http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071012/ap_ ... obel_peace

OSLO, Norway - Former Vice President Al Gore and the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize Friday for their efforts to spread awareness of man-made climate change and lay the foundations for counteracting it.

"I am deeply honored to receive the Nobel Peace Prize," Gore said. "We face a true planetary emergency. The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity."

Gore's film "An Inconvenient Truth," a documentary on global warming, won an Academy Award this year and he had been widely expected to win the prize.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee said global warming, "may induce large-scale migration and lead to greater competition for the earth's resources. Such changes will place particularly heavy burdens on the world's most vulnerable countries. There may be increased danger of violent conflicts and wars, within and between states."

Gore said he would donate his share of the $1.5 million that accompanies the prize to the Alliance for Climate Protection, a bipartisan nonprofit organization devoted to conveying the urgency of solving the climate crisis.

"His strong commitment, reflected in political activity, lectures, films and books, has strengthened the struggle against climate change," the Nobel citation said. "He is probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted."

Gore supporters have been raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for petition drives and advertising in an effort to lure him into the Democratic presidential primaries. One group, Draftgore.com, ran a full-page open letter to Gore in Wednesday's New York Times, imploring him to get into the race.

Gore, 59, has been coy, saying repeatedly he's not running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, without ever closing that door completely.

He was the Democratic nominee in 2000 and won the general election popular vote. However, Gore lost the electoral vote to George W. Bush after a legal challenge to the Florida result that was decided by the Supreme Court.

Peace Prize committee chairman Ole Danbolt Mjoes said a possible Gore presidential run was not his concern.

"I want this prize to have everyone ... every human being, asking what they should do," Mjoes said. "What he (Gore) decides to do from here is his personal decision."

However, when asked about the 2008 U.S. elections, he said: "I am very much in support for all who support changes."

The last American to win the prize or share it was former President Carter in 2002.

The Nobel committee cited the Panel on Climate Change for two decades of scientific reports that have "created an ever-broader informed consensus about the connection between human activities and global warming."

Members of the panel, a network of 2,000 scientists, were surprised that it was chosen to share the honor with Gore, a spokeswoman said.

"We would have been happy even if he had received it alone because it is a recognition of the importance of this issue," spokeswoman Carola Traverso Saibante said.

The panel forecast this year that all regions of the world will be affected by climate warming and that a third of the Earth's species will vanish if global temperatures continue to rise until they are 3.6 degrees above the average temperature in the 1980s and '90s.

"Decisive action in the next decade can still avoid some of the most catastrophic scenarios the IPCC has forecast," said Yvo de Boer, the U.N.'s top climate official.

He urged consensus among the United States and other countries on attacking the problem.

Climate change has moved high on the international agenda this year. The U.N. climate panel has been releasing reports, talks on a replacement for the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on climate are set to resume and on Europe's northern fringe, where the awards committee works, there is growing concern about the melting Arctic.

Jan Egeland, a Norwegian peace mediator and former U.N. undersecretary for humanitarian affairs, also called climate change more than an environmental issue.

"It is a question of war and peace," said Egeland, now director of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs in Oslo. "We're already seeing the first climate wars, in the Sahel belt of Africa." He said nomads and herders are in conflict with farmers because the changing climate has brought drought and a shortage of fertile lands.

The committee often uses the coveted prize to cast the global spotlight on a relatively little-known person or cause. Since Gore already has a high profile some had doubted that the committee would bestow the prize on him "because he does not need it."

Gore's climate change effort has had its share of criticism.

A British judge said in a ruling published Wednesday that some assertions in his documentary were not supported by scientific evidence. The case involved a challenge from a school official who did not want the film shown to students.

The ruling detailed High Court Judge Michael Burton's decision this month to allow screenings of the film in English secondary schools. The judge said that written guidance to teachers, designed to ensure Gore's views are not presented uncritically, must accompany the screenings.

In recent years, the Nobel committee has broadened the interpretation of peacemaking and disarmament efforts outlined by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel in creating the prize with his 1895 will. The prize now often also recognizes human rights, democracy, elimination of poverty, sharing resources and the environment.

