Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore (and the IPCC)'s Nobel Peace Prize gets people thinking.

When Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize last week (sharing the award, let's not forget, with the entire United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and all its associated scientists), it was just as polarizing as the U.S. Presidential election of 2000. The difference now: Mr. Gore is no longer simply a politician. He's achieved a higher status as a statesman, and greater respect for being above the fray. The Nobel is just the latest imprimatur of that status. There are dispassionate views of the significance of the Nobel prize, and why the environment now matters for maintaining peace, as outlined in this story in Slate.

And there are the responses from some on the political right, who seem not to realize that statesmen (and women) are above politics, and therefore bullet-proof when it comes to ideological or partisan attacks. They also fail to understand that the environment is not a partisan issue, and that framing it as one reinforces the worst possible Neanderthal stereotypes about conservatives. Their frothing and barking is considered by Paul Krugman in The New York Times. (The Times has discontinued its TimesSelect paid-content firewall, so Krugman, Frank Rich, Maureen Dowd, David Brooks and all the paper's columnists are now accessible once again.)