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Saturday,
September 22, 2007
Although
it was a few years ago, my lunch with a California Condor, on a rocky
ledge in the Grand Canyon has just been added to the Hiking
Grand Canyon section of my blog.
 Lunch
with Condor #19
- [November
11, 2004] It is Veteran's Day, and there are no classes, which
means I don't need to stick around in my office and can, instead, go
hiking. It was cool day, but not cold. There was sun
early, but quite a bit of overcast later. And, despite some
early missteps, it was a day to remember. . .
Read the full story
- Lunch
with Condor #19 in front of the Battleship
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Sunday,
October 14, 2007
 Nobel
Peace Politics Prize
- I am
sure that the question is being asked far and wide, if not across the
globe, then at least across the net - "How can it be that Al Gore
is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize?" Exactly what has he done
to promote peace? I really can't think of a single thing.
Even a more broadly countenanced standard of
"humanitarianism" eludes the former veep. After all,
did he use the bully pulpit of his Vice Presidency to rail against the
genocide in Rwanda?
Well, no. Has he been touring the world raising consciousness
about the human tragedy of Darfur?
No, but maybe it's on his "to do" list.
Certainly, Al Gore is not in the same category as last year's winner, Muhammad
Yunus, who won for his pioneering efforts to create a
micro-loaning bank that has helped the desperately poor in
Bangladesh pull themselves out of poverty and, in making meaningful
productive contributions, raise the standard of living in their
localities. That is humanitarian. Indeed, the Nobel announcement
for Gore cites "[his]
efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made
climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are
needed to counteract such change."
Since everything that Dr. Yunus has been doing for the past thirty
years has been to help people increase their contribution to
"man-made climate change," one is left to wonder whether Dr.
Yunus' prize will have to be returned.
Upon hearing of Gore's selection, my spouse wrote to me and asked,
"Does the Nobel Peace Prize mean nothing?" to which I
responded, "Yes, it means nothing." Here's a list of
what is wrong with the Nobel committee's statement:
Measures
are needed to counteract changing climate.
No. Absolutely not. That is the point that is made, over
and over again, by Czech President Václav Klaus, most recently in a speech
before the United Nations.
Man-made
sources are significant contributors to climate change.
There is no
evidence for this. Most of the warming that has occurred over
the last hundred years occurred before 1940, before humans made any
significant contribution to CO2 in the atmosphere.
Al
Gore is helping to "disseminate" knowledge about man-made
climate change.
No. He is disseminating his own message, but that he continues
to duck debate proposals on this topic (see JunkScience
and DemandDebate) tells me
that he isn't interested in clearing the air on this topic.
So, let's call this prize what it really is - The Nobel Politics
Prize. Indeed, if Gore gets his way, in terms of a command and
control system that crushes economic progress and development, he'll
make Rachel Carson's contribution to world-wide
genocide seem like small potatoes. Which is probably what
we'll be eating.
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