Al's Excellent Adventure

Hey, did you hear that Al Gore won a Nobel Peace Prize for his 'documentary' and work for the issue of climate change? I understand a person with passion and focus on one area of the problems of the world. I don't understand what Al Gore's passion about climate change has to do with peace.

There is no connection, of course. Unfortunately the Nobel Peace Prize has been reduced to nothing short of an award to promote leftist thought and actions in our world, especially if it is seen as a slap at the U.S., and in particular recently, a slap at President Bush. Those Nordic socialists, so predictable, aren't they? The awarding committee is comprised of politicians, not scientists.

The Nobel Prize is still quite legitimate in areas like medicine and those of true scientific process and thought. Let me be clear there. Also, let me be clear that, yes, there is climate change. The degree and the cause and solutions are what is debated by all arenas.

Sharing the award with Gore - does that mean they share the $1 million dollar monetary award, too, or do they each get the full amount? - is the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I guess the UNIPCC was recognized to balance out Al's message. The earth in the balance, you know.

Bjorn Lomborg, an adjunct professor at the Copenhagen Business School and the author of "Cool It" and "The Skeptical Environmentalist", notes that factual understanding of the issue falls closer to the UNIPCC than Gore. This panel is comprised of thousands of 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."

This has been my problem with Gore and his crusade on climate change. Falling into the usual trap set by Democrats, in order to ratchet up attention to a subject, everything must be immediately dealt with in the most extreme measures because it is a crisis. Crisis. Whenever a power grab is attempted, it is because it is a crisis that must be handled immediately. By handled, I mean big governmental solutions paid for with your tax money. Do not for a moment doubt that for Gore, it is all about the power.

Gore himself has finally admitted that the faux documentary that is recognized as a movie that won an Oscar recently for him is full of exaggeration. The Oscar was won in the documentary category. Documentaries by their very definition are to refrain from exaggeration or personal opinion. School boards across the country, bowing to the Democratically controlled teachers unions, have included Gore's propaganda into the setting of the class room. Recently, in the U.K., parents objected that their children were to watch this borathon and the court ruled that, as 9 complete falsehoods are evident in the presentation, the film must be labeled propaganda. The disclaimer must be shown before the film is presented to the students.

And, most disgraceful of all, I don't recall any big movement to save the planet from the former VP's administration. They tried to push forward the Kyoto agreement yet it was unanimously defeated in the Senate. As VP, Gore was 'president' of the U.S. Senate. That's quite a slap in the face to him, no? Even Richard Nixon, disgraced as he was in office, signed into effect the Clean Air Act, as well as clean water legislation and the first Earth Day. No Noble Peace Prize, though. Plus, he opened up China to the world along the way.

Recently, a little known provision in the energy bill passed by the House and before the Senate now included Rep. Nick Rahall's, D-WVA, "strategic solar reserves" on federal lands, according to the WSJ.com weekend review. It's a miracle! We can harness sunshine if only we set aside federal land and put into place Rep. Rahall's pilot program. At closer look, a House staffer "reports that the provision was the work of the Natural Resources Committee and adds:'They don't propose storing solar energy, but instead identifying and setting aside as solar energy reserves public land areas that have high solar incidence...and that are not conflicted with other environmental or usage issues." The WSJ writer contacted the expert from the congressman's office but the expert was on an airplane and the staffer on the telephone directed the writer to a registered lobbyist for solar energy producers. The staffer said the lobbyist "had a hand in helping to craft this component of the energy bill."

Unlike, say, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve which stores emergency supplies for national uses, concerning the harnessing of solar energy, a University of Maryland physics professor, Robert Park, said, "This is our greatest single problem with energy - figuring out how to store electricity." Sunshine in a barrel? In a pipeline? Hmmm. What to do?

Congressional legislation written by a lobbyist? I thought Grandma Mimi was cleaning all that up.

So, here's a list of some of the possible candidates of the future for the Nobel Peace Prize committee to consider, provided by the WSJ.com. You know, real heroes:

Morgan Tsvangirai, Arthur Mutambara and other Zimbabwe opposition leaders, arrested earlier this year peacefully protesting against dictator Robert Mugabe.

Father Nguyen Van Ly, a Catholic priest in Vietnam arrested and sentenced to 8 years in prison because he helped a pro-democracy group.

Co-founders of the League of Demanders of Women's Right to Drive Cars in Saudi Arabia, Wajeha al-Huwaider and Fawzia al-Uyyouni.

Garry Kasparov who leads Russians in protests against Putin's authoritarian rule in Russia.

How about the people of Iraq, working heroically to build a free country? The monks of Burma?

Tony Blair in the UK, Bertie Ahern of Ireland and the people of Northern Ireland who set aside decades of hatred in March and established the Catholic - Protestant rule of governing in Northern Ireland.

Chinese bloggers? They can and are being arrested for relaying uncensored information about their country to the rest of the world.

U.S. military service men and women working to free tens of millions of people around the world? Nah. That'll never happen. The socialist left despises the military. Until their countries are in need of help, then they demand help.

Al Gore worthy? Hardly.