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239 comments on DrumBeat: October 12, 2007

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jaha on October 12, 2007 - 4:16pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Giving Hansen the prize would have been my choice for this years prize, as the theme seems to be AGW, but that's not the way the system works. The peace prize is a tool for the nobel comittee to highlight something they feel is important, and that is in some way related to peace. Last year it was microcredit and economic development among the extremely poor, before that nuclear proliferation.

This year it's global warming. I have not seen Gore's movie, but a lot of people have. Gore is very famous, and the comittee decided that awarding the prize to him would get the most bang for the buck when it comes to publicity. The fact that he is just an ordinary politician and that the IPCC seems to be always hopelessly outdated doesn't matter, because most people doesn't know that.

Personally I believe Norway should give the prize back to sweden, the reason we got to hand it out in the first place was that Norway hadn't started a war in modern times, and it probably seemed like a nice gesture towards the Swe-Nor union's "little brother". After Norway went to war in Iraq and Afghanistan I don't see how we can credibly hand out this prize.

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ilargi on October 12, 2007 - 4:39pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

After Norway went to war in Iraq and Afghanistan I don't see how we can credibly hand out this prize.

Well, it is only fitting that the prize is awarded by the wrong people to the wrong people. That is an excellent way to make sure the wrong message is delivered.

Fortunately, I'm not the only one who sees the perversity.

Sharon Astyk wrote this morning:

Well, Al Gore and the IPCC won the Nobel Prize, something I'm more than a little ambivalent about. On the one hand, they both did an enormous amount to draw attention to climate change, and that's really important.

On the other hand, in re: Al Gore, I'm reminded of what Tom Lehrer said when Henry Kissinger was given the Nobel Peace Prize, that it made political satire obsolete.

I mean the man was a participant in the Clinton policies that, among other things, allowed half a million kids in Iraq to die from sanctions.

But then again, I would have thought "never was a Nazi" was a criteria for Pope, and that's clearly untrue. And obviously the "never was a mass murderer" bar for the Nobel Peace Prize, if it ever existed, is long since broken. Probably my standards are too high.

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