The first Oslo is where Al Gore and the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts on the issue of global warming.
 What does global warming theory have to do with peace? Funny you should ask:
The Norwegian Nobel Committee said global warming “may induce large-scale migration and lead to greater competition for the Earth’s resources. Such changes will place particularly heavy burdens on the world’s most vulnerable countries. There may be increased danger of violent conflicts and wars, within and between states.”
The second Oslo — the same Oslo, actually — is home to the International Peace Research Institute, which actually compiles data relevant to the subject at hand. Idean Salehyan — apparently a firm believer in man-made global warming theory — used that data to measure the argument that global warming is likely to spark future wars:
First, aside from a few anecdotes, there is little systematic empirical evidence that resource scarcity and changing environmental conditions lead to conflict. In fact, several studies have shown that an abundanceof natural resources is more likely to contribute to conflict. Moreover, even as the planet has warmed, the number of civil wars and insurgencies has decreased dramatically. Data collected by researchers at Uppsala University and the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo shows a steep decline in the number of armed conflicts around the world. Between 1989 and 2002, some 100 armed conflicts came to an end, including the wars in Mozambique, Nicaragua, and Cambodia. If global warming causes conflict, we should not be witnessing this downward trend.
He also notes that arguing that climate change is a root cause of conflict lets tyrannical governments off the hook. Not that this would bother the crowd that has given the same prize to a terrorist like Yassir Arafat, an appeaser like Jimmy Carter, and a fraud like Rigoberta Menchú.
The Nobel Peace Prize — the equivalent of a Che t-shirt for the famous and influential.
See? It wasn’t my fault. We were just having a hot summer in Berlin and Poland was right there…
From a BBC report on October 11, 2002 on the Peace Prize Award to Jimmy Carter:
From today’s report on the Peace Prize Award to Al Gore:
Yasir Arafat…Jimmy Carter…Al Gore…Rigoberta Menchu…Le Duc Tho, yeah, what an honorable group.
Side point: the Nobel people also give out prizes in Physics and Chemistry and presumably work with the Bank of Sweden people who give out the Economics prize. If climate change theory is so well established and so all-fired important, why doesn’t the Nobel apparatus award the IPCC one of the technical prizes that are actually related to the theory?
I’m still waiting for the increased violence and conflict, widespread starvation and famine (in the U.S.), mass displacement, and all-out yuckiness that, in the 60s, was predicted would happen in the 80s.
Because of overpopulation.
And the infamous onset of a new ice age in the 70s? Caused by burning hydrocarbons (particulates this time, not invisible gas).
So given that China and India are building coal-fired power plants like gangbusters, maybe the soot from all that coal will offset our evil carbon-dioxide production.
Or maybe we’ll all sweat to death like those people in the marathons. http://www.climate-skeptic.com/2007/10/the-studies-do-.html
What pisses me off is that when AGW is shown to not exactly be so much of a factor after all, the current hysteria and denouncing of skeptics will disappear down the memory hole. No way will the press sheepishly admit they were wrong. No effin’ way.
We all know people get crankier when it’s hot out. Heck, about 20 years ago, some genius proposed cutting urban crime by giving inner city families an air conditioner.
It’s kind of cool if you ask me cause they could have used the award like usual to empower some syphilitic anti-American Marxist and given them a Voice but they gave it to someone who already has no lack of media sycophants so all in all this is a pretty good outcome, and freights the global warming thinger with obfuscatory peace nonsense.
In 2002 when the UN was debating Iraq, the Nobel Peace Prize guys gave the prize to Dhimmi Carter. They said:
I think they were trying to kick George Bush in the leg, or pee all over it.
Yes, God forbid the Nobel Foundation should consider giving the Peace Prize to someone like George Bush that merely toppled a totalitarian regime and brought the the country it’s first ever democratic elections… or who freed a country full of women from the burqua and made it possible for them to get an education… Doubt those things will have any effect on peace in the world in the foreseeable future..
