# Can the Nobel Prize become relevant again? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 22, 2010, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-nobel-prize-become-relevant-again/565065 "2010-12-22T12:48:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2010, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-nobel-prize-become-relevant-again/565065/41 "2010-12-23T18:57:06Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > What I’m trying to say is that the IPCC also reported on what is more likely to happen if nothing is done, an item that would be reckless for planners to ignore. Okay, but what did the IPCC accomplish? Reporting on something is great, but did it have an impact on world peace, if indirectly? Have countries actually taken real steps to stop carbon emissions and other causes of climate change? I don’t mean generic feel-good “Hey, sure, we’ll do something about this stuff someday” declarations, but real progress that the IPCC had a substantial part in influencing? > [@](#): > > Doing nothing will make it more likely that oceans will rise and natural disasters will become worse in the future, it is not difficult to see who will be most affected by the ocean rise, it is harder to be specific on the effects of climate change on land, but the evidence I have seen tells me that it is not impossible to identify the most likely affected places and plan accordingly to keep the peace. Indeed it’s not. When someone does something about it, I for one will be the first in line to say they should win the Nobel Peace Prize. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2010, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-nobel-prize-become-relevant-again/565065/42 "2010-12-23T19:08:57Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > Okay, but what did the IPCC accomplish? Reporting on something is great, but did it have an impact on world peace, if indirectly? Have countries actually taken real steps to stop carbon emissions and other causes of climate change? I don’t mean generic feel-good “Hey, sure, we’ll do something about this stuff someday” declarations, but real progress that the IPCC had a substantial part in influencing? [http://climateprogress.org/2010/12/17/cancun-copenhagen-global-warming-pact/](http://climateprogress.org/2010/12/17/cancun-copenhagen-global-warming-pact/) > [@](#): > > Why did Cancun work where Copenhagen failed? > December 17, 2010 > > The United Nations climate summit’s Cancun Agreements were a critical step toward an effective compact to fight global warming after many years of disappointing climate meetings. But why did Cancun work where Copenhagen failed? Three factors helped the notoriously difficult negotiating process. > > First, the Cancun Agreements had a good foundation in the Copenhagen Accord, which emerged from last year’s climate summit. > > What many forget is that the Copenhagen Accord was designed to be a political agreement advancing an agenda for a final legal agreement. But when the Copenhagen Accord was born — thanks to President Barack Obama and the leaders of the biggest carbon emitters in the developing world — it proved an unsteady delivery. Five countries out of 193 withheld consent, so the document was never an official U.N. decision under the consensus rules that govern these meetings. As a result, several parties walked back their agreement over the summer. Many refused to acknowledge the accord as a point of departure for further negotiations. > > The Mexican hosts of the Cancun climate summit, led by Foreign Secretary Patricia Espinosa, did two critical things: First, they gave the substance of the Copenhagen text the U.N.’s full imprimatur, and they expanded the original six thin pages to 30 dense pages of programmatic language. > > The result is a set of building blocks that can serve as the foundation for a complete climate treaty. Most important, the parties agreed to limit emissions from deforestation — equal to all carbon emissions from global transportation. Addressing deforestation is key to success in forging a global agreement. > [@RickJay](#): > > Indeed it’s not. When someone does something about it, I for one will be the first in line to say they should win the Nobel Peace Prize. > **[The Real Roots of Darfur](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/04/the-real-roots-of-darfur/305701/)** > > The violence in Darfur is usually attributed to ethnic hatred. But global warming may be primarily to blame. > [@](#): > > The violence in Darfur is usually attributed to ethnic hatred. But global warming may be primarily to blame. The science is telling us that the problems are getting worse thanks to human interference, AFAIR the Nobel committee looked at what happened in Darfur and took into account the warnings that IPCC had given about the region. > [@](#): > > Among the implications arising from the ecological origin of the Darfur crisis, the most significant may be moral. If the region’s collapse was in some part caused by the emissions from our factories, power plants, and automobiles, we bear some responsibility for the dying. “This changes us from the position of Good Samaritans—disinterested, uninvolved people who may feel a moral obligation—to a position where we, unconsciously and without malice, created the conditions that led to this crisis,” says Michael Byers, a political scientist at the University of British Columbia. “We cannot stand by and look at it as a situation of discretionary involvement. We are already involved.” Remember, the IPCC is representing what the scientists are telling us about what is coming in the most likely future, thanks to the IPCC we have a guideline of what we should do to minimize that scenario. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2010, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-nobel-prize-become-relevant-again/565065/43 "2010-12-23T22:15:29Z")
[QUOTE=GIGObuster] Why did Cancun work where Copenhagen failed? [/QUOTE] Cancun didn’t accomplish anything; it commits the signatories to nothing at all., and I will bet good money it’ll result in nothing. And if it did, _what did Al Gore have to do with it?_ Cancun has no binding targets, no obligations, no requirements on the signatory nations, no method of verification or enforcement, nothing. And it will accomplish nothing. I’ll say it again; when somebody DOES something about this problem, then I’ll say they should win the Nobel Peace Prize. Let me know when that happens. