Al Gore, Climate Change, and the Nobel "Peace" Prize

This week Al Gore accepted his half of the Nobel Peace Prize for his and the IPCC's work on "man-made climate change."

My first thought when the organization announced the prize earlier this year was, "what does climate change have to do with peace?" After reading the text of the prize several times awaiting divine inspiration, I still don't know. Perhaps they assumed anthropogenic global warming stands a high probability of creating tensions likely to lead to war.

As for anthropogenic global warming itself, I personally have my doubts and am honestly disappointed that the media doesn't seem to even question it. It makes the limited debates prior to the Iraq invasion in 2003 look like 1968 America by comparison! I am daily inundated with printed and television news pieces, advertisements, and documentaries that religiously proclaim the causes of global warming: cars, planes, pigs, cows, power plants, ships... (but apparently flatulent kangaroos do not contribute to our ensuing demise).

However the opposite is not true. I rarely hear any statements that contradict the anthropogenic theory. I couldn't even rattle off the leading theories on the cause(s) of the last Ice Age, the Little Ice Age, the Medieval Warming, or the Holocene Climatic Optimum. Maybe others don't, but I find that odd. When I see a thunderstorm approaching, or feel the earth vibrating beneath me here in California, I know with certainty the causes based upon experience and education.

Yet I am supposed to swallow without a cry of "but" that this current period of global warming is different from all other climate changes in history. I'm allowed to study these historical periods to my heart's content and the depth of my post-collegiate pockets, but not allowed to use any educational knowledge I acquire in the process to judge the current climate change (or so it seems from my layman's chair). Besides, if I do gather the gall to cry "but," I am obviously an idiot, right-wing nut job, a consultant on Exxon's payroll, or all of the above.

Let's face it though. Greenland is called "Green" land for a reason. When the Vikings first landed there, it was a wonderfully warm place, not the frozen locale we've known in our short lifespans and those of our forefathers for a mere few centuries. In fact, the Little Ice Age directly contributed to the failure of Norse colonization efforts in the "New World." And like that failure centuries ago, climate changes can have positive effects in some areas and negatives in others. Colder here, warmer there. Wetter there, drier here. Better here, worse there. Personally I (and according to archaeological and historical evidence humans as a whole) prefer warm periods to cold periods.

Perhaps today's warming is anthropogenic. Perhaps we as a society are at fault. My problem is that we're not even allowed to debate it. Gore and others of his ilk publicly treat detractors or even those who simply want discussion as if they just claimed to speak with Martians or spent the night in an Oregon forest with Bigfoot. It's academically acceptable to question string theory or ask if FDR possessed foreknowledge of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. Heck, I can probably even question the accepted causes of the Holocene Climatic Optimum. But obviously only an absolute moron would question the causes of this particular global warming period.

Well, in that case, call me a moron.