Reflections on Al Gore's Nobel Peace Prize

It was inevitable that Al Gore would get the Nobel Peace Prize. The perfect irony is that the prize arrives in the week that a British judge found nine big errors in Gore's movie, although the judge agreed with the central premise of Gore's argument. Isn't that the way it goes now - the premise is correct, just ignore the inconvenient facts that are wrong? And isn't that the way the Nobel Peace Prize has often been? We like the storyline of Yasser Arafat making peace or the IAEA ensuring that countries aren't using nuclear energy for military purposes or the UN Peacekeeping forces actually keeping peace or Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho actually creating a peaceful resolution to the Vietnam War or Rigoberto Menchu using her life story in her fight for human rights in Guatemala. So who cares if the central facts are wrong? The intent is there or or we can hope it is there and that is all that matters. It rewards the perceived ideal rather than the actual. Hey, in 1926 and 1929 it was awarded to Briand and Kellogg whose 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact did so very much to outlaw war as an instrument of foreign policy. Who cares that it actually did no such thing - it's the intent that matters, not the reality.

In a note to the Powerline Blog, Jeff Jacoby makes a good point on the difference between the Peace Prize and the other prizes.

In all seriousness, it is worth nothing an important difference between the peace prize and the other Nobel prizes. The Swedish scholars and scientists who make up the committees that award the science, literature, and economics prizes routinely choose honorees whose greatest work was done years, even decades, earlier.

For instance, Max Planck's revolutionary paper on quantum theory was published in 1900; he received the Nobel Prize for it in 1918. Albert Einstein's discovery of the photoelectric effect -- a 1905 achievement -- earned him the Nobel Prize in physics in 1921. James Watson and Francis Crick figured out the structure of DNA in 1953; they didn't receive the Nobel Prize in medicine (with Maurice Williams) until 1962. The 1924 Nobel in medicine went to Willem Einthoven for discovering the mechanism of the electrocardiogram. He had done the work between 1895 and 1905.

This is why recipients of the Swedish Nobels are so often very old. Doris Lessing, this year's literature laureate, is 88. Two years ago, Thomas Schelling -- then 84 -- was a co-recipient of the economics prize for work he had done in 1960. As a rule, a scientist, author, or economist receives a Nobel Prize only after his work has been sifted and weighed and put to the test of time. Its importance has been established, often through years of peer review. As a result, the science, literature, and economics Nobels rarely end up looking foolish or naive.

By contrast, the Norwegian committee entrusted with awarding the peace prize comprises politicians, not scholars. Like politicians everywhere, the peace prize committee tends to be more interested in what the headlines will say today than in what historians will believe 20 -- or 100 -- years from now. And unlike their Swedish counterparts, the Norwegians often intend their choice to have a political impact. When they gave the prize to Jimmy Carter in 2002, the committee chairman emphasized that it was intended to be "a kick in the leg" of the Bush administration. This year's prize to Al Gore speaks for itself.

In short, the five Swedish Nobels are almost always rewards for true achievement. The one Norwegian Nobel too often smacks of an agenda. Maybe the peace laureates would be less risible if they were chosen in Stockholm too.

But it would be no fun if we actually had to wait 30 or 40 years to see if the efforts of the designated recipient had actually achieved any lasting peace.

In North Carolina, our state motto is "To be rather than to seem." The Nobel Peace Prize's motto has become "To seem is just as important as being."

Meanwhile, if the Committee is going to reward people fighting today to bring peace to troubled parts of the world, the Wall Street Journal has a list of 13 more deserving recipients.

And if you too want a Nobel Peace Prize, Jesse Walker has some advice on how you can do it: be a famous humanitarian like Mother Teresa, start an international organization, or just kill a lot of people and then say you'll stop.

And Bjorn Lomborg points out the difference between the recipients this year of the Peace Prize, the IPCC and Al Gore.

THIS YEAR'S Nobel Peace Prize justly rewards the thousands of scientists of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. These scientists are engaged in excellent, painstaking work that establishes exactly what the world should expect from climate change.

The other award winner, former US vice president Al Gore, has spent much more time telling us what to fear. While the IPCC's estimates and conclusions are grounded in careful study, Gore doesn't seem to be similarly restrained.

Gore told the world in his Academy Award-winning movie to expect 20-foot sea-level rises over this century. He ignores the findings of his Nobel co-winners, who conclude that sea levels will rise between only a half-foot and two feet over this century, with their best expectation being about one foot. That's similar to what the world experienced over the past 150 years.

Likewise, Gore agonizes over the accelerated melting of ice in Greenland and what it means for the planet, but overlooks the IPCC's conclusion that, if sustained, the current rate of melting would add just 3 inches to the sea-level rise by the end of the century. Gore also takes no notice of research showing that Greenland's temperatures were higher in 1941 than they are today.

The politician-turned-moviemaker loses sleep over a predicted rise in heat-related deaths. There's another side of the story that's inconvenient to mention: rising temperatures will reduce the number of cold spells, which are a much bigger killer than heat. The best study shows that by 2050, heat will claim 400,000 more lives, but 1.8 million fewer will die because of cold. Indeed, according to the first complete survey of the economic effects of climate change for the world, global warming will actually save lives.

Gore has helped the world to worry. Unfortunately, our attention is diverted from where it matters. Climate change is not the only problem facing the globe.

But hey, who cares about these minor differences? It's the intent that matters, not the reality.