Congrats to Al Gore on co-winning the prize this year!

More later.

oohi
ashu

Dear Mega...

Compared to these five drunken roosters, you are enlightened.  

The link from PaulMurice shows only his grades not Gore's ! If you don't believe, check out the link posted by him.

Now that he's won the prize, perhaps he'll turn down the AC and switch to low energy light bulbs.

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Hey there Samsara, good to see you back. Have a good weekend.

Dear Goodjob,

I suppose "algorism" ideologue has caught on with you as you are more interested in proving your psedo wisdom as opposed to getting to the facts.

 Here is the link as you seem more interested in "gory" details:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A37397-2000Mar18?language=printer

But his grades are beside the point. Al Gore doesnt represent anyone but himself. Global warming is such a speculative idea which he has turned into a propaganda in order to redeem himself after his bitter loss in Florida.

Best,

PM

A couple on further thoughts on the subject in light of some of the points raised:

(1) I am personally not a big fan of Gore and don't identify with him on all the issues. Although on the environment, global warming,( man made or natural), climate changes and the impact of all this on people's lives, my views are closer to his than lets say those in complete denial of climate change. I see them as no different from the alarmists. Gore, while prone to occasional exaggeration, has been able to back up his arguments with science and data. Global warming, man made or otherwise is happening - even Bush seems to have accepted this going by what he's trying to do these days.

(2) Running for President: He's not my favorite on this account and I seriously doubt he will do such a thing. He has attained national and international fame now as a result of this and going back into electoral politics might  undo  the immense credibility the Nobel gives him.

(3) The naysayers: There will always be those saying someone didn't deserve it or digging up dirt about people they dont like. He has impacted environment related policy for almost 30 years now whether it was talking about nuclear energy and waste in the 70s and 80s, getting Clinton to sign Kyoto in the 90s and his awareness about climate change in the 00s. This prize was not given for the movie he made. For that he got the academy awards.  I agree there might be more deserving people, but I have yet to hear a sensible argument as to why his work is undeserving of it. It appears many people are bitter simply because they don't like Gore or think his work on environmental policy is bogus whereas the reality is  there have been few people more influential than Gore on environmental policy in the last 10-20 years. Whether these were his own ideas or him pushing the ideas of others forward, he's been at the front and center of the debate for long enough to have credibility at the policy level IMO.

(4) Nobel Committee Activism: Clearly they have given him a platform to further influence environmental policy in the US  which makes me wonder if that was really what they were up to from the get go. I guess we will never know but they certainly seem to have succeeded given how much the American media has talked about the environment and climate in the last 12 hours since the decision was announced.

Just my thoughts.

"Clearly they have given [him] a platform to further influence environmental policy in the US..."
 

I agree with Captain_Haddock on this one. Prestigious award such as Nobel Peace Prize is being used to make a political statement. Sad, isn't it?

Congratulations Gore, and IPCC. I am not surprised to see some negative comments in here. Most of the time every great achievement faces controversy , no big deal what other says; he diserves it, and he got it. You know what I found real funny from the comments above, some of the gentlemen were assuming the members of  The Nobel committee must have been drunk while making decision. Common guys wake up! we have our own right to say anything we want, that doesn't mean we have to make stupid remarks. lol. I am not Gore's follower either, but I do congratulate him and do appreciate his efforts to bring awareness in global warming. Once again, congratulations to Gore & IPCC for their achievement.

wow.nepal

You guys are drinking something. He was awarded Nobel peace prize for taking the initiative in creating the Internet not the environmental crap. email me if you need the source

I'm stunned by nepali community's perceptions on global warming issues.

बदाले जो गर्यो कम् हुन्छ त्यो सर्ब सम्मत, छैन शन्करको नङ्गा मगन्ते भेश निन्दित।
             I dont think Al Gore is doing too much initiatives to save the earth. He just made a movie related to the protection of environment. Thats it. but why the world is getting blindfolded. I dont think AL Gore deserves the candidacy for the noble peace prize. This is bizarre. So I think  Kabi Siromani Lekhnath Poudyaal is 100% right in making his poem Naitik Dristanta. If u guys have read it. Have your say.

 

Last year, soon after Yunus won the Peace prize, there was no shortage of
bitter critics of him and of his microcredit programs even in Bangladesh.

Some people dismissed the idea that microcredit can "put poverty in museums someday".

Controversies are nothing new when it comes to Nobel Peace and Lit
Prizes. [Quiz: How many Nobel Lit Prize winners' books have you
read?]

At best, this choice reflects the collective judgment of the selection committee. At worst, it looks like their caving in to something they
want others to believe in too.
 
After all, this is a Nobel Peace  (in the eyes of a group of Norwegians who solicit recommendations from previous winners) Prize, and NOT one of the Nobel Physics Prizes. The concept of 'peace' for this award is not clear-cut . . . previous winners have been Yasir Arafat, Henry Kissinger, Jimmy Carter, the Dalai Lama . . .and so on.

That said, here's my prediction for this year's economics prize: Robert Barro.

oohi
ashu
 

I am completely appalled and chagrin and to a certain extent shocked for the denial of the fact which is actually occurring.

