Chicken Little Honored

Well, that's rather embarrassing, huh?

Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize today for warning the world about the dangers of global warming, and leading the campaign to persuade governments and individuals to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels.

Thank goodness Al Gore is here to let us know about the dangers of global warming - the entire issue was threatening to evade all notice, until he came along. Thank goodness, as I said.

This is what I mean by "embarrassing."

Al Gore’s award-winning climate change documentary was littered with nine inconvenient untruths, a judge ruled yesterday.

It's sort of strange that a judge would rule on truth, but then, they must do things differently across the pond. Over here, while we occasionally get even a Supreme Court justice to cite "reason and truth" when his clerk isn't able to find any case law to support his point (Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 660 (1961)), we usually have to settle for having scientists decide scientific questions. I suppose you could say that expert testimony puts science in the courtroom, but for a limited purpose - for establishing facts relevant to the case, and to the standards of the court, not for establishing objective truth.

I digress. The Nobel committee's choice of recipients should be embarrassing, but I can't imagine it's going to cause any more shame than the previous choices.

Kofi Annan? Jimmy Carter? Yasser Arafat?

Ouch. That has to sting. I think Genghis Khan should be nominated for a prize; can you do that?