And the fact that they actually weighed Al Gore’s achievements against a nominee like Irena Sendler that embodies the spirit of resistance to tyranny, self sacrifice, bravery in the face of evil, humanitarianism, compassion… and actually chose Gore??? It boggles the mind and destroys my previously held belief that some things , like the Nobel Peace Prize, went deeper than pop culture politics..
Really, this award just casts the Third World brown peopleses as frightening teeming rapacious sweaty hordes I think. I don’t see how that helps foster a feeling of internationalist partnership. It’s mostly just awfully condescending.
“may induce large-scale migration and lead to greater competition for the Earth’s resources. Such changes will place particularly heavy burdens on the world’s most vulnerable countries. There may be increased danger of violent conflicts and wars, within and between states.â€Â
Shouldn’t Mel Gibson have won for Mad Max?
This makes my brain hurt, badly. I guess what infuriates me the most is how anyone who questions the shoddy science will now be rhetorically tea-bagged with the “former VP AND Nobel Peace Prize Winner algore”, and they will use this as some validation of the BS he spews. Who next? Michael Moore? Sean Penn?
Didn’t Bill Clinton want a Nobel Peace prize more than anything in the whole wide world? This has got to drive Team Clinton crazy.
Unfortunately, his Jew-baiting meltdown didn’t happen until years later. And the Nobel committee probably has, like, a statute of limitations or something.
Not that Mel couldn’t do a remake, mind you…
It goes more like this I think JD. The U.S. is the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, therefore the U.S. is the world’s greatest threat to Peace. (they have to start qualifying this with “per capita,” or not, really)
Myself I would still like to buy the world a Coke, but I’m just genocidal like that.
JD: The answer to the Al Gore title is “A Nobel Peace Prize still doesn’t justify the science.”
Great post, Karl!
[…] Protein Wisdom’s Karl tells “A Tale of Two Oslos” […]
This really is a great post, but my internalized psychologizer tells me that facts and logic will have little impact on how this plays out. That said, I think Brian at #5 makes the best lemonade so far.
Today AGW officially jumped the shark. (The Nobel Peace Prize did that twenty years ago).
Incidentally Brian, the committees of scientists who give out the Chemistry, Physics etc prizes usually wait twenty to thirty years before they honor someone’s work. The committee of politicians who hand out the Peace Prize are, amazingly enough, more concerned with yesterdays headlines.
The committee’s reaching so far down the historical doomsayer ranks for this jetset messianic psycho exposes a worldwide crisis-level lack of elite volcano god sacrifice theorists.
Ground floor, people.
Male virgins into First World volcanos, I think is the string on this popper.
Don’t internalize me, bro.
[random emoticon]
Wrong, psychologizer. There is no bottom.
Regards,
Ric
Ah, yes! The eternal sub basement of abasement.
#5, to answer your question, it’s because Earth Sciences are still regarded as the bastard child of the hard sciences. Only one prize has been awarded for Earth and/or Environmental sciences, 1995 in Chemistry IIRC for the discovery and remediation of the Antarctic Ozone hole.
No prizes were awarded for:
Plate Tectonics
Thermohaline Circulation (what drives the ocean’s mixing)
Rossby Waves and other large-scale atmospheric formations (what makes modern weather forcasting possible)
The discovery of hydrothermal vents and chemolithotropich biosystems in the ocean’s abyss.
The discovery and description of El Nino/La Nina.
The principles of radiocarbon dating.
The climate work of the IPCC and other groups.
Also, in physics, Chaos Theory was developed by a meteorologist.
Yep. Instead of an apple, he had all those butterflies buzzing around.
Regards,
Ric
Speaking of Swedish discernment, any idea what this means?
Plate Techtonics and radiocarbon dating not getting the Nobel Nod is kind of ungood.
