Gore's "sanctimonious lardbutt Yank" award

Damian Thompson:

So Al Gore is the joint winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Admittedly, he has to share it with the United Nations’ climate change panel - but, even so, I think we need to declare an international smugness alert.

The former US Vice-President has already taken over from Michael Moore as the most sanctimonious lardbutt Yank on the planet. Can you imagine what he'll be like now that the Norwegian Nobel committee has given him the prize?

More to the point, can you imagine how enormous his already massive carbon footprint will become once he starts jetting around the world bragging about his new title?

Just after Gore won an Oscar for his global warming documentary, An Inconvenient Truth - in which he asked American households to cut their use of electricity - the Tennessee Centre for Policy Research took a look at Al's energy bills.

It reckoned that his 20-room, eight-bathroom mansion in Nashville sometimes uses twice the energy in one month that the average American household gets through in a year. The combined energy and gas bills for his estate came to nearly $30,000 in 2006. Ah, say his defenders, but he uses rainwater to flush his lavatories. Is there enough rainwater in the world, I wonder?

There are so many reasons why Gore shouldn't have won the peace prize for his preachiness. Alas, it is too late to influence their decision, but I'd have liked to refer the judges to a ruling by Mr Justice Burton, a High Court judge who has criticised the Government for sending out An Inconvenient Truth to schools without a health warning. The reason? It's full of errors and unsubstantiated claims.

The judge is not saying that Gore's basic thesis is wrong (and nor am I). In a way, his findings are more damning than that.

Gore claims that the rises in carbon dioxide and temperature over 650,000 years show an "exact fit". That's wrong, says Mr Justice Burton: there is a connection, but not a precise correlation.

Gore predicts sea levels rising by up to 20ft in the near future. Not so, according to the judge: that will happen only after millions of years.

Those low-lying Pacific atolls that Gore claims have been evacuated? No evidence. Polar bears who drowned swimming to look for ice? Again, no evidence: four bears have drowned - but because of a storm.

None of which will surprise seasoned Gore-watchers. The man is not, as his enemies maintained when he ran against George W. Bush in 2000, a pants-on-fire liar. He's an exaggerator and a braggart.

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But my favourite Gore memory lapse is his account of being sung to sleep with the lullaby Look for the Union Label, written in 1975. How sweet: being sung to sleep by your parents at the age of 27.

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But there is a more fundamental objection to awarding Gore the peace prize that goes beyond issues of character. Climate change is a threat to the environment, not to "peace" and international order. The prize has gone to some sleazy recipients in the past, but at least you can make a case that their actions staved off bloodshed.

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The prize should have gone to Rush Limbaugh or George Bush. At least they are doing something that gives peace a real chance. Their support for victory in Iraq would lead to fewer wars and fewer mass murders. that is why al Qaeda is so violently opposed to it.

But the Peace Prize has become a joke and AlGore is only the latest recipient to make that clear. Yassar Arafat, a true terrorist, turned the prize into a laughing stock. Then Jimmy Carter, who is responsible for letting Islamic terrorism blossom during his administration adds to the hilarity.

Gore is a braggart and an exaggerator and that is what he has won a prize for when it comes to global warming.

Melanie Phillips says, "After today, no-one can take the Nobel Peace Prize seriously ever again. Al Gore??"