Al Gore: Could Nobel Prize Spur Presidential Run?

[russ_watters]

Yes, well, seeing as it is called the Nobel PEACE Prize, it would be rather difficult to deduce why any conservative in the memorable past would deserve one.

George Bush I should have gotten one for leading a world-wide coalition of forces to put down a murderous dictator bent on conquest.

But no, I agree that the Nobel committee wouldn't give one to a conservative. The concept that peace sometimes has to be achieved through force is beyond their comprehension.

 

[russ_watters]

What a fallacious argument you are trying to make here...

"The Webbys...

Interesting choice of counterpoint.

 

[slugcountry]

George Bush I should have gotten one for leading a world-wide coalition of forces to put down a murderous dictator bent on conquest.

But no, I agree that the Nobel committee wouldn't give one to a conservative. The concept that peace sometimes has to be achieved through force is beyond their comprehension.

haha yeahhhhhhhhh good going very on message - the concept of PEACE seems to be beyond YOUR comprehension...

by your own logic would clinton then deserve one for stopping a genocide in serbia??

 

[russ_watters]

Very sad.

Pathetic, really.

 

[slugcountry]

Interesting choice of counterpoint.

ok - I'm sorry that you look down on some humor now and then - care to disprove the rest of the article? not that you would let historical record stand in your way of course...

 

[russ_watters]

The people who invented the internet give Gore credit, but that's not good enough for our nay-sayers. Of course not.

I remember him constantly talking about the information super-highway way back before most people knew what it even could be.

You all should be ashamed of yourselves for allowing your hatred to blind your minds. Hasn't this sort of nonsense done enough damage? After giving us Bush, I would think that you might have learned something.

I can understand not liking a candidate, but these constant denials of basic truth are just too much to believe.

It is a crazy world we live in where someone who gives a speech about something gets credit right up there with people who actually did something. [that goes for both issues]

If you break it down, Gore basically won a Nobel Prize for making a movie about another guy who won a Nobel Prize.

And for the record, I don't hate Gore, I only mildy dislike him. Bhillary, on the other hand, I loathe.

[edit] Btw, this is a reflection of a difference between liberals and conservatives. Conservatives, being for limited government, don't tend to give government credit for much of anything, whether it be the spectacularly good economy of the past 20 years or the development of the internet. Liberals give credit to their favorite politician - so Gore gets credit for the internet, Clinton gets credit for the economy of the mid-90s (and no blame for the crash that happened before he left office), and Bush gets no credit for the great economy of today. For me to actually give someone credit for something, they actually have to do something.

 

[slugcountry]

It is a crazy world we live in where someone who gives a speech about something gets credit right up there with people who actually did something.

... yeah, he didn't do ANYTHING by bringing their work into the public eye...

 

[russ_watters]

ok - I'm sorry that you look down on some humor now and then - care to disprove the rest of the article? not that you would let historical record stand in your way of course...

I think you missed my point. A Berkeley liberal gave Gore an award. How shocking is that?

Anyway, there are plenty of idiocies in that article. Let's start with the first two sentences:

Campbell-Kelly and Aspray note in Chapter 12 of their 1996 text, Computer: A History of the Information Machine, that up until the early 1990s public usage of the Internet was limited. They continue to state that the "problem of giving ordinary Americans network access had exercised Senator Al Gore since the late 1970s" leading him to develop legislation which would alleviate this problem.

Considering that the IBM PC came out in 1981 and market penetration didn't really get huge for another 5 years, there wasn't enough public to access the internet in the late 1970s. As the article points out, Gore sponsored or voted for a lot of technology-related bills. So it isn't surprising, nor is it terribly interesting, that he took part in the funding for the development of the internet.

[edit] In 1981, Bill Gates was saying no one would ever need more than 640K of ram and no one outside of Xerox PARC had ever heard of a GUI - yet somehow Gore knew the WWW was coming? C'mon, are you guys being serious? You're pulling my chain, right?

 

[russ_watters]

... yeah, he didn't do ANYTHING by bringing their work into the public eye...

I never said he didn't. What I said was that popularizing work isn't the same as doing work.

Heck, Bono would be a much, much better choice than Gore. Bono doesn't just give speeches, he does things. He sits down with the President and then the President changes policy. Giving Gore the peace prize here is laughable. It makes me wonder if they considered giving it to Michael Moore. Perhaps they figured too many people would laugh at them if they did.

