Al Gore Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

[Gustaf]

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the Nobel Peace Prize supposed to be awarded to "the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity among nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses". What does global warming have to do with that exactly?

You are wrong. the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to the person whom we think have done generally nice things. Or something like that.

But, yes, it should adhere to the statutes and focus on actual peace. But people are dumb.

[Gustaf]

But people are dumb.

Indeed, but Alfred Nobel wasn't one of them.  He was pessimistic, lonely, and a bit of a nerd, but dumb he wasn't.  He actually made his fortune on explosives.   The Nobel family's nitroglycerin factory blew up in 1864, killing Alfred's younger brother Emil and several other people.  But Alfred maintained his steady belief that if he could just find a safe way to manufacture his product he could make millions, even as occassional accidents killed his factory workers time and time again throughout the following decade.  Eventually he invented dynamite, and that secured a fortune for himself and his family. 

Of course, he wasn't entirely lonely.  It was his "friendship" with the Austrian freifrau Bertha von Suttner that inspired him to establish the prize for peace.

Anyway, you're both wrong.  The Nobel Peace prize is as political as the other four original nobel prizes, and possibly as political as the one invented later by swiss interlopers.  You get nominated for a Nobel Prize, any of them, if you manage to say all the right things and impress all the right people.  Gore, as offensive as he is to me on a deep and profound personal level, has said many of the right things with regard to humanity, I must admit.  Fortunately for him I'm not on that committee, as he's offended me more often than he's said the right things.

Duh, mister, I'm Swedish, I know who Nobel was.