Friday, October 12, 2007

Peace, man

So apparently "the IPCC" has won the Nobel Peace Prize. Al Gore got the Fiction Prize.

According to the BBC, the IPCC is "Made up of more than 2,000 of the world's leading climate experts". I don't know who that counts and who it doesn't. But just in case it counts contributing authors, my share of the $1.5m can be sent to me c/o FRCGC, Yokohama, Japan :-)

Who was it that said that climate scientists were just in it for the money...

Seriously, I think the people who actually did the work did a good job overall, despite having some quibbles over the details (that's only WG1 of course). But for all that it's a worthy effort, it's depressing to think that no-one else made a greater contribution to world peace over the last year.

5 comments:

  1. Thats funny ( in a sad sort of way), I was just thinking the same thing myself. I'm sure many individuals have been doing things towards peace in the past year, but none of them seems to have made any obvious difference anywhere. At least not that I have heard of in the media.

    This is not a good thing.

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  2. Well Piers Forster seems peeved that he has to share his prize with "one man with his Powerpoint presentation"!

    But seriously, I don't have any idea who are supposed to be the "recipients" of the IPCC part of this prize. My contribution was limited to giving them some data to plot, and criticising some of the sillier statements they made in the drafts. I certainly didn't contribute to peace within climate science!

    Is there really nowhere that peace has broken out in the last year? Nothing comes to mind, but I would like to think that is just due to my poor memory.

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  3. Forster is being silly, as is Lomborg in a similar way as quoted on that same page. This is not a physics prize!

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  4. Congratulations are due, for your part, tiny or not, in advancing climate science. I do hope that understanding of climate change does prevent future conflicts.

    Peace within science isn't a good thing. I find wars fought with data and calculations more interesting and more valuable than wars fought with bullets and bombs. So please continue to not contribute to peace within climate science.

    Phil Hays

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  5. "Is there nowhere that peace has broken out in the past year?"

    Welll, off the top of my head, working West from East:

    North Korea- I think they've reached some kind of tentative agreement, but not exaclty peace.

    Burma- more intenral repression

    East TImor- not heard much for a few years.
    INdia/ Pakistan- been fairly quiet for a few years, not much to report in the big picture.
    Afghanistan- still at war.
    Iraq, still at war.
    ISrael/ Palestine- still at war.
    Darfur- ditto
    Congo- uneasy peace, IIRC
    Yugoslavia etc- been quite peaceful for a few years, so no opportunity for a prize.
    Norther Ireland- ditto
    Haiti- still a mess
    Columbia- still a mess

    THat list is also off the top of my head, but isn't very encouraging.

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