 

[vanesch]

Personally, I'm a bit disturbed by a Nobel for human induced climate change as of now. One cannot really say that the scientific case for the issue is closed. There is suggestive data, but the modeling and the internal inconsistencies are to my taste still too big to consider it a proven fact beyond doubt.

Of course, that can be sufficient to be cautious, and maybe it will turn out to be right. But maybe not. Nobel prizes are usually only given to scientific discoveries beyond doubt, based upon experimental work. One cannot claim that climate research and the claims of human induced climate change have as of now reached that state. Some people have to wait 30 years for their Nobel, until their discovery was clearly (with hindsight) a major breakthrough. This can really not be said (yet) of current climate research. It could be true, but it could also be a lot of hot air To be scientifically sure would take at least 2 or 3 more decades. So why the hurry ?

 

[Evo]

Vinton Cerf and Bob Kahn both acknowledge Gore's role in funding the government programs (ARPAnet, part of DARPA) that created the internet. It had nothing to do with "private business"

It had everything to do with "private business", AT&T and several other corporations were very involved in developing this with the DOD.

and when the National Science Foundation (NSF) controlled the backbones it was called the "internet."

Wrong again.

In 1986, a higher-speed network, subsidized by the National Science Foundation (NSF), called NSFNET replaced ARPANET.

In 1988, the NSF decided NSFNET would no longer carry commercial traffic. They hoped this move would stimulate the creation of commercial networks such as PSI, UUNET and ANS. In 1995, NSFNET lost its funding. Today the Internet is supported entirely by commercial backbone providers.

As Veltman points out, the AT&T Bell Labs did some of the first digital transmission and switching in 1962, seven years before the "US Internet" began. When the Department of Defense (DoD) commissioned the Advanced Research Project Agency's Network (ARPANET) to do research into networking, it was AT&T that provided 50kbps lines. In 1969, the year that Arpanet began, AT&T's Bell Labs developed Unix which was "the operating system behind the early Internet, and was one of the key operating systems in the middle and late ARPANET."

Between 1969 and 1972, Bell Labs developed the C programming language basic to much of Internet software. In 1970, AT&T installed the first cross-country link between the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) and Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN) in Boston. In 1976, AT&T's Bell Labs developed (Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP), which was distributed with UNIX one year later."

All of these were important points of origin of the Internet as we know it, so the telco theory, unpopular as it is in Internet circles, should perhaps be explored in more detail. Certainly the physical infrastructure created by the telcos was central, and certainly telcos had worked out protocols for sending voice data between disparate networks early in the piece. In the examples above, they added the component of computers and networked them. Can we completely eliminate the telco origins and contributions to early developments?

http://www.corp.att.com/attlabs/reputation/timeline/69internet.html

1969 will forever be remembered as the year of the "Miracle Mets" and Neil Armstrong's walk on the moon. But, as the Internet's influence continues to grow, maybe 1969 will come to be known as the "Year of the Internet" since it was 1969 that the Internet was launched. The development of the Internet has close ties to the UNIX operating system, which was developed at AT&T Labs. The Internet itself would not exist if it were not for AT&T's telecommunications network, the electronic gateway that connects you to the rest of the world.

Over the past 30 years, AT&T Labs has made many contributions to the development of the Internet and to computer software. Among the programming languages developed at AT&T Labs are C and C++.

http://www.corp.att.com/attlabs/reputation/timeline/69internet.html

Furthermore, it used to be called the "information super highway," when business took it over, it became more about e-commerce rather than information sharing.

No, that was a goofy name that was coined that didn't last very long, *we* did not call it that.

 

[Hurkyl]

unfortunately, if one doesn't go down that path, one cannot make a persuasive argment.

If the truth is not persuasive, then you have no business making an argument.

the repercussion of the British court ruling may now mean that ppl will dismiss the entire film (again this is due to not everyone has the clear thinking you may have), and not just those handful of opinions turned facts. (ie. bad for the symbolism)

Well, there you go. Even if you do decide to take an unscrupulous route, we see that there is a very good reason not to lie.

 

[Art]

First off I'd like to say I currently have no opinion on whether or not Gore made a meaningful contribution to the internet and seeing as how most of this thread is taken up with 'yes he did' 'no he didn't' I still am no wiser.

