The award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Al Gore and the IPCC is bizarre at best: whatever one's views of their work and their cause, it is difficult in the extreme to make the case that they have somehow advanced peace per se. (Much more appropriate would have been the underrecognized John Garang.) This isn't the first time the Nobel committee has gone off the rails, of course -- remember the endorsement of anticapitalist greenie Wangari Muta Maathai? -- but it does lend credence to the idea that the award is now merely a tactical expression of political sympathies, rather than a meaningful honor for men of peace.
