Friday, October 12, 2007

There have sure been more ridiculous Nobel Peace Prizes

Some have been flatly idiotic. Arafat getting one is a prime example.

This one seems just a little forced. Seems to me it is a stretch to suggest that mitigation of the effects of global warming is a peace initiative. But that is a call for the Scandinavians, who do not seem easily embarrassed by many of their choices.

As for me, I am really happy for Gore the individual; he has rebounded from his disappointments in a political career, to find a new one as a semi-competent polemicist, maybe actually a really good one. I shut his movie off once it made its first fatuously false argument (as I did with another much-praised 'documentary', this one Canadian, 'The Corporation'). But false arguments can be good tools and they have worked well for Gore.

I do lean to believing that we do need to respond to quite serious concerns that human behaviour is generating climate changes that may have some bad effects (and possibly some good ones - not all change is bad - in fact I would have thought leftists would not have knee-jerk reactions against change, but they do actually seem to).

Gore has done nothing to move me in the direction of believing this - in fact he makes me want to be a contrarian. Meanwhile, the IPCC has done good work, though I cannot see what it has to do with Peace.

One amusing theme every year - the media prattle on about who has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Well, the collection of people able to submit nominations for the Peace Prize is roughly in Canada like those able once to serve as guarantors for your passport application. So surely eBay could create a market for those interested in being nominated? Or has it? (I do not plan to check.)

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