Surely it shouldn't be hard for those supporting the contention to provide evidence of actual contributions he made and then perhaps the discussion can centre on how meaningful these contributions were.

 

[Art]

Gees I know they have some natsy storms up there but this storm would have had to last for a month.



http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article767459.ece

From your article

The researchers returned to the vicinity a few days later after a fierce storm and found four dead bears floating in the water. “We estimate that of the order of 40 bears may have been swimming and that many of those probably drowned as a result of rough seas caused by high winds,” said the report.

No drownings have been reported prior to this event or subsequently and why assume more drowned than the 4 observed?? Is there a rationale for this pure speculation?? Does baseless, random, idle speculation from 'environmentalists' constitute scientific proof in your opinion??

If you have 10 close friends and 2 die in a car accident is it then reasonable from this sample to extrapolate 20% of the population of the world will die in car accidents??

One data point does not a trend make.

If the climate change fear-mongers want to be taken seriously then they should show more respect for the public and stop lying to them.

 

[Evo]

He sponsored the High-Performance Computing Act of 1991 along with 24 other senators http://www.congress.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d102:SN00272:@@@P

I'd have to agree that he has a long record of pushing environmental protection issues. Although, I think he's gone over the edge the past couple of years.

But then there's his resolution to establish the month of October, 1991, as "Country Music Month".

 

[Astronuc]

They were just being pc to try to get Gore's foot out of his mouth, if you knew about the growth of the internet, you would know that. He did nothing to encourage businesses taking over the internet. You *do* know what the internet is, right? I was working with it at AT&T in 1973, before it was called the internet. (want to make clear, I was not working on the internet project, I was in data networking for them)

I suppose one could go back even further. In 1968, I did a course in programming (primarily BASIC) and we used a teletype to a computer in another city. We had to use a dialup modem, place the phone in cradle. How far back does teletyping go?

 

[Evo]

I suppose one could go back even further. In 1968, I did a course in programming (primarily BASIC) and we used a teletype to a computer in another city. We had to use a dialup modem, place the phone in cradle. How far back does teletyping go?

They go WAY back, according to wiki, they went into general use around 1922. I remember pulling news copy off the teletype machine when I worked at the radio station.

 

[edward]

So where do polar bears typically die? If the carcasses were found on land, would they have said they died from walking too much? Seriously, with as much body fat as polar bears have, is it even possible for them to drown?

Yes they do drown. Usually exhaustion is the underlying cause. As far as I know they die at whatever location they happen to be when they become to weak to hunt or swim.

SCIENTISTS have for the first time found evidence that polar bears are drowning because climate change is melting the Arctic ice shelf.
The researchers were startled to find bears having to swim up to 60 miles across open sea to find food. They are being forced into the long voyages because the ice floes from which they feed are melting, becoming smaller and drifting farther apart.

Although polar bears are strong swimmers, they are adapted for swimming close to the shore. Their sea journeys leave them them vulnerable to exhaustion, hypothermia or being swamped by waves.

 

[sneez]

vanesh

Personally, I'm a bit disturbed by a Nobel for human induced climate change as of now. One cannot really say that the scientific case for the issue is closed.

Exactly, and now its another form of political support, how unscientific. It purports already distorted "religious view of the topic" that researching otherwise and reporting results that do not support this hypothesis are somehow against science/planet/life/blahbalh.

Plus the fact that Gore is as much scientists as bush is politician (uups, I had to :D)

 

[slugcountry]

Surely it shouldn't be hard for those supporting the contention to provide evidence of actual contributions he made and then perhaps the discussion can centre on how meaningful these contributions were.

If you've read through the thread then you should know full well that evidence has been provided, in the form of quotes by the very PEOPLE who actually designed the infrastructure of the net.

 

[mheslep]

If you've read through the thread then you should know full well that evidence has been provided, in the form of quotes by the very PEOPLE who actually designed the infrastructure of the net.

No, that was evidence that he has supporters. What they said was still in the abstract; there's nothing there in the Cerf quote about what he actually did

 

[BobG]

The text of the HPCA should probably be included, as well:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c102:S.272.ENR:

Gore was also one of the driving forces behind http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c104:3:./temp/~c1044tWMBG:: of 1996, even though, as VP, he played no official part in its passage in the Senate.

