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Friday, October 12, 2007

JOKE OF THE DAY: Al Gore and U.N. Panel win Nobel Peace Prize

Forced to wake up ultra early, for a student matinee this a.m, I thought my overly tired brain and eyes were playing tricks on me when I saw that the illustrious Al Gore and a U.N. panel had actually won the Nobel Peace Prize for their work on, of all things, Global warming! Al Gore?! The U.N.?! Sigh. Excuse me while I bang my head against the wall.....repeatedly. Just what Gore needs to inflate his already humongous ego: another wholly undeserved award. All this glory, however, might satisfy his ego enough to deter him from making a bid for the ultimate prize: Prez of the U.S. of A., but I'm not so sure, although others are convinced it will. Then again, garnering kudos for 'saving our planet' is far less stressful than trying to save the western world from marauding religious fanatics intent on dragging us back into the dark ages, or into the ground if we refuse to submit. Or whacked-out foreign leaders armed with nuclear weapons, ready, willing and poised to strike. Why would anyone, frankly, want to take on that responsibility?! Then again, power is an aphrodisiac.

And can someone please explain why the Global Warming issue is worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize? What has Global Warming to do with Peace, pray tell? There was a petition submitted to the Nobel Committee requesting that the Peace Prize be awarded to the Burmese Buddhist monastic order (Sangha), for their peaceful attempts to bring democracy to their country which would have been a far more deserving group than Gore and the useless U.N. Particularly in light of the fact that there are very differing views, in the scientific community, on the whole Global Warming issue. Apparently, Stewart Dimmock, truck driver and father of 2, sued the British government for distributing to 3,500 schools Global Warming packages which included Gore's film, claiming that


"the former U.S. Vice-President's documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, is unfit for schools because it is politically biased and contains serious scientific inaccuracies and 'sentimental mush'."
Although it wasn't outright banned, a U.K. court recently ruled that there are, indeed, 9 inaccuracies in Gore's "Inconvenient Truth" that must be addressed when showing the video to the school kids, along with a disclaimer stating that the film is politically biased:

1. 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.

2. 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.


3. 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.

4. 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.


5. 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.

6. 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.

7. The film blames global warming for species losses including coral reef bleaching. The Government could not find any evidence to support this claim.

8. 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.

9. 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.

Others blogging about this joke:
Spanish Pundit
Patjknowsitall

Chatterbox Chronicles

UPDATE:

Here's a great commentary in the UK Daily Telegraph

"So Al Gore is the joint winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Admittedly, he has to share it with the United Nations’ climate change panel - but, even so, I think we need to declare an international smugness alert.The former US Vice-President has already taken over from Michael Moore as the most sanctimonious lardbutt Yank on the planet. Can you imagine what he'll be like now that the Norwegian Nobel committee has given him the prize? More to the point, can you imagine how enormous his already massive carbon footprint will become once he starts jetting around the world bragging about his new title?"
H/T: Jammiewearingfool


16 comments:

Pat Jenkins said...

good post incog, and an even better assessment of the "climate" for making this "far reaching" choice. i don't know if you heard or not but those who made the decision to award it to gore claim g.w. is a peace issue because it will cause wars around the globe. for whatever that is worth. it is good to see the commitee is not a political arm. ahem......

Karen Townsend said...

That was my question, too, Incog - what does climate change have to do with peace? The award is meaningless anyway, except in the areas of medicine, in my opinion, after the downturn began with awarding it to the likes of Arafat, Carter, Kofi Annan. Please.

And the timing of the announcement of the court in the UK about the disclaimer that must be made for the school kids before it is shown? Priceless.

Anonymous said...

The science behind anthropogenic global warming is dubious at best, but the scheme to alter its effect i.e. Kyoto Protocol is very in line with the more socialist leaning of the U.N. and the Noble Prize's committee. They can't give him the one in the science category because it'll fall apart under examination, but they want to give it the recognition that they deem important, so they went with the "peace" category. I would like to think that this category is more subjective than any other ones. So they vote for Al Gore to get it. Recognition given to global warming, its most fervent and well known advocate got recognized, two birds, one stone scenario completed.

A win-win for the greenies.

Frank Partisan said...

You are not clear about your position on global warming. Do you believe it's happening, and Gore's info was wrong, or do you deny it?

Incognito said...

PAT J: Uh.. major stretch there. but it's their award and I guess they can stretch all they want. Ludicrous, in my mind.

KAREN: True, they are all meaningless, pretty much, including the ones for literature. It's all so subjective. Yeah....it was priceless... that's what we call "timing".

