The joint-award of the Nobel Prize for Peace to US failed-Presidential candidate, Al Gore, is a dangerous disgrace, although one entirely to have been expected. As Samuel Johnson said when questioned by James Boswell about ‘predestination’ and the Book of Common Prayer, ‘global warming’ is now the PC “clamour of the times”, especially in Old Europe - and Norway is Very Old Europe. The temptation to give George W a kicking just can’t be resisted. Moreover, this new secular religion of the liberal elites must have its saints to carry the Green Flag, however questionable their qualifications. The names of recent Nobel Peace laureates read like a list of bien pensant characters from the political left: Jimmy Carter (surely one of the worst of US Presidents) (2002); Yassir Arafat (1994); and Rigoberta Menchu (1992). Al Gore joins a highly predictable bunch.

But, more importantly, the politics of this process illustrate perfectly J.-F. Lyotard’s telling prediction in The Postmodern Condition that science will become increasingly legitimised by the ‘social bond’, that is, by what society wishes to be true. Do you think anyone would receive the Nobel Peace Prize for showing that ‘global warming’ is not a threat? In Europe especially, ‘global warming’ is the chosen trope of the political classes. It is a powerful Barthesian myth, and its aim is to exclude all other constructions of knowledge from debate. Al Gore’s ‘elevation’ is simply part of this process of exclusion, namely the trampling down of any dissent by an increasingly assertive, self-referential, grand narrative in the style of Marxism. This must not be allowed to happen.

It is also why, in the English and Wales High Court this week, Mr. Justice Burton was entirely correct in insisting that Gore’s Hollywood-style ecochondriac film , An Inconvenient Truth, should not be shown in schools without serious scientific caveats being entered. Education should provide us with the tools to deconstruct and to challenge predatory grand narratives, not to promote their excesses or to control and manipulate our children’s minds.

The serious debate on climate change is not, and can not be, closed down; indeed, the true debate has only just started. It’s time to fight the myth-making - politically.

[See also this commentary]