Every 'creation' has its plusses and minuses:

http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.9135/pub_detail.asp

http://archive.salon.com/tech/feature/2001/06/28/telecom_dereg/index.html

Regardless of how much value you put in Gore's internet efforts, it's undisputed that his actions eventually led to the enrichment of our culture with this Dan Quayle comment: "If Gore invented the Internet, I invented spell-check."

 

[mjsd]

If the climate change fear-mongers want to be taken seriously then they should show more respect for the public and stop lying to them.

I am not sure what your personal position on climate change, but I think that, certainly, you are no fan of ppl exaggerating things. fair enough.

I personally feel that this debate of whether human activity is the main culprit in global warming, is a bit like the debate about whether "smoking is bad for you" 40 years ago. yeah, today we have slightly more scientific evidence and "proof" about the harm that smoking may do to you, but surely there were a lot of anti-smoking campaigners being branded as fear-mongers back then. So, my point was really that there is a fine line between outright lying and constructing a persuasive argument that is easy enough for the public to understand (without being far too technical); for the public to related to (ie. that "fear factor" of what may happen if we don't act etc...) and has the appeal to the wider audience. Now if you drop all that in name of getting all facts right, you will inevitably lose a large amount of your arguments as well as the audiences. Gore may have overstepped the line on several occasions (9 according to the British court, right?), but the critics of his film/ideas also tend to dismiss the entire film rather than just the 9 facts in an attempt to construct a persuasive argument against the idea of human activity led to warming of themselves...so the battle is more than just about the facts... if you don't like it being fought that way, well may be you should make a film of your own on that point.


recently, Dr William Gray, a pioneer in the science of seasonal hurricane forecasts and long-time professor at Colorado State University, gave a lecture at uni of North Carolina accusing Gore and others for "brainwashing our children". He also mentioned how other scientists may refuse to speak out against something (ie. human activity led to global warming) that is scientifically wrong in the fear of losing grants.

But in a sense Dr Gray is also a fear-monger himself by making claims that we are brainwashing the younger generation (he thinks we are all stupid or something?). In any case, the jury is still out on this issue, the only question is whether it would be too late to act when we wait until all the facts are known.



various news sources used for this post
http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/gore-gets-a-cold-shoulder/2007/10/13/1191696238792.html
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003946751_nobelgray13.html
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22579885-663,00.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/06/AR2007040601959.html (earlier this year)

 

[Curious3141]

I have to agree, Gore had nothing to do with the internet (which is run by businesses, not the government). Most people don't know that though.

The internet started with ARPANET, completely a DOD initiative. It has evolved and continues to evolve, with the influence of private enterprise, governments and academia.

Al Gore did have something more than a marginal role in the evolution of the internet. He obviously saw the benefit of having a massive network of computers as far back as 1986, and made efforts to ensure funding for such initiatives. Many even credit him with coining the phrase "information superhighway".

This site gives the dope : http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue5_10/wiggins/#w4 You can scroll down and read about Al Gore's involvement.

That Gore became such a laughing stock in connection with the internet is unfortunate, and the reasons are somewhat unfair to him. The press never bothered to give much coverage at the time to his speeches about the potential of the internet in the 80s and 90s. Then, when Gore happened to mention his involvement in an interview, he was widely (and probably maliciously) misquoted as having claimed he "invented" the internet (he has never actually used those words). When the boffins actually involved in designing the infrastructure of the net speak out in defence of Gore, the press conveniently ignores it.

I'd rather see Gore as President of the USA *any day* than either the blithering idiot Bush or the scheming Hillary.

 

[Art]

If you've read through the thread then you should know full well that evidence has been provided, in the form of quotes by the very PEOPLE who actually designed the infrastructure of the net.

Evidence of what exactly? He spoke in favour of what has become known as the internet as did several other gov't representatives but did this have any material effect on it's development? Was his contribution greater than the other sponsors of communication related legislation? How much federal money for it's development is directly attributable to his support?

To claim as he did that he took the initiative in creating the internet is to say the least exaggerating his own contribution but likewise his critics who misquote him as claiming to have invented the internet are also guilty of exaggeration.

Would early supporters of Einstein's Theory of Relativity be entitled to claim they took the initiative in creating the Theory of Relativity?

 

[vanesch]

In any case, the jury is still out on this issue, the only question is whether it would be too late to act when we wait until all the facts are known.

