And the award for the biggest joke is….

Wait, you mean this isn’t a joke?

Gore, U.N. panel win Peace Prize

Former Vice President Al Gore and the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo today for their campaigns against global warming.

The citation said Gore’s "strong commitment, reflected in political activity, lectures, films and books, has strengthened the struggle against climate change." The Norwegian Nobel Committee also said Gore was "probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted."

Let’s forget for a moment the Goracle, the UN climate change panel, and Bad Science. Let’s focus instead on the Nobel Peace Prize itself and what a farce it has become for at least the past 20 years. Power Line presents a short list of recent winners, all exemplars of the struggle for world peace and human understanding:

2005
MOHAMED ELBARADEI (joint winner). He’s done such a nice job with Iran.

2004
WANGARI MAATHAI. The Kenyan ecologist peacefully teaches that the AIDS virus is a biological agent deliberately created by the Man.

2002
JIMMY CARTER JR., former President of the United States of America. A true cosmopolitan, he has undermined the foreign policy of his own country and vouched for the bona fides of tyrants and murderers all over the world.

2001
UNITED NATIONS, New York, NY, USA.
KOFI ANNAN, United Nations Secretary General. Among other things, they have respectively served as the vehicle for, and presided over, one of the biggest scams in history.

1994
YASSER ARAFAT (joint winner), Chairman of the Executive Committee of the PLO, President of the Palestinian National Authority. He was a cold-blooded murderer both before and after receiving the award.

1992
RIGOBERTA MENCHU TUM, Guatemala. She is the notorious Guatemalan faker and author, sort of, of I, Rigoberta Menchu.

1988
THE UNITED NATIONS PEACE-KEEPING FORCES New York, NY, U.S.A. Notwithstanding rapes and sex abuse committed by the team in Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea and the Congo, still doing fine work all over the world.

The award itself is the joke. Nice company you find yourself in, Al.

(Note: I added the links.)

LINKS: Others have already commented on the Goracle’s latest triumph: Pajamas Media has a  roundup of blogosphere opinion, while Jules Crittenden celebrates Our Eco-Savior’s anointing. Ed Morrissey calls it a Nobel for "Alarmism and Hyperbole," Roger L. Simon thinks Gore deserves this award more than he did an Oscar or Emmy, while Blue Crab Boulevard links this to Hillary and the presidential race. Gates of Vienna thinks the man who won a court case exposing the Goracle’s errors should get the prize. Little Green Footballs has my favorite picture of Al. Finally Daniel Thompson at the Telegraph wonders what on Earth Al has done for world peace?

UPDATE: Welcome readers of Gates of Vienna!