"Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny." -- unknown

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results - Albert Einstein

Award is a farce.
October 13, 2007 - 7:34 am

I don't mean to downplay his work on the environment, but that... since when did that equal bringing about a less violent world?

They certainly couldn't give him a science award.. since so much of his movie has been shown to be based either on erroneous science or not much science at all.

I get that tons of people love him because they think he should have beat Bush and with Gore as president the world would be a different, happier place. They get to enjoy the fallacy that humans love to daydream about:

If X had happened, the world would be exactly the same, but better.

A better case of this was some Hollywood actress who, if I recall right, said that if the world were ruled by mothers, it would be a better place. I had a brief conversation about this and the person, female, agreed.. so I asked, what did she think the world would be like?

Her answer, in a nutshell, was we'd have everything we have today, but no violence, no gun problems... less crime.. etc.

This just doesn't compute. Like it or not, but a great many of the wondrous bits of technology we have were derived from war technology. Not to mention the current setup of countries is totally the result of war and conflict.

Perhaps the world we live in wouldn't yet have passed the level of technology of the American Indians and or Aborigines -- would this constitute a better world?

I can't say, I doubt I'd be alive in it -- in fact, none of us would be alive and exactly who we are.

You see, one of the things the victors in ancient conflicts got to do was ensure their seed would proliferate -- they'd have many, many offspring. You can google Genghis Khan and the estimates of how many people in this world hold a piece of his genetic code, you may well be shocked. Take these people out of the equation and well.. the genetic makeup of whoever would be alive would be markedly different.

So, yes, it's fun to daydream and suppose that if this or that had happened, you'd get to keep all the good stuff in the world that you like and have the added bonus of removing what you didn't... but it's just a daydream.. and dreams have very little to do with logic and reality.

How does this tie back to Gore? In a way he's like Moore.. He runs about saying what people want to hear. He's blasting big oil and saying we need to do this or that and the world will be better and people want the world to be better.. and people like Gore, they think he should have been president (though why all these people didn't vote for Gore is a whole other issue) and if he was the world would be magically better.

So, yes.. many folks are happy he won the award. They see it as some sort of vindication for losing the presidency -- it's not, it's not related at all. They see it as some sort of vindication that Gore's (well it's not his is it?) science is right and people are the cause for global warming -- it's not. It's not a science award.

I don't doubt that the global warming is happening. I do doubt just how much people are to blame. The ice caps on Mars are melting. The Earth, we know, has had many, many cycles of hot and cold spells. The magnetic core of the Earth is due (perhaps overdue) to flip and impact will that have? The Sun, this one I'm fuzzy on, is in a more active period, so its radiation could be the cause...

Just because we dominate the world now, doesn't mean we are the root cause. No doubt we contribute to it.. but that doesn't mean we can or should stop it. Not if you are a true environmentalist -- you should want to warming to happen, it's natural. It's what the world does. We've had several ice ages.. so we know it's normal for the earth to heat and cool.. and they had nothing to do with humanity. Though we do like to blame ourselves for things and point the finger at those we don't like... but anyway, enough rambling.

Anyway, Gore getting a peace award for work that has nothing to do with peace is a farce.