"He's the evidence that America is still capable of intelligent discourse," said Peter Kellner, who heads the British polling firm YouGov. According to Kellner, opinion polls show that British people generally admire America and Americans but strongly dislike Bush. He also said surveys routinely find that more than 80 percent of Britons agree with Gore that climate change exists and is man-made.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called Gore "inspirational," and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said he hoped Gore's honor would encourage world leaders to "approach this challenge even more swiftly and decisively."
John Noach, 69, a Dutch citizen who was sitting in a London Starbucks on Friday, said that in Europe, "most reasonable people" think of Gore as "a lifeline to sanity."
And an interesting comparison between the the paths of Bush and Gore since 2000 from the Post. What a different country and better place the US would have been with a Gore administration. The Republicans are so full of sour grapes, obviously touchy about the massive failures and lies that will define the GOP for years to come. Gore was so right about so many things and that's something the GOP or the Supreme Court can never take away.
What other good articles is everyone seeing out there from around the world?
What the hell is that? It's only been announced this morning and CNN is already attacking Gore with their headline story? I would expect a hit piece like this from Fox, but CNN is bottom feeding with this.
Ahh, if only there was a new war that CNN could help the country leap into as they did with Iraq we would all be better off. Then we wouldn't have to bother reporting on someone who made it his mission to improve the planet and win a Nobel Peace Prize.
Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for their work towards raising awareness about global warming.
The Nobel committee cited them "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."
The IPCC and Gore will each receive a gold medal, a diploma and split about $1.5 million. The award ceremony will be held Dec. 10 in Oslo, Norway.
"Through the scientific reports it has issued over the past two decades, the IPCC has created an ever-broader informed consensus about the connection between human activities and global warming," Ole Danbolt Mjoes, chairman of the Nobel committee, said in making the announcement.
"Thousands of scientists and officials from over 100 countries have collaborated to achieve greater certainty as to the scale of the warming."
The Nobel committee praised Gore as being "one of the world's leading environmentalist politicians."
He is probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted," said Mjoes.
Senator James Inhofe and the other global warming deniers thought they had blocked Al Gore's Live Earth concert in DC. Wrong. This morning, Gore announced that there will be a concert on the mall:
Washington has been added as a host city for this Saturday's worldwide series of Live Earth concerts, former Vice President Al Gore, a co-organizer of the shows, said on Friday.
The concert to raise climate change awareness will be on the Mall, a vast park located between the Capitol building and the Lincoln Memorial, and will include married country singers Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood, Gore told the "CBS Early Show."
An earlier bid to stage the concert in Washington fell through when other music groups had already obtained permits for the Mall and some Republicans in Congress blocked an effort to move it to the Capitol grounds.
That's the way the GOPers play ball. They actually thought blocking this concert was some kind of victory. Bizarre, but that's what we're up against.
Al Gore continues to call 'em as he sees 'em and is once again spot on.
"The eight most powerful nations gathered and were unable to do anything except to say 'We had good conversations and we agreed that we will have more conversations, and we will even have conversations about the possibility of doing something in the future on a voluntary basis perhaps."'
A few days ago, a small "organization" no one had ever heard of got their hands on Al Gore's utility bill. And, not surprising for a man who lives in a large home, Gore's bill was a lot of money. The "organization" claimed that Gore was a hypocrite for proclaiming the need to address Global Warming while living in a 20-room home.
Huh?
Since when was it a crime, or even in poor taste, in America to do well and live in a nice home - and since when did Al Gore lecture anyone on the need to buy smaller homes? (Sure, it fits into the conservative smear about rich liberals being hypocrites, because somehow we're all supposed to be poor Capuchin monks, but that's neither true nor news.) But, no one was claiming that Gore was wasteful with his energy use. No one was claiming that Gore didn't try to "greenify" his home (he did). What they were claiming was that Al Gore lived in a large home and thus had a high energy bill. Uh, yeah. And?
So how exactly is this story news? Simply because some out-of-nowhere "organization" just happens to attack Al Gore a few days after his documentary gets the Oscar? Gee, some conicidence there. And in fact, contrary to the implication that Gore was sloppy with his own energy use - which would be news - Gore has been doing exactly what he preached:
The vice president has done that, Kreider argues, and the family tries to offset that carbon footprint by purchasing their power through the local Green Power Switch program -- electricity generated through renewable resources such as solar, wind, and methane gas, which create less waste and pollution. "In addition, they are in the midst of installing solar panels on their home, which will enable them to use less power," Kreider added. "They also use compact fluorescent bulbs and other energy efficiency measures and then they purchase offsets for their carbon emissions to bring their carbon footprint down to zero."
Now, ABC will argue that there is a controversy here and they're simply reporting both sides. Gee, thanks. But the first rule of journalism, in my book at least, isn't whether there's a controversy, it's whether there's a story. You can't legitimiately do a he-said-she-said when you know that there's no there-there. In this story, the complaint on its face, that Al Gore lives in a 20-room house, is bogus, unless Al Gore has been lecturing people about the need to live in smaller houses - and he hasn't, to my knowledge, nor do the stories say otherwise.
To reiterate a point made by ABC's own Mark Halperin a few years back:
We have a responsibility to hold both sides accountable to the public interest, but that doesn't mean we reflexively and artificially hold both sides "equally" accountable when the facts don't warrant that.
The attack on Al Gore is the equivalent of the "have you stopped beating your wife" allegation. It's not news, and it's not fair and balanced, simply because you report the views of the slanderer and the victim, especially when you know that the only thing people in the middle will take away from the story is a scent of scandal that blackens Gore's good name.