Paul Maurice: What's ur purpose of bringing his University grades up here?? Does that change his effects and his efforts on the issue for which people around the world are getting more and more conscious. This is just a smear tactics of the spokes person on the issues which u don't  like. I guess people on this thread are intelligent  than that ( which I seriously doubt of Samsara, no offence ) . FYI, not all the nobel prize winners are Harvard grads; they probably havent even drink a coffee in harvard square.
Well neither I am environmentalist nor the scientist. So hence i gotta go with most of the scientist agreed on. Well you can post some of the names of the scientist who dont agree. But the fact is, there are "some" not "all" or not "lots of". Well dont know much about them. But, hey there are people who still say world is flat and there are people is US who say world was made in 6 days some 6000 yrs back. I wonder which I category they fall into.

Then coming to hypocrisy thing. He told you to do as much as you can. He didnt say that u cant live ur life. He was vice president and is a rich man. If he wont have big house, plane than, who will. But the fact that he is raising the awareness on the issues, which in fact he is doing for 30 yrs, on a topic which is so hard to grasp even for the intellects is very endearing and in my opinion he deserves it.

Robert Barro? I am not sure if he'll win this year's economics prize. Barro, in the past, has defended some of Bush's economic policy, and this very fact might work against him. Nobel Prize committee, for some odd reason, tend to support leftist (just my opinion--I hope I am wrong this year).

My prediction for this year's economics prize: Paul Krugman.

HEY MISTER MATRIX BABYMANIAX HEHEHAHAH! I LOVE YOU OKAY.

Only if you have a huge stake in the black gold i.e. fossil fuel business or anything that threatens your personal interest why in the world would you be denying global warming? Or is it because it is so much against the Republican New World Order agenda? I am sure you are a commoner like me who does not get to hobnob with the elite few who get to run the lives of the sub-privileged to every third world citizen.

About Al Gore school grades, it does not matter. Your Mr. President himself accepts in self-deprecating humor at college commencements that he has wallowed in for much of his life.

If you actually rent "An inconvenient truth" next time instead of one of your can-hardly-wait Shah Rukh Khan flicks, you will see that the presentations set forth in the documentary strives to make as much scientific and statistical sense as possible not that every idea expressed in the movie is perfect in a do-no-wrong manner.

In recent memory, it was the denial of the existence of UFO now it probably is the dangers of global warming. Go figure.

Krugman or William J. Baumol should be awarded the Nobel economics prize...Methinks Krugman may be snubbed as he has often been considered too young, rebellious and brash by most of the senior academicians around (Just like Mundell was in his earlier days...However, he did sing "I did it my way" on the victory podium that day!!).  Baumol is on the brink of his career: still at NYU and I had the opportunity to meet up with the fellow a coupla years ago.  IMHO, looks like Baumol has the highest chance so far...I could be wrong but to each his own!!  Also, What about Greenspan for his role as the Fed chief??  He could defntly end up being the dark-horse here.

Wow! we have some of our own promising sajhaites coalescing into a parallel Nobel Committee. If Jharna Bajracharya could prevent Indian invasion of Nepal by persuading the British government and military forces to provide a stand-off  before the conflict even takes root, then you guys could award the nominal Nobel Peace prize to her.

I know I am completely drenched in this Jharna.

Jharana and the Nobel prize?  No way.  I'd rather give it to someone more deserving: perhaps model Kohinoor for her becoming an "ani" (female monk) anyday!!  hahahaha

How 'bout nominate Girija and Prachanda

Sure, there are people who do NOT like Gore at all.

That's fine.

But Gore's been raising awareness about environmental issues since he '80s (see way below).

An extract from Wikipedia entry on Gore:

Source:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore

""Gore was one of the first politicians to grasp the seriousness of climate change and to call for a reduction in emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouses gases. He held the first congressional hearings on the subject in the late 1970s."^[59] During his tenure in Congress, Gore co-sponsored hearings on toxic waste in 1978–79, and hearings on global warming in the 1980s.^[60] On 14 May 1989 while still a Senator, Gore published an editorial in the Washington Post which argued that, "Humankind has suddenly entered into a brand new relationship with the planet Earth. The world's forests are being destroyed; an enormous hole is opening in the ozone layer. Living species are dying at an unprecedented rate." ^[61]

On Earth Day 1994, Gore launched the GLOBE program, an education and science activity that, according to Forbes magazine, "made extensive use of the Internet to increase student awareness of their environment".^[62]

In the late 1990s, Gore strongly pushed for the passage of the Kyoto Treaty, which called for reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.^[63][64] He was opposed by the Senate, which passed unanimously (95-0) the Byrd-Hagel Resolution (S. Res. 98),^[65] which stated the sense of the Senate was that the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol that did not include binding targets and timetables for developing as well as industrialized nations or "would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States".^[66] On November 12, 1998, Gore symbolically signed the protocol. Both Gore and Senator Joseph Lieberman indicated that the protocol would not be acted upon in the Senate until there was participation by the developing nations.^[67] The Clinton Administration never submitted the protocol to the Senate for ratification."