I think it’s wonderful that we live in a country where two men can fight tooth and nail for something they both desperately want and still have respect for one another in the end.

It appears the visit to the White House by Al Gore to be honored as a Nobel Prize recipient went off without a hitch.

Al Gore slipped out the side door of the West Wing.

In his private Oval Office meeting with President Bush, the former vice president insisted that they had spoken about global warming “the whole time.” It wasn’t clear if the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, who shared the honor for his work on climtate change, was serious.

“Of course,” they had spoken about global warming, Gore said, strolling down a rain-slick Pennsylvania Avenue with wife Tipper Gore after a private session with the president. For Gore, who had gone into the White House for a reception for the American winners of the 2007 Nobel Prizes, this was his first return to the Oval Office since leaving office.

But Gore, calling the meeting with Bush “very cordial” and “substantive,” declined to elaborate on their meeting. “I’m not going to do an interview here,” Gore said in his walk down the streets outside the White House. “I don’t want to comment more.”

This was the first private meeting of Gore and Bush since the Tennessee Democrat won more of the popular vote than Bush in the presidential election of 2000 but lost in the Electoral College – following a 36-day court fight over Bush’s disputed 537-vote margin in Florida.

This may have been a cordial reunion of erstwhile adversaries from a contested election, but it was kept discreetly private, within the confines of the Oval Office – where photographers and pool reporters arrived near the end for “a photo-opportunity.’’ The two appeared relaxed, smiling and in good moods, the pool reported.

You don’t have to like Al Gore or his policies or his theories on Global Warming. You don’t have to believe he should have won an Oscar for his documentary. Regardless of those feelings, he was a sitting Vice President and he did receive those awards. What would have been said if the President ignored Mr. Gore and proceeded with this ceremony in his absence?

I for one am glad that the class of this President once again came to the forefront, (through his White House Press Secretary):

“The president didn’t make a calculated decision to invite Al Gore to the White House… He invited him because he’s one of the Nobel winners,’’ said Perino, pressed about the purpose of the additional private meeting. “I didn’t psychoanalyze the president to find out why… It was a presidential, gentlemanly thing to do.’’

Darn right. I am by no means a Al Gore fan but I do respect his former position and he had every right to be at this ceremony and enjoy his visit with the President.

HT:Drudge

From Friday’s Omega Letter by Jack Kinsella:

Oscar-Winning Nobel Prize Laureate Almost-Next-President Al Gore

Alfred Nobel was a Swedish chemist, engineer and armaments manufacturer who made his fortune by his invention of dynamite.
In 1867, Nobel discovered that when nitroglycerin was absorbed into an inert substance, it became more stable and less volatile than liquid nitro. Ten years later, he improved on his invention, creating gelignite, or ‘blasting gelatin’.

In 1888, a newspaper prematurely released his obituary on an erroneous report of his death. Nobel was scandalized when he read his own obituary’s headline:
“Le marchand de la mort est mort” (”The Merchant of Death is Dead”).

His death notice read: “Dr. Alfred Nobel, who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before, died yesterday.”

Nobel, who saw himself as a great humanitarian and philanthropist, was shocked to find his historical legacy would be summarized as ‘the merchant of death’.

In 1895, in a ceremony at the Swedish-Norwegian Club in Paris, he signed his last will and testament, leaving the bulk of his fortune to set up the Nobel Prize Committee.

Nobel left a fortune estimated at $4.3 million 1896 dollars to fund the prizes. ($4.3 million in 1896 would be worth roughly $103 million 2007 dollars)

Nobel left instructions to award annual prizes in the fields of physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and, the most incongruous of all, the Nobel Prize for Peace.

It is incongruous because the premature obituary was right. Alfred Nobel was a merchant of death. His most successful invention, dynamite, has probably been responsible for more deaths than any other invention in history.

Nobel’s armaments company, Bofors, manufactured death on a wholesale basis. Bofors anti-aircraft guns were used by all sides in both world wars, and the Bofors 37mm anti-tank gun was standard equipment on tanks used by Americans, British, Polish and Germans in WWII.

Nobel’s legacy of death continues every with every IED or suicide bombing attack. Every dollar in the Nobel Committee’s trust fund is stained in blood.

