The news is always full of the negative these days; the latest scandal, the saddest crimes, the juiciest misfortunes are food for our consumption.  And we can't get enough.  So what a surprise when good news hit the press this last week - Al Gore has won the Nobel Peace Prize.  Did you notice?

   It was a long hard road for Gore, but it couldn't have happened to a better person.  In 2000, Gore won the election as President of the United States, but politics prevented his actually taking the office; the loser won, instead. Voting ballot irregularities in Florida (how convenient President George Bush had his brother in office as governor of the state) produced questionable returns in the polls.  In the end, the United States Supreme Court denied a closer look at the election, ruling that a recount would very possibly show that Gore won, and Gore's win would cause "public acceptance" and that would "cast ... a cloud" over Bush's "legitimacy," which would harm our "democratic stability."  (Read a PBS timeline of election night for more details on the events of that evening.)

   Of course, as much as that disturbed many of us (it sealed the nail in the coffin of my belief in our government's ultimate integrity and my faith in the election process,) 2000 is long since gone.  Al Gore has since faded from the political spotlight, even refusing to run for president in 2008.

   Perhaps many Republicans hoped that was the end of the Gore story.  But Al has fooled everyone.  While slipping away from a political scene that seems too clearly rigged, he set his sights on another achievement - warning the country and the world about global warming and the environmental destruction we wrought.

   Gore received first an Academy Award for his work "An Inconvenient Truth" and then an Emmy for his channel Current TV, which is aimed at younger viewers. Meanwhile, however, nay-sayers rejected his claims, with some so-called 'experts' arguing global warming is a hoax.  But did they see the movie?

   University of Arkansas-Monticello Sociology Professor Dorothy E. Everts showed the documentary to some of her classes.  The film was undeniable, and the implications staggering.  You see the snows of Kilimanjaro receding at alarming rates. You witness polar bears dying in staggering numbers; quite simply, the ice they use to rest is growing weaker, and sometimes they drowned before they can reach a suitable piece of ice - often miles and miles away.  The footage is not doctored.  Didn't they see it?