Gore and the IPCC win the Nobel Peace Prize

temperature.jpg

IPCC figures rock!


And there's a lot of discussion taking place around the blogosphere that concerns the merit behind this particular choice (here's a good overview at the NYT), ranging from the errors in his movie, as well as the debate over whether activism in the climate change arena constitutes a major contribution to issue of "peace" itself.

What do people think around here?

In any event, the IPCC being a co-winner, I think, is a no brainer. This is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a large (like 2000 or so!) UN group of academics from a variety of disciplines (many from UBC by the way) charged with the goal of sitting down and trying to get the facts straight in an objective manner to "lay it all out" for the public and also the policy movers and shakers. If you haven't heard of this before, check out the Terry FAQs (part 1 and part 2) on the topic.

Also go to their website. Their reports (especially the one on science for policy makers) are all kinds of awesome.

More like this

Today's DemocracyNow! has a segment with Chris Field, a leading member of the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and other guest discussing worsening outlooks of future warming and increased lobbying efforts from the fossil fuel industry. We speak to Chris Field, a…
The Global Warming Policy Foundation is an organization of mainly economists dedicated to mucking up the development and advancement of good science-based policy related to climate change. It is a denialist "think" tank. A couple of weeks ago, Swedish meteorologist Lennart Bengtsson joined the…
This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H.E.Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's GW news roundup (skip to bottom) Top Stories, Nobel, Anti-Gore, UK Court Case Melting Arctic, Walruses, Humidity, Solar Cycle Hurricanes, CO2 Equivalents, 455 ppm, GHG Sources, Glaciers, Sea…
A well known anti-science "think" tank has sent around, to teachers, a mailing including an antiscience book, a movie, and nice letter and, oddly, a pamphlet exposing the fact that the mailing is entirely politically motivated. Most science teachers will ignore this. A few science teachers are…

I signed the petition to draft him for President of the U.S. Why? Because the world needs serious leadership on the issue and the position of President is a very effective bully pulpit.

But here we have a man who is a former Vice President, an Oscar winner, an Emmy Winner, a best selling author, and now a Nobel Peace Prize winner.

Talk about a legacy.

I think climate change activism, especially on the scale of Al Gore and the IPCC, does help to bring peace. As Jared Diamond and countless others have pointed out, one of the biggest contributors to violent conflict is a lack of resources (or even a perceived lack), and our present path of reckless consumption will only worsen the situation.

For instance, would we be in Iraq today if weren't so dependent on oil? Climate change activism has multiple positive repercussions throughout our world.