I agree that there is sufficient material on the table to be cautious. So as a policy, the argument that there is *a possibility* of human-caused global warning, it to be taken seriously, and no, the biosphere shouldn't be considered as a big laboratory for a mad scientist's experiments. So I do recon that it is a good idea to take the *possibility* seriously, to investigate more, and to see if we shouldn't already, as precaution, take preventive action and limit the emission of potential greenhouse gases until we find out for sure that they don't harm, or on the contrary, that they were the culpritt and that we did a good thing in anticipating it. So from that point of view, I agree.

But to me, a NOBEL goes much further than advancing a plausible hypothesis. It goes about PROVING EXPERIMENTALLY BEYOND DOUBT a very important scientific, political or social fact.

So Gore can receive his prize, if it is FIRMLY ESTABLISHED that he was right, a proof we will only have in several decades.

Gosh, the people proving experimentally the existence of the neutrino, after it was already theoretically proposed since many years, still had to wait for 30 years for their prize.

There was much less scientific doubt in that case, than in the case of human-induced global warming.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I agree that there is sufficient material on the table to be cautious. So as a policy, the argument that there is *a possibility* of human-caused global warning, it to be taken seriously, and no, the biosphere shouldn't be considered as a big laboratory for a mad scientist's experiments. So I do recon that it is a good idea to take the *possibility* seriously, to investigate more, and to see if we shouldn't already, as precaution, take preventive action and limit the emission of potential greenhouse gases until we find out for sure that they don't harm, or on the contrary, that they were the culpritt and that we did a good thing in anticipating it. So from that point of view, I agree.

But to me, a NOBEL goes much further than advancing a plausible hypothesis. It goes about PROVING EXPERIMENTALLY BEYOND DOUBT a very important scientific, political or social fact.

So Gore can receive his prize, if it is FIRMLY ESTABLISHED that he was right, a proof we will only have in several decades.

Gosh, the people proving experimentally the existence of the neutrino, after it was already theoretically proposed since many years, still had to wait for 30 years for their prize.

There was much less scientific doubt in that case, than in the case of human-induced global warming.

Gore didn't receive his Noble for science, he got it for his public service. I believe that the quote from the Noble committee was that he has probably done more to educate the public about GW than any other single human being.

Of course Bush senior called him "Mr Ozone" when Gore was talking to Congress and the public about GW over twenty years ago. Which reminds me, didn't he play a large role in arguing to ban CFCs as well?

Eat your words Bush.

On the role of humans in GW, the IPCC [2500 experts who had to agree on a number] puts it at 90% certainty. Also, no matter the role of ACO2 in our weather today, which is debatable, I believe that human produced CO2 is expected to dominate the climate system within the next twenty years or so.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I find it amazing that what once earned Gore the title of "Mr Ozone" is now argued to not have happened.

History rewritten, once again.

 

[Art]

I find it amazing that what once earned Gore the title of "Mr Ozone" is now argued to not have happened.

History rewritten, once again.

I haven't seen anybody argue against the contention that Gore has for many years been a vocal supporter of AGW could you quote the posts where this happened?

The question is should he have received a Nobel prize for his support of an unproven theory and why the Peace prize?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I haven't seen anybody argue against the contention that Gore has for many years been a vocal supporter of AGW could you quote the posts where this happened?

I was responding to the notion that others have worked on this far longer. Gore has probably worked on this as long as just about anyone.

The question is should he have received a Nobel prize for his support of an unproven theory and why the Peace prize?

He won it for his education of the public about an issue that threatens humanity and that will certainly play a role in world peace. Already we see political tensions arising over the opening of the Northern passage. The Russians even planted a flag using a Submarine! And GW is no longer considered to be an unproven theory, so regardless of AGW's role, GW is a critical issue for everyone, and this fact is no longer disputed in mainstream science. And IMO, those who argue that 90% confidence isn't good enough to justify action are being irrational. Those who argue that we don't have 90% confidence are fringe and should post their evidence in S&D. I'll even make a sticky for it; right next to the UFO section.

Just wait until people start running out of drinking water, which is close to happening in Atlanta right now.

If you don't understand the connection between peace and climate change, then you don't understand the impact that AGW might have. Not long ago I posted a paper done for the Defense Dept that is part of an effort to evaluate the potential impact of GW on national security. I tried to spot it but will have to post later. It is somewhere in Earth Sciences.