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2010, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-nobel-prize-become-relevant-again/565065/44 "2010-12-23T23:00:24Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > Cancun didn’t accomplish anything; it commits the signatories to nothing at all., and I will bet good money it’ll result in nothing. And if it did, _what did Al Gore have to do with it?_ > > Cancun has no binding targets, no obligations, no requirements on the signatory nations, no method of verification or enforcement, nothing. And it will accomplish nothing. > > I’ll say it again; when somebody DOES something about this problem, then I’ll say they should win the Nobel Peace Prize. Let me know when that happens. It will be better to get something else just besides “because I say so”. And once again you are ignoring that I’m saying that “doing nothing” is not what scientists (IPCC) are doing. Addressing deforestation is very important, and what I do expect is that once more evidence is piled up not even the retrogrades among the Republicans will not stop the future bills and treaties dealing with the issue. Al Gore was the best spokesman for the issue, and like Barry Brickmore (geochemistry professor at Brigham Young University, an active Mormon, and an active Republican) can tell you, the dismissal of Gore regarding his popularization efforts is really exaggerated. > **[“Why Don’t You Bash Al Gore?”](https://bbickmore.wordpress.com/2010/10/03/why-dont-you-bash-al-gore/)** > > Since I took the plunge and started publicly criticizing certain climate change contrarians, notably certain Utah politicians and Christopher Monckton, people on the other side of the fence have of… > [@](#): > > Since I took the plunge and started publicly criticizing certain climate change contrarians, notably certain Utah politicians and Christopher Monckton, people on the other side of the fence have often asked, “Why don’t you criticize Al Gore for all his misrepresentations?” The implication is that I, and others like me, are being intellectually dishonest by selectively criticizing only those who are pushing for doing nothing about climate change, while ignoring “alarmists” who exaggerate. > > If you really want to fathom why scientists like me typically don’t get all worked up about Al Gore, you have to understand a couple things from the outset. > > 1. Scientists expect journalists and popularizers to get a few things wrong when explaining scientific work. > > Most scientific work is pretty specialized, technical stuff. It isn’t easy to take something like that and boil it down for popular consumption without glossing over a few important points. The problem becomes worse when we try to explain our work in simplified terms to a journalist or popularizer, who will then try to boil it down even more for the masses. Boiling down technical information is a tricky balancing act, and it often takes an expert to tell when simplification crosses the line into blatant error. > > The most extreme example I know of is the time a geophysicist colleague of mine was interviewed by a reporter from the student newspaper. He told the reporter how he uses seismic waves to figure out what is under the surface of the Earth, e.g., he can locate features like the Moho, which marks the transition between the crust and mantle. My friend went on to explain that bats use a similar strategy to locate bugs like mosquitos, except that bats use sound waves instead of seismic waves. When the article came out, it included a “quotation” in which my friend supposedly said that he could use seismic waves to find a mosquito at the Moho. > > The upshot is that scientists are usually pretty resigned to the fact that the popular media is going to botch some of the details, so we’re generally happy if they get the overall gist right. > > 1. Gore’s documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth”, is not that bad, frankly. > > Yes, there are a couple errors. Yes, in a few cases he focuses on “worst-case scenarios,” rather than communicating the full range of risk. But the fact is that he got the most important points right, and the problems aren’t that serious from the perspective of most scientists who have examined the movie. Tim Lambert collected reactions from a number of scientists about a list of nine alleged errors in the movie, for example. While they didn’t always agree about the status of individual “errors,” there was general agreement that the list was too long. In most cases, it was questionable whether they were really errors at all. ---
**Author:** ![godix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/278dde/32.png) [@godix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/godix)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2010, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-nobel-prize-become-relevant-again/565065/45 "2010-12-24T01:55:48Z")
Can the climate change argument move to a thread actually about climate change? In theory, the replies in this thread are supposed to have something to do with the Nobel Prize, not who drunk Gore’s kool-aid. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2010, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-nobel-prize-become-relevant-again/565065/46 "2010-12-24T02:31:30Z")
> [@godix](#): > > Can the climate change argument move to a thread actually about climate change? In theory, the replies in this thread are supposed to have something to do with the Nobel Prize, not who drunk Gore’s kool-aid. > **[Nobel Peace Prize 2007](https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2007/summary/)** > > The Nobel Peace Prize 2007 was awarded jointly to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Albert Arnold (Al) Gore Jr. "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the... > [@](#): > > The Nobel Peace Prize 2007 was awarded jointly to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Albert Arnold (Al) Gore Jr. “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” Sorry to say but your protests just show that you are only trying to negate the reason why the Nobel was granted and the Global warming issue, indeed the award was more deserved than the silliness of saying that then 2 superpowers going to cold war blows just for shit and giggles did deserve it. ---