Never could get into radiocarbon dating. Radiocarbon never seems to have anything interesting to talk about, and couldn’t talk if it did.
Of course, sex is out of the question as well, so what’s the POINT.
As for Plate Techtonics – I saw those guys in a nightclub in Toronto once back in ’93 or ’94, they were pretty good until the drummer spontaneously combusted. They never really recovered.
Amos Oz is another leftist “root causes” advocate, who is absolutely sure that the way to turn the Palis up sweet is give them lots of goodies.
Regards,
Ric
Ho, boy, ric, you ain’t kiddin’.
Three guesses who gets to do all of the “painful compromising.”
Anybody that comes up with the idea of dumping spoonfuls of water on a fire to put it out needs to stay away from knives.
How do you compromise with “kill all the Jooooooooooooos”. Do you agree to just kill most of them? Some of them?
what is the more creepy is giving that to 11th graders as state-blessed thought and then saying all EU nations should do likewise. They’re fucking Swedes. Who gives two reindeer shits what they think?
I do hope Mr. Oz’s neighborhood fire department is armed with something more than a fistful of silverware.
Dear God, the vapidity of these goo-goos (to use the old Mike Royko term) is just staggering.
Oz is operating on the loose Ghandi principle that considers the moral imperatives of your cause against the morality of your opponent. What he and others of his ilk fail to realise is that the opponent is not Colonial Britain or Southern Law Enforcment but
a fanaticals’ contruct that thinks nothing of death and is demonstrably willing and eagar to commit mass killing to accomplish its goals. Those factors he eliminates in favor of real estate are the essence of the fanatics imperative.
All of them. Oz has no idea how dangerous he is to the people of
Israel.
two reindeer shits about what they think about the Middle East is what I meant.
The Gramscian long march has not yet reached the hard science committees. Also, it might be that the older scientists on the committees tend to reward their peers who came up with the radical theories when they were young and radical as well.
By that notion, Hansen, Mann, Gore et al should get their prizes in about thirty years, just as the Ice Giants are back and crushing Oslo and Stockholm.
(I think the best reflection on Gore’s prize came from Paco in Tim Blairs comments who suggested Al’s contribution to peace was losing the 2000 election.)
In no time the word “Peace” will be dropped from the description, making algore a “Nobel Prize Winner”.
What Al Gore is really doing is wanting to spend a lot of money to wage preemptive peace. There’s no real imminent threat of global-warming-related conflict. Get your head around that one. Laying down in front of an open refrigerator helps I think.
Yeah, but she just saved some Jooz. Big Al’s saving the whole fucking planet.
happyfeet – The AGW alarmists are terrorizing me with all their rhetoric, demands, protests, and other bullshit. They are actually getting laws changed based on junk science. I know I’m not alone. There’s your global warming related conflict right there.
Yes. I just had the most disturbing IM conversation … here’s his side:
Have a nice weekend, happyfeet.
You too, Techie. It’s less than an hour and a half away. That guy is a good friend by the way, I just don’t know where to start. What I would like I think is not so much a factsheet of talking points with respect to the shakiness of global warming theory and practice, but just a list of reasonable questions a devotee of the theory should be able to answer, inasmuch as they are advocating for a wholesale and expensive change in the way “people view/use things.”
hf:
Here ya go.
happyfeet —
http://www.junkscience.com
To be fair, there have been a few decent Peace Prize winners. Norman Borlaug. Lech Walesa. George Marshall. The only halfway decent one in recent years has been Médecins Sans Frontières. They probably wouldn’t win today, given that their founder has shown himself to be not a moonbat.
that’s a good start you guys – I am going to have a little script come Monday ready
Norman Borlaug is very cool. My Republican biology teacher in highschool made us spend a week on him.
Borlaug probably saved the lives of a billion people and no one knows his name. Too bad he didn’t have Anna Nicole’s plastic surgeon.
hf,
Ixnay on the Republican biology – that’s very closely held. Do you realize what would happen if everyone were allowed to live to 300? Especially with that “retention of the energy of a 25 year” old part.
