Testing the Climate.(The Talk of the Town)(Al Gore's Nobel Prize)

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 24-DEC-07

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COPYRIGHT 2007 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

Last week, Al Gore, at the start of his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, took note of a curious coincidence. Almost exactly seven years earlier--on December 12, 2000--the United States Supreme Court had called a halt to the Florida recount, thereby un-electing him President. "I read my own political obituary in a judgment that seemed to me harsh and mistaken--if not premature," Gore told the dignitaries assembled in Oslo. "But that unwelcome verdict also brought a precious if painful gift: an opportunity to search for fresh new ways to serve my purpose."

The Nobel Peace Prize is given out on the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death. It's the only prize that, following a quirk in Nobel's will, is administered by the Norwegians, rather than the Swedes, and the only one that is awarded not for solving a problem but for merely trying to. Sometimes,...

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