Climate Change and World Peace

This post is by Sheryl Canter, Online Writer and Editorial Manager at Environmental Defense.

This year’s Nobel Peace Prize went to people fighting global climate change. What does fighting climate change have to do with world peace? Here’s the answer that Michael Oppenheimer, Ph.D., one of the team of authors of the IPCC’s 2007 reports and science advisor to Environmental Defense, gave in an interview with PBS:

A stable climate helps keep the peace. We see situations all around the world where shortages of the sorts of resources that will shrivel under a changing climate, like water for food, water for agriculture, are contributory factors in places like Darfur, the Horn of Africa, where instability is rife, and governments just can’t hold it together, and people die. That’s ultimately why this is justifiably a prize for peace.

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3 Comments

  1. K.C. Weber
    Posted October 15, 2007 at 5:32 pm | Permalink

    I think it was on October 14, that one of the foremost meteorologists, Dr. William Gray, spoke to a packed hall at the University of North Carolina. He said that the theory that helped Al Gore share the Nobel Prize is “ridiculous” and the product of “people who don’t understand how the atmosphere works.” He said, “The human impact on the atmosphere is simply too small to have a major effect on global temperatures.”

    http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/gore-gets-a-cold-

    This comes on the heels of BBC News denouncing Al Gore’s Academy Award winning movie, “An Inconvenient Truth,” saying it has nine errors that are not supported by mainstream scientific consensus.

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/7037671.stm

    I notice that Al Gore and, most who say that mankind is responsible for global warming, say that there is a scientific consensus on this view. However, by saying this, hundreds of other scientists viewpoints are ignored who disagree with this viewpoint. The American Heritage Dictionary defines consensus as “an opinion or position reached by a group AS A WHOLE.” If hundreds of scientists do not agree that man is causing global warming, then there is obviously not a consensus about this. Webster’s New World Dictionary defines consensus as “agreement, especially in opinion.” Global warming is not something that everyone agrees on.

    My feeling is that possibly in years to come, it may be said that Al Gore may not have deserved his Academy Award or Nobel Peace Prize.

    K.C. Weber

  2. K.C. Weber
    Posted October 15, 2007 at 5:40 pm | Permalink

    CORRECTION TO MY BLOG ABOVE

    I copied the first web address wrong. The correct one about Dr. William Gray is:

    http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/gore-gets-a-cold-shoulder/2007/10/13/1191696238792.html

    K.C. Weber

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    Posted October 17, 2007 at 3:45 am | Permalink

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