Nobel Prize Winners

In recent arguments in the commentary sections of the series of posts on Global Warming, guest Neologizer frequently cited the internationally award-winning creds of the alarmist Global Grillers as "proof" of--presumably-- scientific objectivity and integrity.

Republicus has rebutted such qualifications by pointing out that recipients of the Nobel do not always reflect the imagined characters of who we think would be worthy of receiving such a prestigious award, e.g. people of intellectual objectivity and character integrity, i.e. people who make other people proud to be people.

Case in point: PLO Terrorist and Infitada-instigator Yasser Arafat was a Nobel Peace Prize Winner.

Well, you say, that's the fault of the committee which decided to award him.

Yes. And, obviously, political considerations are factored in to the equation which determines the resulting winner.

So Neologizer's attempts to strengthen his argument (that is the arguments of his Global Warming gurus) by constantly waving the Nobel Prize over it as some secular sort of Divine Infallibility is what is known as an illegitimate appeal to authority, i.e. fallacious reasoning.

A story today makes my point well. Behold the "apolitical" and "peaceful" mettle of another recipient of the Nobel Prize for Peace winner:


07:31 AM CDT on Friday, July 13, 2007
By JAMES HOHMANN / The Dallas Morning News

Nobel Peace Prize winner Betty Williams apologized Thursday for saying she could kill President Bush, remarks that drew scorn from Bush loyalists and shook up the International Women's Peace Conference in Dallas.

"My feelings now and again get way ahead of me," Ms. Williams said. "I couldn't kill anybody, but I must confess that I'm extremely angry with the Bush administration and what they have done. To say that was wrong."

Note: "My feelings now and again get way ahead of me."

Indeed. And receiving a Nobel does not make them right.

Meanwhile...

AFP News brief

COLD SNAP KILLS THREE PEOPLE IN ARGENTINA AND CHILE

A cold snap sent thermometers plunging in South America in recent days, killing three people in Chile and Argentina while Buenos Aires saw snow on Monday for the first time in 89 years.

The temperature dropped to minus 22 degrees Celsius (7.5 Farenheit) in Bariloche, in Argentina's southern Andes mountains, while snow flakes fell for the first time in Buenos Aires since 1918.

A man was found dead from the cold on a doorstep in Rosario, 300 (186 miles) north of here. The body of a homeless man was found Monday under cardboard on a street in Buenos Aires, where the temperature fell to 3 degrees C (37 F).

A blizzard hit Mendoza, on the foothills of the Andes 1,100 kilometers (680 miles) northwest of here, and the Andean provinces of Catamarca, La Rioja, San Juan, Mendoza and Neuquen have been placed under a storm alert, the national weather service said.

A blizzard with winds of up to 140 kilometers (87 miles) per hour shut down the Cristo Redentor tunnel between Chile and Argentina, stranding some 3,000 trucks.

In Chile's southern region of Araucania, where the thermometer dropped to minus 18 C (minus 4 F), another man was found dead from exposure.

In Bolivia, heavy snowfall blocked the country's main highway and shut down its biggest airports, the National Meteorology and Hydrology Service said.

Even in Peru, where warm climate prevails, the cold snap forced authorities to place half of the country's 24 departments under a state of emergency.

Weather forecasters expect this third cold snap in the southern hemisphere's winter season to last until Wednesday.