Science & Morality

I really like how NYT's Andrew Revkin captures the essence of today's Peace Prize: how appropriate it was that both the IPCC and Gore received the prize -- the IPCC representing the cold, logical, scientific side of this huge equation, and Gore representing the ethical, moral, emotional part of the story. Both are absolutely necessary, as in any big story. Some people understand or prefer to listen to one side of the story; others respond to the other side. But the latter is not cut-and-dried -- it is as big any value-laden issue, and global warming is as value-laden as it gets. Gore might not always get every iota and detail correct -- his critics don't either -- but there is still a lot of uncertainty about all this and someone has to say, look, this can get really serious. Recently we've seen that predictions made 7 or 10 years ago underpredict today's reality -- the situation does indeed appear to be on the serious side of things. In a very real way Gore has done more good for the world than had he been elected President in 2000.