The big news of the day (besides NB's Noel Sheppard appearing on the Dennis Miller radio show) so far has been the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to top warm-monger Al Gore for his work trying to profit from warn us all about the dangers of man-made global warming.
My colleague over at CNS, Randy Hall, talked to some more qualified people, however, who think Gore is more of a propagandist than a peacemaker:
Update 12:33.Timothy Ball, a retired climatologist who leads the National Resources Stewardship Project, told Cybercast News Service he agrees that "An Inconvenient Truth" is a "wonderful piece of propaganda, but that's all it is."
Calling the film's scientific errors "huge," Ball said that the movie "would fail as a grade 10 science project," because it depends on "visual imagery and gimmickry" to make its point.
Ball also said it's a "travesty" that Gore is being considered for such a prize since "you can spin the lies but you can't spin the truth. I hope that one day soon, we'll be able to have a calm and rational debate about climate change."
The fact that the former vice president has refused to debate skeptics of manmade global warming was also on the mind of Patrick Michaels, a senior fellow with the libertarian Cato Institute, who issued a statement that called Gore's candidacy for the Nobel Peace Price "a tribute to persistence."
"For 20 years, he has not changed his story: climate change is the most important issue confronting our planet, it should be the 'central organizing principle' for civilization, and it is caused by a conspiracy of a few greedy individuals," Michaels said. "He's like the proverbial nut that grew into a giant oak by standing his ground."
"We can only hope that he can parlay his prize into a run for the U.S. presidency, where he will be unable to hide from debate on his extreme and one-sided view of global warming," he added.
Michaels wasn't the only person wondering if winning a Nobel Prize might cause Gore - who was vice president during Bill Clinton's two terms in the White House and who narrowly lost the 2000 presidential race to Republican George W. Bush - to jump into the field of Democratic candidates for 2008.
Related: Canada's prime minister is set to give a major speech attacking the Kyoto Protocol treaty.
