Gore joins Arafat (October 12, 2007)

Al Gore has won the Nobel Peace prize, for efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change. Two things seem terribly wrong with this selection:

1. The Peace Prize is supposed to be about peace. What does climate change have to do with peace?
2. Gore has knowingly disseminated incorrect information (See also here). He claimed ice core data supports his case, but to make this claim he had to reverse the labels on his graph. Almost as bad, he has denied that the Medieval Warm Period existed.

I cannot feel good about the Nobel Peace Prize. It was bad enough to give it to Yassar Arafat, one of the worst war-mongers in modern history, but the argument there was that Arafat was supposedly really trying. In this case I do not see the argument. Gore has raised consciousness of an issue, but he did it by lying, and the issue is not about peace anyway.

I wish there were a way to dissociate the "Nobel" name from the Peace Prize. The other Nobel prizes seem to go to deserving people.