**Author:** ![godix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/278dde/32.png) [@godix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/godix)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2010, 6:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-nobel-prize-become-relevant-again/565065/47 "2010-12-24T06:32:09Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > Sorry to say but your protests just show that you are only trying to negate the reason why the Nobel was granted and the Global warming issue, indeed the award was more deserved than the silliness of saying that then 2 superpowers going to cold war blows just for shit and giggles did deserve it. Actually, my protests were that your argument has been shifting from the ‘Gore/IPCC’s prize was dumb’/‘no it wasn’t’ debate and into a more generalized debate on global warming and how effective the various attempts to combat it have been. Which is a different issue than the OP. As for the actual topic of was Gore & the IPCC’s prize silly or not, I’m not getting into it anymore. You believe a powerpoint presentation deserves what is, in theory, one of the most prestigious prizes in the world. I believe saving the world takes a bit more than letting clippy help slap together some propaganda, so awarding it the most prestigious prize in the world does nothing but cheapen the prize. I don’t see either of us changing the others mind. For that matter, I’m seeing scant evidence mind and thought was involved at all here. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2010, 6:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-nobel-prize-become-relevant-again/565065/48 "2010-12-24T06:52:51Z")
> [@godix](#): > > Actually, my protests were that your argument has been shifting from the ‘Gore/IPCC’s prize was dumb’/‘no it wasn’t’ debate and into a more generalized debate on global warming and how effective the various attempts to combat it have been. Which is a different issue than the OP. It is important when the issue of declaring it dumb is based on good evidence, it was important and related to peace. > [@godix](#): > > As for the actual topic of was Gore & the IPCC’s prize silly or not, I’m not getting into it anymore. You believe a powerpoint presentation deserves what is, in theory, one of the most prestigious prizes in the world. I believe saving the world takes a bit more than letting clippy help slap together some propaganda, so awarding it the most prestigious prize in the world does nothing but cheapen the prize. I don’t see either of us changing the others mind. That is not what scientists on the whole think of Al Gore. And you will need to get some pertinent cites to even pretend that it is a serious point to say that it is just propaganda. > [@godix](#): > > For that matter, I’m seeing scant evidence mind and thought was involved at all here. Everyone can notice that when a poster like you resorts to direct insults it is just evidence of a poster that has lost a discussion. I post in any case not to convince people like you, I post for other readers that want to learn from more reliable sources. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2010, 7:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-nobel-prize-become-relevant-again/565065/49 "2010-12-24T07:21:01Z")
> [@godix](#): > > For that matter, I’m seeing scant evidence mind and thought was involved at all here. This is an insult and not an argument. In the future please keep comments like this in the Pit. That said, I agree with you: you and **GIGObuster** should either start a new AGW thread or drop the discussion in this one. The topic has been exhausted as it relates to the Nobel Prize. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2010, 8:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-nobel-prize-become-relevant-again/565065/50 "2010-12-24T08:12:05Z")
Indeed, I would like concentrate on one point made by the OP: > [@](#): > > Could the Nobel Prize be reformed? Does a prize like that really do any good anymore? Did it ever? The Nobel Peace price of 2004 was awarded to Wangari Maathai “for her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace”. > **[Nobel Peace Prize 2004](https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2004/ceremony-speech/)** > > The Nobel Peace Prize 2004 was awarded to Wangari Muta Maathai "for her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace" Essentially the money and prestige gained makes it easier for the recipient to continue his or her work. IMHO it does good. Of course it depends on the recipient. Some did not need it at all like Kissinger or Arafat. ---
**Author:** ![Slightly\_mad\_scientist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ba8739/32.png) [@Slightly\_mad\_scientist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slightly_mad_scientist)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2010, 8:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-nobel-prize-become-relevant-again/565065/51 "2010-12-24T08:38:23Z")
> [@WarmNPrickly](#): > > The Nobel Prize in Chemistry has always been very well thought out excepting this year. I have yet to meet one chemist that thinks a couple of guys that did theoretical work on something three years ago that has not even begun to pan out, and as I understand it, is full of holes, should have gotten it. Most seem to think there was some under the table deal with Russia. Could you clarify which Nobel prize you mean? The 2010 one was for palladium-catalysed cross-couplings. This absolutely does not fit your description, and I haven’t seen anyone describe this one as undeserved. ---
**Author:** ![Busy\_Scissors](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/d78d45/32.png) [@Busy\_Scissors](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Busy_Scissors)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2010, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-nobel-prize-become-relevant-again/565065/52 "2010-12-27T18:33:54Z")
I think **WarmNprickly** must have gotten started on the Christmas boozing when he wrote that - this years Chemistry Nobel prize was the most popular one in recent memory amongst the organic chemistry community - long, long overdue and a recognition of something that’s become essential to everyday nuts and bolts chemistry at the bench. Completely different to the structural biology that has claimed the chemistry Nobel a few times in recent years and which many chemists struggle to relate to. I think he might have been thinking of the physics prize for graphene. Premature maybe (time will tell), but hardly theoretical. They made graphene after all. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-nobel-prize-become-relevant-again/565065.md?page=2)