When did the Nobel Peace Prize go off the tracks? Today's award to Al Gore and the IPCC "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change" fits in with a subset of cosmopolitan frauds, fakers, murderers, thieves, and no-accounts going back about twenty years:

2005
MOHAMED ELBARADEI (joint winner). He's done such a nice job with Iran.

2004
WANGARI MAATHAI. The Kenyan ecologist peacefully teaches that the AIDS virus is a biological agent deliberately created by the Man.

2002
JIMMY CARTER JR., former President of the United States of America. A true cosmopolitan, he has undermined the foreign policy of his own country and vouched for the bona fides of tyrants and murderers all over the world.

2001
UNITED NATIONS, New York, NY, USA.
KOFI ANNAN, United Nations Secretary General. Among other things, they have respectively served as the vehicle for, and presided over, one of the biggest scams in history.

1994
YASSER ARAFAT (joint winner), Chairman of the Executive Committee of the PLO, President of the Palestinian National Authority. He was a cold-blooded murderer both before and after receiving the award.

1992
RIGOBERTA MENCHU TUM, Guatemala. She is the notorious Guatemalan faker and author, sort of, of I, Rigoberta Menchu.

1988
THE UNITED NATIONS PEACE-KEEPING FORCES New York, NY, U.S.A. Notwithstanding rapes and sex abuse committed by the team in Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea and the Congo, still doing fine work all over the world.

How about some recognition for the scientists of Laputa discovered by Gulliver in the course of his travels? Is it too late to recognize them for their fine efforts to extract sunlight from cucumbers? (Thanks to reader Anthony Ragan for his contribution.)

UPDATE: Reader Michael Slade thinks we need to extend the list a bit further back in time to include Betty Williams ’76, whom he deems "deserving of a place for her remarks about killing President Bush."

Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby writes to add:

Don't forget Le Duc Tho (with Henry Kissinger) for the 1973 peace with honor bequeathed to the fortunate people of Vietnam.

In all seriousness, it is worth nothing an important difference between the peace prize and the other Nobel prizes. The Swedish scholars and scientists who make up the committees that award the science, literature, and economics prizes routinely choose honorees whose greatest work was done years, even decades, earlier.

For instance, Max Planck's revolutionary paper on quantum theory was published in 1900; he received the Nobel Prize for it in 1918. Albert Einstein's discovery of the photoelectric effect -- a 1905 achievement -- earned him the Nobel Prize in physics in 1921. James Watson and Francis Crick figured out the structure of DNA in 1953; they didn't receive the Nobel Prize in medicine (with Maurice Williams) until 1962. The 1924 Nobel in medicine went to Willem Einthoven for discovering the mechanism of the electrocardiogram. He had done the work between 1895 and 1905.

This is why recipients of the Swedish Nobels are so often very old. Doris Lessing, this year's literature laureate, is 88. Two years ago, Thomas Schelling -- then 84 -- was a co-recipient of the economics prize for work he had done in 1960. As a rule, a scientist, author, or economist receives a Nobel Prize only after his work has been sifted and weighed and put to the test of time. Its importance has been established, often through years of peer review. As a result, the science, literature, and economics Nobels rarely end up looking foolish or naive.

By contrast, the Norwegian committee entrusted with awarding the peace prize comprises politicians, not scholars. Like politicians everywhere, the peace prize committee tends to be more interested in what the headlines will say today than in what historians will believe 20 -- or 100 -- years from now. And unlike their Swedish counterparts, the Norwegians often intend their choice to have a political impact. When they gave the prize to Jimmy Carter in 2002, the committee chairman emphasized that it was intended to be "a kick in the leg" of the Bush administration. This year's prize to Al Gore speaks for itself.

In short, the five Swedish Nobels are almost always rewards for true achievement. The one Norwegian Nobel too often smacks of an agenda. Maybe the peace laureates would be less risible if they were chosen in Stockholm too.

And Bill Katz adds:

Alfred Nobel's will specifies that the peace prize would go "to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses." That's Al Gore? Al, we hardly knew ye.

By the way, to fully appreciate the farcical nature of the peace prize, you need only go back to the painful years before World War II:

In 1931 the prize was shared by Nicholas Murray Butler, president of Columbia University, whose later enthusiasm for keeping good relations with Nazi universities has been a source of embarrassment to Columbia.

In 1933, 1934 and 1936, the peace prize went to executives of the League of Nations, already a colossal failure.

From 1939 through 1943 there was no peace prize. You know, World War II was such an inconvenience, and Oslo, where the peace prize is given, was under occupation. Ah, the success of those past prize winners!

Someone should rewrite "It Was a Very Good Year" to memorialize the great Nobel Peace Prize Winners of years gone by. Is Mark Steyn doing anything today? (I've deleted Michael Costello's tribute to Fritz Haber, who won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry rather than Peace. Thanks to our readers who noted the error.) Finally, do not miss the indispensable Steven Hayward on "Environmental Gore."