2008 Woodie Awards
op-ed: Al Gore deserves the Prize
Dan Streitfeld
Issue date: 11/1/07 Section: Opinions
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Alex Garlick, Campus columnist, has, in a rather hastily written piece, spilled some ill-advised ink regarding Al Gore's recent receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize. The raison d'être of the column is that Gore does not deserve the award because his actions cannot truly be seen as directly promoting world peace in a meaningful way, as has been the case with previous prize winners.
As Mr. Garlick reminds us, Gore (and the U.N. Panel on Climate Change) were given the award for, in the words of the Nobel committee, "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."
Mr. Garlick challenges none of this, but writes that "[d]ue to the unpredictable nature of climate change [the Nobel Committee's rationale] is a very speculative reason for an award that is traditionally given for retrospective action. What if climate change brings rainfall to water-starved arid regions?"
Anyone who studies climate change knows that there is indeed a tremendous amount of uncertainty involved in predicting its effects. Yet Garlick seems to fallaciously presume that the probabilistic effects of climate change amount to something akin to spinning a roulette wheel, randomly bringing positive outcomes in some cases and negative outcomes in others.
In fact, had Mr. Garlick done any research into the matter, he would have discovered that, despite the uncertainty, there are models that attempt to systematically predict the effects of climate change. It is true that many of the more prosperous countries of the north, such as Canada, the U.S. and northern Europe might experience net benefits from climate change, mostly due to frigid regions being warmed enough to host increased agricultural production and human habitation.
On the flip side, however, there is a general scientific consensus that the regions most negatively affected will be those around the equator - the Caribbean, sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. This is the case because a rise of only a few degrees Celsius could have cataclysmic effects in those already heat-baked regions - higher temperatures and decreased precipitation levels (due to less snow melt, changed weather patterns, and others causes) would be even more mal-suited to agriculture and human habitation.
As Mr. Garlick reminds us, Gore (and the U.N. Panel on Climate Change) were given the award for, in the words of the Nobel committee, "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."
Mr. Garlick challenges none of this, but writes that "[d]ue to the unpredictable nature of climate change [the Nobel Committee's rationale] is a very speculative reason for an award that is traditionally given for retrospective action. What if climate change brings rainfall to water-starved arid regions?"
Anyone who studies climate change knows that there is indeed a tremendous amount of uncertainty involved in predicting its effects. Yet Garlick seems to fallaciously presume that the probabilistic effects of climate change amount to something akin to spinning a roulette wheel, randomly bringing positive outcomes in some cases and negative outcomes in others.
In fact, had Mr. Garlick done any research into the matter, he would have discovered that, despite the uncertainty, there are models that attempt to systematically predict the effects of climate change. It is true that many of the more prosperous countries of the north, such as Canada, the U.S. and northern Europe might experience net benefits from climate change, mostly due to frigid regions being warmed enough to host increased agricultural production and human habitation.
On the flip side, however, there is a general scientific consensus that the regions most negatively affected will be those around the equator - the Caribbean, sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. This is the case because a rise of only a few degrees Celsius could have cataclysmic effects in those already heat-baked regions - higher temperatures and decreased precipitation levels (due to less snow melt, changed weather patterns, and others causes) would be even more mal-suited to agriculture and human habitation.
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