Novel Peace Prize 2009

Oslo, October 9 (MNN) – U.S. President Barack Obama incessant mentioning of the word “peace” has been rewarded with this year’s Novel Peace Prize. “No, it’s not a mistake by a person hitting the wrong key at his laptop on a Friday night,” said an anonymous source. “The Committee simply decided it was time to reward the possible future, as it looks so much better than the actual past“.

In other news: bloggers all around the world are rejoicing. Now they know, all it takes to bag over a million dollars, is to talk about nice things.

Cluster Bombs Convention – Update

What exactly has been achieved in Dublin about Cluster Bombs?

1. Over 100 countries agreed to ban “the use, production, stockpiling and transfer of all existing and future cluster bombs“
2. There is no exception, and no transition period. The ban covers all kinds of “submunitions“
3. Stockpiles must be destroyed within 8 years
4. A new standard has been defined for humanitarian assistance for victims, families and communities
5. A “Treaty” will be signed in Oslo in December 2008 (Nobel Peace Prize, anybody…)
6. It will then take 30 countries to officially adopt the Treaty, for this to actually enter into force
7. Afterwards it will be a matter of monitoring the situation
8. Last but not least, the muribund UN talks on conventional weapons may be brought back to life

Countries such as the USA, Russia and China do not appear likely to join the ban on cluster bombs. Some say “submunitions” are essential to modern war and without them many of their soldiers may get killed.

The best reply to that, I have read it somewhere on the web: “Cluster bombs save soldiers’ lives? So would anthrax…“

Preventative Nobel Peace Prize a Sign of the Times

After a (disastrous) preventative war in Iraq in 2003, we are going to see a (potentially disastrous) preventative Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Al Gore and the IPCC on December 10 at a ceremony in Oslo.

Why can’t we deal with real-and-present problems, and have to make up fantasies of new ones, I wonder?

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What will people make of our climate change circus in 50 years’ time is anybody’s guess.

Surely though, they will still question what Al Gore and the IPCC had actually done, by the middle of 2007, to deserve a prize. No Kyoto-II agreement has been reached yet, no CO2 emission cutting program has been implemented by any Government yet, and no “smoking gun” for greenhouse-gas-induced climatic change has been found yet.

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Things are actually a-moving, and the still-ongoing Bali conference may come out with a document asking developing countries to develop rather less. Who would have thought that “global warming” rhymes with “neocolonialism”?

And yet, there is some hope. The bandwagon has become so huge, it will be next-to-impossible to steer. Expect ridiculous targets nobody will ever try to reach, set for times unbelievably far in the future.

Until one day, the Sun will cool us down, and so will die the mad dream of anthropogenic climate change.

The Ascent of Al Gore

1969 – Bachelor of Arts (Harvard)

1976 – House of Representatives

1984 – Senator

1988 – Joins the Presidential race

1992 – Vice-President

2000 – Most-voted Candidate

2007 – Oscar

2007 – Emmy

2007 – Nobel Peace Prize

2009 – Lifetime UN Secretary General

2010 – Lifetime Chairman of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee

2012 – Lifetime Pope (well, it comes with the job)

2013 – Grand Ayatollah Supreme Leader (idem)

2014 – Joint Chief Rabbi, Sikh Guru, Buddha’s Reincarnation, etc etc

2015 – Replaces Charles III as King of the United Kingdom

2015 – Chooses title of “Defenders of the Faiths and Unfaiths” (that’s Political Correctness for you)

2020 – Becomes Alus Gorus “Caesar” Augustus, Planet Emperor

2021 – Acclaimed Divus in world-wide plebiscite

2021 – Commands Climate not to change. Climate complies (it would not have changed anyway, but that’s a secret…ssshhh!!)

2021 – Temples in his name start to spruce around

2022 – Convenes US Supreme Court, gets reversal of 2000 decision

2100 – Shortly before his death^H^H^Hascent to Heaven, forgets to command Earth to stop earthquakes (alas!)

Nobel Peace Prize awarded to alarmist prone to shout off questioners…

…and to Intergovernmental Panel that discards all commentaries that are not “on-message”.

Fortunately Lysenko has been dead for a few years otherwise next year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry would have been his.

And it’s the first time in history that a Nobel Prize has been assigned not in recognition of the past, not as a reward for the present, but for reasons that may, perhaps, happen sometimes in the future…

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A reminder of Al Gore’s attitudes:

“…after the interview [Al Gore] and his assistant stood over me shouting that my questions had been scurrilous, and implying that I was some sort of climate-sceptic traitor.”

Here also a link to the full reasons for a British High Court Justice to state that “some of the errors, or departures from the mainstream, by Mr Gore in An Inconvenient Truth in the course of his dynamic exposition, do arise in the context of alarmism and exaggeration in support of his political thesis“.

Interestingly, there are nine inaccuracies that as a consequence of a court’s decision “have to be specifically drawn to the attention of school children“:

• The film claims that melting snows on Mount Kilimanjaro evidence global warming. The Government’s expert was forced to concede that this is not correct.
• The film suggests that evidence from ice cores proves that rising CO2 causes temperature increases over 650,000 years. The Court found that the film was misleading: over that period the rises in CO2 lagged behind the temperature rises by 800-2000 years.
• The film uses emotive images of Hurricane Katrina and suggests that this has been caused by global warming. The Government’s expert had to accept that it was “not possible” to attribute one-off events to global warming.
• The film shows the drying up of Lake Chad and claims that this was caused by global warming. The Government’s expert had to accept that this was not the case.
• The film claims that a study showed that polar bears had drowned due to disappearing arctic ice. It turned out that Mr Gore had misread the study: in fact four polar bears drowned and this was because of a particularly violent storm.
• The film threatens that global warming could stop the Gulf Stream throwing Europe into an ice age: the Claimant’s evidence was that this was a scientific impossibility.
• The film blames global warming for species losses including coral reef bleaching. The Government could not find any evidence to support this claim.
• The film suggests that sea levels could rise by 7m causing the displacement of millions of people. In fact the evidence is that sea levels are expected to rise by about 40cm over the next hundred years and that there is no such threat of massive migration.
• The film claims that rising sea levels has caused the evacuation of certain Pacific islands to New Zealand. The Government are unable to substantiate this and the Court observed that this appears to be a false claim.