On The Nobel Peace Prize

Vía: RedState.

I suppose that it should come as little surprise that Al Gore ended up winning the Nobel Peace Prize, as the prize has gradually turned into the Nobel Committee Thinks This Person Is A Good Person Prize. The Committee is, of course, entirely free to hold whatever opinions it wants about Al Gore and Gore can hold whatever opinions he wants to hold about the environment, but it is difficult to see how he has advanced "peace" per se. And please, no tenuous connections between climate change and warfare. Just about anything can be connected in some way, shape or form to warfare and it is more than a little bizarre for people to try to dig through a whole lot of . . . er . . . stuff, all the while exclaiming like latter day Reagans that "There's just got to be a peace pony in here somewhere!" A Trojan Horse is more like it.

In any event, it is worth noting that there has been a lot of valuable commentary regarding the environment that has come out over the past few days but has not received the attention that it should receive. Via David Boaz, for example, we have some valuable commentary from Bjorn Lomborg, showing that Gore is quite often at odds with the co-winners of the Peace Prize, the International Panel on Climate Change.

More by Lomborg (via Ben Domenech):

All eyes are on Greenland's melting glaciers as alarm about global warming spreads. This year, delegations of U.S. and European politicians have made pilgrimages to the fastest-moving glacier at Ilulissat, where they declare that they see climate change unfolding before their eyes.

Curiously, something that's rarely mentioned is that temperatures in Greenland were higher in 1941 than they are today. Or that melt rates around Ilulissat were faster in the early part of the past century, according to a new study. And while the delegations first fly into Kangerlussuaq, about 100 miles to the south, they all change planes to go straight to Ilulissat -- perhaps because the Kangerlussuaq glacier is inconveniently growing.

I point this out not to challenge the reality of global warming or the fact that it's caused in large part by humans, but because the discussion about climate change has turned into a nasty dustup, with one side arguing that we're headed for catastrophe and the other maintaining that it's all a hoax. I say that neither is right. It's wrong to deny the obvious: The Earth is warming, and we're causing it. But that's not the whole story, and predictions of impending disaster just don't stack up.

Read it all. Relatedly, Jesse Walker will tell you how you too can win a Nobel Peace Prize. Let's cut to the chase:

My advice to anyone who wants to follow in the footsteps of Linus Pauling and the Dalai Lama is to fuse approaches two and three. Start an NGO devoted to murder and mayhem--something on the SPECTRE/Al Qaeda/Medellin Cartel model--and then agree to a truce. In theory, you could accomplish this in an afternoon, but to make a splash big enough to impress the Nobel judges it's probably best to bargain with something larger than the Nashville Police Department's hostage negotiations unit. Choose your target wisely.

Either that, or make a movie.

Of course, I happen to take the issue of climate change quite seriously. That's why I have hopped on the bandwagon for this idea. I continue to think that it represents the best mechanism by which each side in the global warming debate can call the bluff of the other and the best mechanism by which the objective truth about global climate change can come out, one way or the other and independent of the spin of personalities on each side of the debate who may have their egos too heavily invested in the argument to be zealous and conscientious seekers of truth.