If you ever needed proof of the public relations campaign being waged over global warming and the environment, all you have to do is look at the recent list of awards garnered by Al Gore.

Some political pundits dismiss the attempts to make Gore's efforts look heroic despite the lack of scientific foundation as merely left-wing activism. They point out that two major criteria to winning the Nobel Peace Prize in recent years is to be anti-Bush or anti-American and liberal in one's political leanings. Recent winners have far less to do with peace than they do in representing a certain ideology and worldview. I would argue this goes far deeper than just political correctness run amok.

Al Gore's Academy Award for best documentary was also based on political agendas, and demonstrates the extent to which the environmental movement has moved beyond protecting the environment to a larger, more in-depth movement. It doesn't take a conspiracy theorist to see the economic philosophy the movement has embraced (anti-market, anti-capitalism and very pro-socialist), its view on government's proper role vs. individual choice, global trade and rights of individual countries.

The bottom line is that advocates of this political movement do not want to conduct this debate on a scientific or intellectually honest basis. They want this to be an argument based on emotion. Like so many of these mass movements in the past, those who support it are heroic, those who oppose it are villains, and any marketer in the world will tell you that emotion trumps logic every time.

Those of us who support a more reasoned and scientific based approach to protecting the environment best come to the realization that while scientific studies and economic analyses are great, they are not nearly as powerful as a polar bear looking forlorn as it floats away on a piece of ice.