BLADEMONKEY: Well, that makes perfect sense. Too bad they didn't award it to him for literature, considering much of it is fiction.

REN: Like most people, I do believe there is current global warming trend, but I happen to believe it is more cyclical in nature than those on the man-made global warming hysteria bandwagon. I think Gore's film was decidedly biased and politically motivated... it has already been proven that 9 of his points were fallacious..(per the UK court decision). And there are many, many scientists who believe the same. So, yes, the world is getting slightly warmer, no, I don't believe we are going to fry within the next millenium. And given the cyclical nature of weather, we could easily face another ice age.

Don't get me wrong, I do my bit.. I recycle, I don't eat meat etc. but, if those who are so concerned about global warming, like Gore,were that conscientious, perhaps they should consider going veggie and being more careful about their 'carbon footprints"..Gore is neither,in my humble opinion.

WomanHonorThyself said...

hiya Incog!...great to see ya at my site girly..what a joke this man is...he's in great company with Arafat..bwhahahha! :)

Anonymous said...

"The former US Vice-President has already taken over from Michael Moore as the most sanctimonious lardbutt Yank on the planet. " I love that sentence. Let me just say if over and over and over hahahahahaah.

There is no justice in this. Think of all the deserving people on the planet who have actually worked for PEACE. I don't get it.

Dionne said...

Great post!! I talked about this on the radio show today and I just found some new, good cartoons. I think I will post on the wonderful woman who should've received this award.

Incognito said...

WOMAN: Arafat among other twits. Just catching up after being incommunicado till we opened.

DEBBIE: I loved that sentence too. :-) I know... it just shows you how worthless it all is.

DEE: Will go check out now.. Am interested to know who.

Susie said...

I agree with you that Global warming have nothing to do with World peace and I'm so disappointed that Burmese Buddhist monks didn't get the award.

I do belive that we have to take care of our environment, but there has been changes in the climate before whitout any human interaction. That is the way nature works. We can still see marks in the nature from the Ice age and during the Stone age it was a lot warmer in Finland than it is today, so I'm pretty sure some of the changes we see are natural changes in the climate that would have been there us pollution too.

Incognito said...

Hey SUSIE. There was also a Polish woman who risked life and limb to save 2,500 children during the holocaust who was up for the award. She and the monks were far more worthy recipients thank Gore. Oh well.

And yes, I think most people realize that we have to take care of our environment, and as Jon put it, we need to encourage others to not just trash our world. That's interesting about Finland being colder now. Small details like that, that people don't take into account.

Missy said...

Incog - Glad your opening went well. I had to bite my tongue while at my parents house last week. My mom was actually glad Al Gore got the Peace prize. I made one statement that his film was made up of multiple hysterical myths and did not deserve to see the light of day. Her response was that she knew how I felt about the Democrats and was pretty sure how I would respond to him receiving the award.

This is the worse part of the entire issue. Average, normal people believe the bunk he's selling without ever checking facts to see if there is any truth.

Thanks for the post!

Anonymous said...

I think that Gore getting the Peace Price is one of the signs of the apocalypse. I couldn't believe that they gave him such a noble honor without trying to find out if he was right. It's great that he's trying to get people interested in saving our environment but come one. He's full of it!

Personally, I wonder if a Nobel Prize can be revoked if it can be proved that the reason they won was bogus. He publishes a book of lies, and wins one of, if not the, most prestigious award(s) on the planet!

The UK Court is so right. I've heard so much garbage about global warming that never made any sense. One of them being that Europe will be thrown into an ice age. Wait, global warming will cause an Ice Age? How the heck does that make any sense?

Like some paranoid nut job, Gore has decided "this is what I'm trying to prove" and then he looks for evidence to support that... and relies on the fact that the majority of people will not actually try to verify the truth behind his arguments. True science examines the evidence and comes to a conclusion based off of that evidence. This man is no scientist. He is a politician with a political agenda, that's it.

What is this world coming to. Well, it at least seems like we've got a few smart cookies left. I can take some comfort in that.

Jim Fryar said...

Here is another perspective on this, pretty similar to yours.

Incognito said...

NATHANIEL: I guess it just shows (as in the past with certain other recipients) how totally meaningless it is. And, yeah it's great, but he does nothing to help the environment himself. Total hypocrisy. Not sure about whether it can be revoked, but it should be. And that's basically what it boils down to, as you say.. he's a politician with a political agenda. He didn't become prez so he wants to become saviour of the world.

Incognito said...

JIM F: Thank you for the heads up.. I will check it out.