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Nobel prize winners slam US policies
Reuters via SA Independent ^
| 12/7/01
Posted on 12/07/2001 5:03:42 PM PST by NativeNewYorker
Stockholm - More than 100 Nobel laureates have signed an appeal criticising the climate change and missile defence policies of the United States under President George W Bush.
The appeal, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters on Friday, said the most profound danger to world peace in coming years would stem from legitimate demands of the world's poor and disenfranchised majority.
"It is time for the industrialised world to take responsibility for being a member of the world community and stop thinking in terms of nations," Canadian John Polanyi, who won the 1986 Nobel Prize in Chemistry and initiated the appeal, told Reuters.
| To counter both global warming and a weaponised world |
Thousands of the world's dispossessed, some with access to weapons - including chemical and nuclear ones - posed the greatest threat to world peace, he said.
Concern that grievances such as poverty in developing countries, if neglected, could create new conflicts embroiling industrialised countries has been growing since the September 11 attacks on the United States.
Among the appeal's signatories are exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the former Soviet Union. Several US winners also signed.
Almost 200 of the world's 225 living winners of the Nobel prizes, first awarded 1901, are gathering in Stockholm and Oslo for ceremonies commemorating the centenary of the accolades bestowed upon people of merit in medicine, physics, chemistry, economics, literature and peace.
"We must persist in the quest for united action to counter both global warming and a weaponised world," said the appeal, adding that the 105 signatories supported international agreements including the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty and the so-called Kyoto Convention on Climate Change.
In an indirect reference to the national missile defence (NMD) system planned by the United States as a shield against attacks from what it has called rogue states, the appeal said it was time to "turn our backs on the unilateral search for security in which we seek shelter behind walls."
Implementing NMD would violate the ABM treaty. Polyani said the September 11 attacks on the United States had shown that national missile shields could not offer complete protection.
Bush has rejected the Kyoto protocol intended to curb industrialised countries' emissions of so-called greenhouse gases, which some scientists say are the main factor behind global warming. - Reuters
TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events
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To: NativeNewYorker
How many of those 100 are american? I would like to see the list of names and what they won the nobel prize for anyway.. Is Arafat one of them?
To: NativeNewYorker
An Appeal to Authority is a fallacy with the following form:
Person A is (claimed to be) an authority on subject S. Person A makes claim C about subject S. Therefore, C is true. This fallacy is committed when the person in question is not a legitimate authority on the subject. More formally, if person A is not qualified to make reliable claims in subject S, then the argument will be fallacious.
This sort of reasoning is fallacious when the person in question is not an expert. In such cases the reasoning is flawed because the fact that an unqualified person makes a claim does not provide any justification for the claim. The claim could be true, but the fact that an unqualified person made the claim does not provide any rational reason to accept the claim as true.
To: NativeNewYorker
We must end the Martian Global Warming problem NOW!
4
posted on
12/07/2001 5:08:34 PM PST
by
ambrose
To: NativeNewYorker
Hmmmm... Nobel Prize winners get hundreds of thousands of dollars as part of the prize. Perhaps they should pass the hat at their meeting to take up a collection for the world's poor and dispossed. Oh, but no, they'd rather the USA pick up the tab?
To: BrooklynGOP
BrooklynGOP is a minority group if I ever heard one!
What part of Brooklyn do you live in?
To: NativeNewYorker
Maybe I'm just an arrogant American, but who gives a sh*t!
7
posted on
12/07/2001 5:12:34 PM PST
by
WarPaint
To: NativeNewYorker
the appeal said it was time to "turn our backs on the unilateral search for security in which we seek shelter behind walls." And seek shelter behind treaties. These people are nuts.
What has protected the world from nuclear war for the last 55 years is not any treaty, but the unspoken, unwritten certainty of retaliation.
To: NativeNewYorker
:) I lived for 10 years in bensonhurst, and moved to Sheepsheadbay few years ago. It was pretty funny. When I went to vote Bush, I had to fill out a ballot manually, cause I moved and they didn't have my name in that precinct.. I saw an old lady who was volunteering there leer over my shoulder and she saw me pick Bush. THen I handed it to her, and she gave me such a look. Haha :)
To: Alas Babylon!
Hmmmm... Nobel Prize winners get hundreds of thousands of dollars as part of the prize. Perhaps they should pass the hat at their meeting to take up a collection for the world's poor and dispossed. Oh, but no, they'd rather the USA pick up the tab? That's the first thing that crossed my mind. They could start something like Gov. Huckabee's "Tax Me More Fund."
To: denydenydeny
Global Warming Solution
Place all left wing liberals in a deep freeze.The amount of hot air trapped and sealed will fix the climate for many years to come.
To: Alas Babylon!
It has been demonstrated that Nobel prize winners, like lottery winners, tend to go to seed after they have made the big score (Really. Research productivity typically drops to zero.)
As for Desmond Tutu and Michael Gorbachev, who really gives a damn. Neither one knows squat, and the politics of chemists is equally irrelevant.
To: NativeNewYorker
YAWN! So what the hell else is new?
13
posted on
12/07/2001 5:20:05 PM PST
by
SuziQ
To: BrooklynGOP
Sheepshead Bay, where my parents lived the last decades of their lives, is one of the great neighborhoods in Brooklyn.
I LOVE the bitchy waitresses at El Greco on Emmons Avenue. :)
To: ambrose
We must end the Martian Global Warming problem NOW! But it's impossible to conduct class warfare on Mars, which is all these closet Marxists are doing.
To: WarPaint
"Maybe I'm just an arrogant American, butwho gives a sh*t!" A...FReeping...MEN!!!
16
posted on
12/07/2001 5:22:15 PM PST
by
harpu
To: NativeNewYorker
Hey, Nobel prize winners! Go save some whales! And if you'd shut your collective yaps, greenhouse gasses would be cut in half.
17
posted on
12/07/2001 5:23:04 PM PST
by
IronJack
To: hinckley buzzard
the politics of chemists is equally irrelevant. Hey. :-)
Actually, mine seem to be generally welcome here.
As to what I think of the opinions of people who have won the Nobel Prize for (haha, smirk) Sociology or Feminist Underwater Basketweaving, etc... Well, I could not possibly care less what some doddering superannuated irrelevent foppish masturbators have to say about condemning my country for not cutting its throat by subscribing to Junk "science".
To: NativeNewYorker
I LOVE the bitchy waitresses at El Greco on Emmons Avenue. :) Oh, no! El Greco :) I spend countless days there, when I was in high school.
To: NativeNewYorker
Well, I note that according to the attendance figures, about 100 Nobel Laureates DID NOT sign the appeal--so the fact that 100 of them DID sign, is hardly earth-shattering.
I too would like to see the list of signees and what they were given the Nobel for (hard science vs "economics, literature, and peace").
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