Al Gore Wins The Nobel Peace Prize

What? You mean Rush Limbaugh didn't win? This is a bigger upset than Appalachian State over Michigan! /Snark.

Al Gore, the former U.S. vice president and presidential candidate who reinvented himself as an environmentalist, won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for his efforts to fight global warming. Gore shares the prize with the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

"I am deeply honored to receive the Nobel Peace Prize," Gore said in an e-mailed statement. "We face a true planetary emergency. The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity."

The Nobel committee in Oslo, Norway, announced the news at 11 a.m. local time – 5 a.m. on the East Coast – and 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 Ole Danbolt Mjoes, chairman of the Nobel committee.

As a Nobel laureate, Gore receives a gold medal, a diploma and splits 10 million Swedish kronor – about $1.7 million – with the IPCC. (H/T - Pam)

Um, what does fighting global warming have to do with a "Peace Prize?" I don't know, either. Look, bloggers more talented than I (read: all of them) have already pontificated about this little miracle, so I will only mention this:

Individuals Who Have Won The Nobel Peace Prize:

• 1988 - The U.N. Peacekeeping Forces (Anyone see Black Hawk Down?)


• 1990 - Mikhail Gorbachev ("For helping to bring the Cold War to an end." President Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher were not chosen.)


• 1994 - Yassir Arafat (A known terrorist.)


• 2001 - Kofi Annan (One of the most corrupt Secretary Generals in U.N. history.)


• 2002 - Former President Jimmy Carter (Need I say more?)