Which might explain why the Nobel Committee’s choices for its ‘Peace Prize’ are generally so-off-the-wall.

Assessment:

In recent years, the Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded or shared by such illustrious luminaries for peace as Yasser Arafat, Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, Mikhail Gorbachev, Kofi Annan, and of course, former US President Jimmy Carter.

Summarized, the Nobel Peace Prize Committee has chosen to award the Peace Prize to: one unrepentant terrorist, two Marxist-Socialists, one Soviet Communist, one international thief of historical proportions — and one Useful Idiot, in that order.

In keeping with its track record, this year’s Nobel Peace Prize was jointly awarded to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — and our own Al Gore, for their evident contributions to world peace by advancing the theory that we’re all gonna die soon anyway.

The Peace Prize Committee chose Gore and the IPCC 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,” the committee said.

It is worth noting that the Nobel Peace Prize Committee has, in the past, rejected nominations for Mahatma Ghandi (5 times), and Eleanor Roosevelt (5 times).
(Other examples include rejecting such nominees as Nicolae Tesla and Thomas Edison for prizes in physics.)

First off, it is hard to connect climate change to advancing world peace. In the main, the Gore model for effecting climate change involves keeping undeveloped and underdeveloped nations from contributing pollution by stopping them from developing, ie, keeping them poor.

Poor, under-developed nations are seldom peaceful.

It is significant to note, I think, that Gore did NOT get the award for science. After all, climatology is a science. If you took all the charts, graphs and scientific models out of Al Gore’s Power Point presentations, what would be left?

(”Hi. I’m Al Gore. and I used to be the next President of the United States. Thank you all for coming.”)

Even the IPCC that shared the award with Gore disputed many of his key ‘facts’ when it issued its revised report.

Just last week, a UK judge, after only three days of study, identified nine separate scientific errors in Gore’s movie, “An Inconvenient Truth” and ordered UK schools to issue a disclaimer to that effect before showing it to students.

Gore’s self- reinvention as an evangelist of climate change has yet to advance any real science. So the reason Gore wasn’t included in the science category is self-evident.

But his selection in the category of ‘peace’ seems equally difficult to justify.

Al Gore’s record for advancing peace includes creating a Constitutional crisis after losing Election 2000 that nearly erupted into civil war and opened political wounds in America that have yet to heal.

Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” has advanced the international image of America as a rapacious industrial polluter whose selfish pursuit of wealth endangers the whole planet.

Al has made it his mission to scare the public into demanding that George Bush sign the UN’s Kyoto Treaty on Climate Change. The Kyoto Treaty would create a global government agency with the authority to impose punitive taxes on countries that exceed an UN-determined pollution cap.

Even if Bush signed it, the Senate already voted 98-0 not to ratify it. It has nothing to do with the environment or peace and everything to do with engendering political conflict along partisan lines.

For Al Gore, it is a convenient club to use to beat George Bush and the neocons who ’stole’ the election from him about the head and shoulders.

But to the international community, it is a method of restoring political balance in a ‘unipolar world’ by weakening the United States.

Even announcing Al Gore as a recipient engendered a lot more conflict than it did peace.

When the Nobel Committee gave Jimmy Carter the Peace Prize a few years back, it was uncharacteristically candid about the reasons. One Nobel Committee member, Gunnar Berge, told reporters Carter got the award “to give George Bush a kick in the leg.”

Selecting Al Gore as this year’s Nobel Peace Prize Laureate is another kick, aimed slightly higher.

He’s right. This should have been in the science category, but everyone knows it’s bad science.

To be included with Arafat and Jimmy Carter tells you what this award is worth.

Sounds different today, but is it because he learned something different or because the party line is different now? BTW, he’s running for VP here and criticizing the first President Bush.

Hat Tip: The Anchoress via Instapundit.

You talk about a screw up. I just can’t believe this. He goes all over the world preaching conservation and how endangered species should be paid more attention to. Well, I guess this is his way of doing it.
Idiot.

ONLY one week after Live Earth, Al Gore’s green credentials slipped while hosting his daughter’s wedding in Beverly Hills.

