Al Gore: Phony, or Really Good Guy? And What about that Peace Prize?

Yeah, I think Al Gore is a bit of a phony. He's the toughest kind of phony to really pindown because he's kind of naive about stuff. Like when he said he created the internet (for a full run down on that, see Snopes). Plus he's really great at pretending to be sweet, and nice and all gentlemanly. Or maybe he is really sweet. Either way, the sweetness screams phony to me.

Isn't he just using the platform of climate change as a way to remain in the spotlight? He could have picked any subject, but he chose one that's deliberately impossible to prove with absolute certainty one way or the other, but which has global ramifications. Had he chosen a campaign to save the baiji, the only country immediately affected by it would have been China. That's too small. Though I think it would have done more good than the climate change battle.

I get the feeling that Al Gore really believes people have the power to damage the Earth, and I don't argue with that (though on what scale, we disagree). I think he chose an issue that has united people from all over the world -- so in that sense, he's created a kind of peace, a unity of cause. But there is also a lot of dissension that has been silenced by the easy responses of the "experts" and the "scientists." So Nobel Peace Prize? Maybe. I guess I buy that. But while they're expanding the definition of long established awards, they ought to broaden the scope of literature and include my blog in the running for the Nobel Prize in Literature. I'd even settle for a Pulitzer.

If the climate change theory is a tool that's being used to cause change in human consumption of resources and that alone, fine. Someone should admit that. But if drastic measures are going to be taken that have the potential to cause permanent damage, such as the measures that were proposed during the 1970s global cooling scare, I think Al Gore has unleashed a dangerous fury on humanity. I can't say that I think his motives are altruistic, either, and I guess that's the real reason he strikes me as phony.