Surprised by CNN on Gore

Unless you travel via Horse and Carriage like our Amish friends or have been floating down the Amazon for the last week, you've heard the news that former Vice-President Al Gore has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Pundits and Analysts across all media forms are dissecting this award along predictable lines:

1. So what, look at past NPP winners
2. What does Global Warming have to do with World Peace?
3. What about nominee, seriously, Rush Limbaugh?
4. What about Al's above average energy consumption?
5. Despite his foibles, isn't this a worthy recognition of his exhaustive efforts?
6. Is Al Gore's science even accurate?

I must confess that while expecting this sort of talk from "insiders", I was just bracing for yet another mass acceptance of propagandist intentions from liberal leaning, academic elites. Until I saw this headline:

"CNN.com readers sound off on Gore, Nobel Peace Prize".

Curious, yet instinctively dubious, I clicked through. Note a few key entries - from CNN, not FoxNews:

Roy Woodcock of Rochester, Washington

What a disgraceful choice. Al Gore has promoted bad science and dishonesty, but done nothing to promote peace. I must conclude that his selection is based on pure politics.

(Cbass Comment: Well, in fact, the Peace Prize is selected by Politicians. Unlike the Prizes for many other disciplines, such as Science and Medicine, it tends to be awarded to current leaders based on global perceptions of their current efforts. Other Nobel committees feature discipline specific academics and practitioners who review the PROVEN contribution OVER TIME of a particular idea, discovery or research finding. This Prize, while sometimes given to positive reformers, is intrinsically designed to be a political prize.)

Chris Smith of Bexley, Ohio

Al Gore? Nobel Peace Prize? Wow, that really degrades my image of that prize. Why not give it to Michael Moore while we're at it? How sad.

(Cbass Comment: Great and original comment! I think the burden falls to the Nobel Committee to show how Al Gore's work is much more than that of spokesman and polemicist. Perhaps Michael Moore could get the prize for Medicine. Oh wait, that's right, the prize for medicine goes to someone how has made a lasting impact upon the field.)

Phillip Bernard of La Grange, Illinois

The peace prize should be reserved for furthering peace in our world. The work Mr. Gore has done is conjectured quasi-science. His research does not employ a scientific method, otherwise it would have been considered for the prize for science.

(Cbass Commnet: Another good observation. Why isn't this the Prize for Science? Probably because it would never pass the first test outlined above. One really does need to show how this is related to Peace, however - and I mean something beyond the cliché, "In 100 years, the world will be so hot and so disrupted in weather that nations will battle for water and the few remaining stable environs". This sort of predictive award is a bit of reverse of the "wait and see" attitude of the other Prize Committees.)

Matthew Whitley of Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Over the last decades, the Nobel Peace Prize has increasingly become a laughingstock. That Al Gore of all people should be honored this year is another nail in the Nobel Peace Prize's coffin of legitimacy and relevance. Much like the prize for literature, the peace prize is becoming nothing more than a political bauble awarded to some political insider advocating the cause of the week.

Al Gore has been "working" for climate change for an enormous period of four whole years, coincidentally discovering this new passion right when his political career was slouching to its end. The Nobel Committee actually expects us to believe that, out of all human organizations working for peace and the improvement of the human condition, Al Gore's paltry four-year media circus of climate change advocacy is the most significant achievement we have to show for ourselves?

How ridiculous. I'm embarrassed for the legacy of the Nobel Prizes, I'm embarrassed for my country, and, if I were Al Gore, I'd be embarrassed to stand in front of the world claiming to be a worthy, legitimate recipient of the peace prize.

(Cbass Comment: Pretty much stands on it's own.)

Michael Chiu of ??

The Nobel Peace Prize should have gone to the Monks in Myanmar. I guess leading peaceful demonstrations for freedom and democracy and consequently suffering arrests, torture, and death is not enough though.

(Cbass Comment: But they have personal motivations. . .)

Just when I think we've all gone crazy - I see some glimmerings of hope in sanity.

On Principle,

CBass