranks of:
2005
MOHAMED ELBARADEI (joint winner). He’s done such a nice job with Iran.
2004
WANGARI MAATHAI. The Kenyan ecologist peacefully teaches that the AIDS virus is a biological agent deliberately created by the Man.
2002
JIMMY CARTER JR., former President of the United States of America. A true cosmopolitan, he has undermined the foreign policy of his own country and vouched for the bona fides of tyrants and murderers all over the world.
2001
UNITED NATIONS, New York, NY, USA.
KOFI ANNAN, United Nations Secretary General. Among other things, they have respectively served as the vehicle for, and presided over, one of the biggest scams in history.
1994
YASSER ARAFAT (joint winner), Chairman of the Executive Committee of the PLO, President of the Palestinian National Authority. He was a cold-blooded murderer both before and after receiving the award.
1992
RIGOBERTA MENCHU TUM, Guatemala. She is the notorious Guatemalan faker and author, sort of, of I, Rigoberta Menchu.
1988
THE UNITED NATIONS PEACE-KEEPING FORCES New York, NY, U.S.A. Notwithstanding rapes and sex abuse committed by the team in Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea and the Congo, still doing fine work all over the world.
Alfred Nobel’s will specifies that the peace prize would go “to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.” That’s Al Gore? Al, we hardly knew ye.
By the way, to fully appreciate the farcical nature of the peace prize, you need only go back to the painful years before World War II:
In 1931 the prize was shared by Nicholas Murray Butler, president of Columbia University, whose later enthusiasm for keeping good relations with Nazi universities has been a source of embarrassment to Columbia.
In 1933, 1934 and 1936, the peace prize went to executives of the League of Nations, already a colossal failure.
From 1939 through 1943 there was no peace prize. You know, World War II was such an inconvenience, and Oslo, where the peace prize is given, was under occupation. Ah, the success of those past prize winners!

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