UN Climate Change Panel share Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore (updated)

“for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change”

“I would like to pay tribute to the scientific community, who are the winners of this award,” says IPCC Chairman R. K. Pachauri. “The experts and scientists are the backbone of the IPCC and they provide the knowledge, which has contributed to the success of the IPCC...and this will energize the IPCC to do even more in the future.”

“Indications of changes in the earth’s future climate must be treated with the utmost seriousness,” says a press release the Nobel Prize foundation , “and with the precautionary principle uppermost in our minds.”

“What may be missed in the announcement of this award,” says historian Spencer Weart, who has written a book on the history of the science of global warming, “is that only a fraction of the IPCC is the thousands of scientists who work on the main report...There are other reports that the IPCC issues that include practical advice on steps to reduce climate change.” Moreover, he adds, “The IPCC reports are formed through consensus, not just by scientists, but also by the representatives of nearly every government in the world. All these groups have agreed, including countries such as China, that that there are economical steps that can be taken to avoid the risk of extreme climate events by 2100.”

“In fact,” says Weart, “the Nobel Peace Prize committee is behind the curve in relating this year’s award to climate change. Recently a group of 3- and 4-star US generals and admirals issued a statement stating that global warming is a strategic threat to the United States. Global warming, along with all environmental degradation, is a threat to world peace. We can confidently assert that there will be more conflicts over resources such as water as the effects of climate change increase. This ties into some new scientific results in the last 10-15 years in which we’ve discovered that ancient civilizations have collapsed due to the environmental pressure of climate change.”

This point is also amplified by the Foundation’s press release: “By awarding the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 to the IPCC and Al Gore, the Norwegian Nobel Committee is seeking to contribute to a sharper focus on the processes and decisions that appear to be necessary to protect the world’s future climate, and thereby to reduce the threat to the security of mankind. Action is necessary now, before climate change moves beyond man’s control.”

Related Physics Today articles
Cause and Effect in Global Warming , January 2005
More Notes on Global Warming , May 2005
The Discovery of Rapid Climate Change , August 2003
A physicist proselytizes about countering global warming September 2007
Corporations embrace bottom-line global warming plan December 2006

Related web sites
2007 NobelPeace Prize site
Intergovernmental panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
Statement from Al Gore on winning the prize
Al Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth
Report: National Security and the Threat of Climate Change
The Discovery of Global Warming (Spencer Weart)

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