SinoPenn

Dear Eric,

I am deeply honored to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. This award is even more meaningful because I have the honor of sharing it with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change–the world’s pre-eminent scientific body devoted to improving our understanding of the climate crisis–a group whose members have worked tirelessly and selflessly for many years. 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. It is also our greatest opportunity to lift global consciousness to a higher level.

My wife, Tipper, and I will donate 100 percent of the proceeds of the award to the Alliance for Climate Protection, a bipartisan non-profit organization that is devoted to changing public opinion in the U.S. and around the world about the urgency of solving the climate crisis.

Thank you,

Al Gore

First off, no, this isn’t from Al Gore to me. This is from Al Gore to his mailing list which I happen to be on. I’ve been loosely following Al since watching An Inconvenient Truth and have learned a few things about him in the process.

First: Al Gore did not invent the Internet. “REALLY? Gen De Ma?” you say. Yes.

During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country’s economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system.

~ Al Gore, interviewed by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on March 9th, 1999. From Snopes.com

Was the wording clumsy? Well, yes and no, but he never said, “I made the internet.” What he did was to pass legislation that led to a better internet & more funding for new technologies.

The people who DID invent the Internet, Vint Cerf & Bob Kahn had this to say on September 9th, 2000:

As the two people who designed the basic architecture and the core protocols that make the Internet work, we would like to acknowledge VP Gore’s contributions as a Congressman, Senator and as Vice President. No other elected official, to our knowledge, has made a greater contribution over a longer period of time. Last year the Vice President made a straightforward statement on his role. He said: “During my service in the United States Congress I took the initiative in creating the Internet.” We don’t think, as some people have argued, that Gore intended to claim he “invented” the Internet. Moreover, there is no question in our minds that while serving as Senator, Gore’s initiatives had a significant and beneficial effect on the still-evolving Internet. The fact of the matter is that Gore was talking about and promoting the Internet long before most people were listening. We feel it is timely to offer our perspective. As far back as the 1970s Congressman Gore promoted the idea of high speed telecommunications as an engine for both economic growth and the improvement of our educational system. He was the first elected official to grasp the potential of computer communications to have a broader impact than just improving the conduct of science and scholarship. Though easily forgotten, now, at the time this was an unproven and controversial concept.

From Wikipedia (link anonymoused).

Well, there you have it.

What else has Al done noteworthy? How about helping to arrange an airlift for stranded medical patients in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, quite against FEMA’s wishes?

Greg Simon, President of FasterCures wrote a lengthy piece detailing an account of how he, Gore and others worked on getting planes for stranded people at Charity Hospital. Here’s a part of the story:

I called Steve and told him to delay the planes. I called Al. It was 2 a.m. in Nashville. He was planning to leave for Dallas at 4 a.m. to meet the plane. I told Tipper what was going on. She said, “Greg, you can’t delay it now. It’s too late, the doctors are flying in here to fly with Al to Dallas.” Al got on the phone and said we could not delay. I tried to scare him. What if something went wrong with a patient on the plane? What if the military did not cooperate on the ground and no patients got on the plane? He refused to budge. Col. LaFon could handle the patients and Al would trust that when they landed they would break through the resistance and succeed.

I called Mimi back and said we could not delay but we would agree not to fly to Chicago. I called Steve back to re-start the planes.

Over the next three hours (from 2a.m. to 5 a.m.) I was called by an array of Majors and Lieutenant Commanders telling me to stop. (“I don’t mean to be rude, sir, but you must not do this. You must stop this now.”) Major Webb from GPMRC (don’t ask), Grant Meade from ESF. Major Lindquist from TRANSCOM (at last!) all telling me they would not cooperate and they did not know how we had gotten permission to land. I never mentioned Gore’s name because no one ever asked me who was paying for the flights or how we had come so far.

The full article is here, and I won’t spoil the ending for you, but rest assured, it’s a good ending.

So does he deserve the Nobel Prize? Why not? He’s worked hard to raise awareness for Global Warming, new technologies and the general welfare of the world. He absolutely should be honored for this.

More Gore you say? Well… Okay.

CNN Video on the Draft Gore Movement – CNN Article on Gore’s Nobel Prize win – Gore’s Comments after the Nobel Win