Gore and his guests at the weekend ceremony dined on Chilean sea bass - arguably one of the world’s most threatened fish species.

Also known as Patagonian toothfish, the species is under pressure from illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing activities in the Southern Ocean, jeopardising the sustainability of remaining stocks.

The species is currently managed by the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Living Marine Resources, the body which introduced a catch and trade documentation scheme as an attempt to tackle illegal poaching of this species.

Working with non-government organisations, the Humane Society International’s focus is now on pursuit of illegal fishing operators who, in the rush to cash in on the highly valued species, plunder stocks with no regard for sustainability.

It has been estimated that more than 50 per cent of toothfish traded is illegally caught, and includes juveniles vital to the ongoing toothfish population.

Story

The Live Earth concerts are taking place this weekend purportedly to save the planet from global warming.

I don’t claim to be an expert on global warming, but the Daily Mail reports the following:

A Daily Mail investigation has revealed that far from saving the planet, the extravaganza will generate a huge fuel bill, acres of garbage, thousands of tonnes of carbon emissions, and a mileage total equal to the movement of an army.

The most conservative assessment of the flights being taken by its superstars is that they are flying an extraordinary 222,623.63 miles between them to get to the various concerts - nearly nine times the circumference of the world. The true environmental cost, as they transport their technicians, dancers and support staff, is likely to be far higher.

The total carbon footprint of the event, taking into account the artists’ and spectators’ travel to the concert, and the energy consumption on the day, is likely to be at least 31,500 tonnes of carbon emissions, according to John Buckley of Carbonfootprint.com, who specialises in such calculations.

Throw in the television audience and it comes to a staggering 74,500 tonnes. In comparison, the average Briton produces ten tonnes in a year.

This means nearly 7.5 Britons would each generate as much waste in a year to equal the amount of waste in these concerts.

Dr Andrea Collins, an expert in sustainability from Cardiff University, has researched the impact of such mass gatherings on the environment.

“An event of this size at Wembley - which holds 65,000 at a rock concert, will generate around 59 tonnes of waste,” she says. “That is largely composed of the rubbish from food and drink consumption.”

She found that a Wembley-sized football match generated an ‘ecological footprint’ of 3,000 global hectares - an area the size of 4,166 football pitches. This is the amount of bioproductive land required to absorb the C02 emissions produced by such an event.

3,000 global hectares would be equal to 7,413 acres. Does this not seem to be an exhorbitant waste for a group of people who claim they want to cut down on CO2 emissions?

Dr Collins estimates that the global audience for Live Earth will generate some 1,025 tonnes of waste. An extraordinary one million people are expected at the free concert at Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana beach, featuring Lenny Kravitz, Macy Gray and Pharrell Williams.

Live Earth say that they will recycle much of the waste generated. Fine talk, but in fact some of the concert venues are struggling to keep up with their commitments.

A spokesman for Wembley says they only have the capacity to recycle around a third of waste produced - the rest will go into landfill sites.

One third of the waste in London will be recycled. Is it environmentally friendly to dump the other two-thirds in landfills?

But wait! Live Earth has an explanation:

Andrea Robinson, Live Earth’s green manager, says her message to celebrities is: “Leave the Learjet at home - fly commercial.”

Wembley Stadium will be lit using low energy fluorescent lightbulbs, while the backdrop is composed of recycled tyres and oil drums. The organisers tried to introduce re-usable cups for interval refreshments, but found that - like many green strategies - this was not practical on such a huge scale.

Some bio-produced plastic, made from corn, will be used, and artists’ changing rooms will be fitted with energy-saving lightbulbs - all rather a drop in the ocean compared to the pollution generated by fans traveling across the UK to the concert or using the stadium’s 2,618 toilets. Plans to ask the British public to turn off their electrical appliances during the Live Earth broadcast were scuppered when the National Grid pointed out that as everyone switched on again, a giant power surge could cripple the country.

Some stadiums are greener than others. The Aussie Stadium in Sydney will run the event on 100 per cent green energy supply. Each Australian Live Earth ticket comes with a free public transport voucher, while all the bathrooms will be waterless with waste being composted into fertiliser.

