Posted on 10/26/2007 10:32:02 AM PDT by ElkGroveDan
Since the first Nobel Peace Prize was awarded in 1901, its recipients have enjoyed public acclaim and great honor the world over. This year however, the Committee has done great damage to the respect and prestige of this award by honoring Al Gore for his politically slanted film on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth. Gore’s work is a tale filled with questionable science, deceptive anecdotes, and outright falsehoods that do not come close to the true accomplishments for world peace that previous recipients have earned.
Past recipients of the Peace Prize have included American Presidents and other world leaders who have mediated and resolved real conflicts and worked tirelessly for peace in the world. George Marshall received the prize for his Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe after World War II. Henry Kissinger received the prize for his efforts on The Vietnam Peace Accords. Organizations such as the Red Cross and UNICEF have also received the prize for their efforts in war-torn corners of the globe.
Earlier this month Gore was awarded the Nobel Peace prize jointly with the UN Panel on Climate Change 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." In order to answer the question of what that has to do with resolving global conflict or enhancing world peace the panel came up with this tortured reasoning, “Extensive climate changes ... may induce large-scale migration and lead to greater competition for the earth’s resources.”
That’s a whole lot of “ifs” and “maybes” applied to a movement that already is rife with unsupported assumptions and twisted lines of reasoning. With so many real efforts to advance the cause of world peace in recent years and so many hard working people striving for that goal every day, it is disappointing that the Committee would engage in verbal acrobatics in order to justify this prize where none is deserved.
In addition to the weak justification for awarding Gore a prize in the Peace category, the film itself is rife with factual errors, unsupported scientific conclusions and outright falsehoods. It’s no wonder then that a judge in Great Britain recently ruled that schools showing An Inconvenient Truth must point out nine critical errors in the film and that written guidance must be provided to teachers showing it to their classes to prevent “political indoctrination.”
The point of An Inconvenient Truth and its long term goals is nothing more than that - political indoctrination. The notion of man-made global warming threatening the entire world is little more than selective evidence used to advance one cause: increased regulation and control of free market economies. Coincidentally the cause of more government control of human commerce has been the goal of Al Gore’s Democrat Party and liberals in general since long before “global warming” became the latest political fad. If the public were to accept the errors, deceptions, and false conclusions of Gore’s global warming agenda, it would be the ultimate victory for the American Democrat Party and liberalism.
Is it any wonder then that supporters of an unfettered and thriving free market seriously question this film and its message? Through controversial science, faulty reasoning, and bald-faced falsehoods, we are encouraged to embrace a cause that conveniently mirrors liberal Democrat Al Gore’s lifelong political agenda. What’s truly sad is that the Nobel Committee has chosen to embrace Gore’s fear mongering. If this prize was given out of ignorance and gross misinformation, then that is unfortunate. On the other hand, if the Committee made its decision because of a desire to advance one political agenda, then that is truly sad. Either way the Nobel Committee has badly tarnished its image and lost much credibility by Awarding a Nobel Peace Prize to Al Gore in 2007. Let’s hope they get it right next year.
As H.L. Mencken said in 1920:
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and hence clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
I like Fred Singer’s response. See below:
“In the great, never-cooling debate over the causes and consequences of global warming, it’s always clear whose side Fred Singer is on: not Al Gore’s. Singer, who was born in Vienna in 1924, was a pioneer in the development of rocket and satellite technology and holds a Ph.D. in physics from Princeton. Now president of the Science & Environmental Policy Project research group, his latest book (with Dennis Avery) is “Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1,500 Years.” I talked with Singer on Oct. 27 by phone from his offices in Arlington, Va.:
“Q: What did you think upon hearing of Al Gore’s Nobel Peace Prize?
“A: First of all, I was really not surprised. The peace prize is a political exercise. Remember that Yasser Arafat got the peace prize for, ha, contributing to lasting peace in the Middle East. It’s very interesting, the peace prize selection committee comes from the Norwegian Parliament, so they’re all politicians. The government is a very left-wing government right now. I spoke about it this morning, in fact, and said that if the government changes — if the Progress Party, which is an anti-immigration party, gains majority control — it might give a peace prize to Pat Buchanan. It’s purely political, unlike the other prizes, which are awarded by the Swedish academies and which are based on committees that know something about the subject.”
The NPP was on the decline but once it gave the award to a known terrorist, that was the final nail.
Nobel Peace Prize has become the swimsuit competition in the Miss Universe contest with unshaven legs and armpits.
What’s to tarnish? Honorable people should shun it.
Hmm. So you're saying all the contestants are european women?
It wasn’t tarnished when Yassir Arafat won?
very related:
Inhofe slams DiCaprio for scaring kids in two-hour Senate speech debunking climate fears
Senator James Inhofe | October 26, 2007 | Senator James Inhofe
Posted on 10/26/2007 4:18:52 PM PDT by EPW Comm Team
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