My bad.
He quit teaching right after – something about going off to college with one of his students. I don’t think it worked out, but he was a great guy.
Happyfeet, go over to Harry’s Place and call up the comments on the global warming / Gore’s peace prize post. One of the commenters there had the best summary of the skeptical approach to “climate change” I can recall seeing.
Regards,
Ric
“Next you’ll tell me that when we Republicans force people to drink poisoned water and breathe dirty air, that they won’t just flock to the polls to vote for our guys to show their gratitude.”
That’s what I woulda said.
Ah, here you go. Look for:
Posted by Johan W at October 11, 2007 10:22 AM
Regards,
Ric
– So then when climate change turns out to be a natural phenomena dating back, say, to the formation of the earth, does Gore give the prize back? Is this another example of fake but accurate? Will no one help Pelosi get the beatniks off her lawn?
Yep. Right after Walter Duranty gives back his Pulitzer.
Gore give the prize back?
Sure. Right after Rigoberta _Menchú gives hers back.
Ric – I went – the post is more on the judgment in England about the disclaimer required for An Inconvenient Truth I guess? That’s what I found – I bookmarked it.
This is interesting kind of cause my company is going “green” – our office will be getting our copy of the Gore movie in the mail sometime soon from what I understand. I think you can start a countdown for a about maybe a year after we get that movie and when happyfeet finds something better to do with his one God-given life. We’ll see. Sometimes follow-through is not what it could be on both my and the company’s part.
Got it – thanks Ric.
Yup. Johan’s my guy.
happyfeet, I don’t know what you do for a living, but Houston is screaming for people in everything from sorting sand to nuclear spin resonance. The climate sux and the hurricanes blow, but the money’s good, and maybe we all need to start letting the Coasts stew in their own juices. Just a thought, mind you.
Regards,
Ric
Ric – Thanks for that link. I like Johan, in a totally non-ghey way.
I will be spending the week between Christmas and New Years in Houston.
hf,
You might also want to inform your friend that NASA’s climate data had a Y2K bug not corrected until this year.
And that the National Climatic Data Center (part of NOAA) tried to suppress the locations of the surface temperature monitoring stations that collect the basic temperature data — some of which failed to meet the NCDC’s requirements, or were revealed to be in ridiculously unsuitable locations — on hot black asphalt, next to trash burn barrels, beside heat exhaust vents, even attached to hot chimneys and above outdoor grills.
You might add that less than half of all peer-reviewed papers published on the ISI Web of Science database from 2004 to February 2007 endorse AGW theory.
Not quite Gore’s “consensus.”
For that matter, since 2001, the IPCC has reduced its overall estimate of mankind’s effect oÂÂn the climate by 25 percent. The IPCC also has been forced to halve its predictions for sea-level rise by 2100. As the science supposedly gets better, the amount of warming decreases.
Thanks Karl – This is great stuff, and the guy actually is not a closed-minded sort, so who knows… a little seed of doubt maybe?
Borlaug probably saved the lives of a billion people and no one knows his name.
He’d never win today. To the current enviro movement saving a billion human lives would be considered a bad thing.
hf, Bjorn Lomborg is a good source, too. While he believes that AGW is a problem he reasons that our resources are better spent solving other problems (lack of clean drinking water for much of the world, etc.). Here is one example.
Sorry for the late-night drive-by. Travelling.
Will there be a sign at the TN border – “Home of Al Gore Nobel Winner – we still wouldn’t vote for him.” ?
[…] A Tale Of Two Oslos [Karl] , and Cambodia. If global warming causes conflict, we should not be witnessing this downward trend. He […]
True. Algore probably isn’t syphilitic..
Swe Agreed, he looks more like he’s got a thyroid problem.
Thanks boys146af657cfb9c074a6a1bd71a86c12fc