Conversely, in New York’s Giants Stadium, trade unions have blocked Live Earth’s attempts to recycle, and the 52,000-seater arena is not situated near public transport. The smallest - and least polluting - concert will be held at the British Antarctic Survey’s base in Rothera.

It appears from reading this article only the site in Australia will be completely green.

So just how does Gore claim that Live Earth will be carbon neutral? He does so by convenient use of ‘carbon offsetting’ - a trendy new method of absolving yourself of guilt.

[...]

However, critics say that the practice is simply a way for consumerist industries and nations to export their responsibility to developing countries. Others say it simply does not work.

Carbon-offsetting is, it turns out, how celebrities square green issues with their extravagant lifestyles and use of private jets.

To buy your carbon offsets go to Generation Investment Management a company in which Al Gore is the chairman, partner and co-owner.

According to The Tennessean as quoted in Bill Hobbs’ blog that’s where Mr. Gore purchases his carbon footprint offsets.

The following quote seems to say it all:

Dr John Barrett, from the Stockholm Environment Institute at the University of York, says: “There is a huge irony in flying halfway across the globe in a private jet, eating up fossil fuel.

“The idea that you can offset the pollution you cause is just ridiculous. What these people at Live Earth have done is defined their boundaries to suit themselves, but there is no sense in which this concert is carbon neutral.

“Planting trees or investing in renewable energy does not reverse the damage of releasing huge quantities of carbon dioxide into the environment.

“It is far better not to pollute in the first place. Carbon offsetting can be a removal of guilt, but it is not an effective one.”

Were Republican senators vindictive enough to block the concert after he testified? I don’t know.
It seems like it’s going to go on anyway and amazingly enough with the help of a Native American.

Al Gore announced Friday a surprise Live Earth concert in Washington, foiling Senate Republicans who blocked Gore’s attempt to bring his global warming extravaganza to the grounds of the U.S. Capitol.
The former vice president said the all-day “Mother Earth” concert would be held on the National Mall at the National Museum of the American Indian—about two blocks from the Capitol—as part of Saturday’s concert series focused on climate change. The headliners are Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood.

“Global warming naysayers in the political world have not been able to have their way, because this will—despite their best efforts—be held on the Mall,” Gore told The Associated Press.

The “Mother Earth” show had been previously planned, but Gore announced Friday that it would be part of the Live Earth series. The concert will also feature films, music, dancing and guest speakers, including scientists and cultural leaders from the American Indian community.

“There is no more important matter before us than the question of how to live sustainably on the Earth,” said Tim Johnson, acting director of the American Indian museum and a descendant of the Mohawk tribe.

There are eight other Live Earth concerts scheduled Saturday, starting in Australia and continuing to London, New Jersey, Japan, China, South Africa, Brazil and Germany.

Earlier this year, Republican leaders in the Senate refused Gore’s request to host one of the concerts on the Capitol grounds facing the Washington Monument. The denial came after Gore testified before House and Senate panels in March about what he calls a “true planetary emergency.”

Story

Another politicians brat bites the dust.
Examples

The 24-year-old son of former Vice President Al Gore was arrested for drug possession on Wednesday after he was stopped for speeding in his hybrid Toyota Prius, a sheriff’s official said.

Al Gore III — whose father is a leading advocate of policies to fight global warming — was driving his environmentally friendly car at about 100 miles per hour on a freeway south of Los Angeles when he was pulled over by an Orange County sheriff’s deputy at about 2:15 a.m.

The deputy smelled marijuana and searched the car, said sheriff’s spokesman Jim Amormino. The search turned up a small amount of marijuana, along with prescription drugs including Valium, Xanax, Vicodin, Adderall and Soma. There were no prescriptions found, he said.

Gore was arrested on suspicion of drug possession and booked into the Inmate Reception Center in Santa Ana, about 34 miles south of Los Angeles, on $20,000 bail. Although he quickly identified himself as the son of the former vice president, Amormino said Gore received no special privileges.

Gore made bail and was released at 2 p.m., Amormino said. He will receive notice of a court date within 30 days.

The youngest child and only son of the former vice president, Gore has had previous brushes with the law. He was arrested in 2003 for marijuana possession and in 2002 for suspected drunken-driving.

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