Late yesterday, reports started zinging around suggesting that the Obama transition team was ready to announce its energy and environment leaders.

By now it's clear they are the following: former New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection commissioner Lisa Jackson will head up the Environmental Protection Agency; current Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory director Steven Chu will become Secretary of Energy; and Clinton administration EPA head Carol Browner will fill a newly created post, that of White House "climate czar." In addition, Nancy Sutley, the current City of Los Angeles "deputy mayor" for Energy and Environment (and, of these four, the person with the thinnest Wikipedia profile), will come in as chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

Wow. There's denial of reality, there' delusion, there's delusions of grandeur, and then there's the prolific climate denier S. Fred Singer claiming that he is a Nobel Prize winner.

In a bio description for an upcoming talk to a UK skeptics society meeting, (sent to us by a very astute DeSmog reader) Singer has this to say about himself:

As a reviewer of IPCC reports, he [Singer] shares the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore."

And then came the powerful defenses of Gore, the skewerings of the Gore deranged, and just general voicing of reason. Alas, the Gore defenders, while being broadly accurate about Gore's "broadly accurate" film, also seem to have missed some key matters that bear addressing.

So let's add some needed perspective here.

First, our warmest congratulations to Al Gore. The Nobel Prize is one of the world's great honors and, in our view, one that is extremely well-deserved.

But I'm conscious that the standing ovation Gore is enjoying today is not exactly unanimous. The climate change conversation has become polarized - and belligerent - over the last decade. And Al Gore - a politician who dared to address a controversial public issue outside the conventional political process - has become a lightning rod for some hyper-political criticism. How can we get people from all points on the political spectrum to celebrate Gore's Nobel Prize without feeling that they are sacrificing their own cherished political interests?

The former U.S. vice president will descend on Victoria September 29, then cross the Georgia Strait for an engagement that evening in Vancouver. After his address, expected to focus on daily actions to combat climate change, the audience will be treated to high tea at the venerable Empress Hotel.