Two of the past three prizes have been untraditional, with the 2004 award to Kenya environmentalist Wangari Maathai and last year's award to Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank, which makes to micro-loans to the country's poor.

The prize also includes a gold medal and a diploma.

The prize for economics will be announced Monday.



http://nobelpeaceprize.org/
http://www.climateprotect.org/

Yeah, I just saw an article about this when I fired up my computer this morning. What a joke. There was an 90 old woman who hid children from the Nazis nominated also and they give it to Al Gore? Do they not realize that many of his claims have been disproven?

Hey there Steve,

Ya gotta admit that climate change is the "Hot Button" issue these days all around the globe. Also, a Canadian, Sheila Watt-Cloutier, won the award along side him.

While I don't want to down play the actions of that "Old Woman who hid children from the Nazis", I think that people trying to educate about climate change are trying to save us ALL.

Al Gore is a scaremongering politician.
His facts have been disproved. So how did he win.

How long before he runs again for the White House.

Hey Red!
It's true that the scientists aren't all on the same side when it comes to the movie (have you watched "The Great Global Warming Swindle"? It's the response to the Gore movie.) but "disproved" is pushing the envelope a little. Two different camps when it comes to interpreting the same info.

The Swindle movie didn't really convince me.

Pawly,

I watched both and was much more inclined to side with the "swindle" especially after reading some of the scientific papers on my own. I'm a skeptic and want to see what's behind the scientific claims. Right now I'm reading a book about the theory proposed in TGGWS. It seems a little sketchy in the movie but as I read "The Chilling Stars" it is starting to make much more sense. I'm more convinced than ever that CO2 is a very minor GHG.

I'm more worried about the intellectual climate.

That's on a T-shirt I saw on the net. I agree.

BB

'Disproved' ...wow - when I hear remarks like this, I get the urge to foam at the mouth out of sheer incredulity, but then again, it's entirely anyone's prerogative if they want to stick their head in the sand and accept rhetoric over fact. If you are referring to the British judge who found fault with Gore's film in a court decision last week, that was an act of semantic hair-splitting that got way more press than it merited, and didn't plausibly challenge the substance of Gore's movie. If you seek facts, there are plenty of resources around - here is one place.

It's not hard to glimpse the big picture here - Earth is a fairly closed system with pretty much nothing leaving or entering save for meteors, ions from the solar wind, and satellites launched into orbit. Aside from negligible sources such as geotidally-generated heat and naturally occurring radioisotopes, our only source of energy is (and has been) the sun.

Fossil fuels are merely solar energy that has been slowly stored and buried underground over the course of MILLIONS of years (with its attendant carbon content, of course). Now, in the past 100 years or so, a fraction of an eyewink in terms of geological time, we have extracted and BURNED a significant portion of the hydrocarbon deposits. Burning is a process of oxidization, which in this case involves oxygen reacting with hydrogen and carbon to form CO_2 and water vapour, amongst other compounds.

Even if you doubt the scale of man's effect on our biosphere, you can't challenge the fact that BILLIONS of TONS of CO_2 have been released from underground (where it can't affect climate) into the atmosphere (where it can) by this process over the past century. This is a VERY significant addition to our atmosphere. CO_2 is a greenhouse gas. EVERY element, every chemical compound, every mote of matter interacts with light in some manner. Carbon dioxide happens to interact with light in the infrared range, which is the same range at which the earth normally radiates excess heat out into space. CO_2's presence causes some of this excess heat to be reflected BACK to earth again, which is why it is called a greenhouse gas. here is a site with more information on carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases.

There is no money to be made by urging people to reduce emissions. There IS money to be made by urging people to ignore science and continue to consume fossil fuels at a breakneck pace along with the products that use them. Don't let yourselves be brainwashed by the marketing machine. I don't mean to have a nasty tone with this post, but I feel pretty strongly about information getting crowded out by disinformation.

BB ... KK ... I wanna see a nice clean fight. No rabbit punching or eye gouging. No head butts and nothing below the belt. lol


Debate is a very healthy thing. Be respectful of one another and we can argue this till we are either baked by the sun and under water or shivering in the next ice age ... which ever comes first.

Pawly,

I posted here once in responce to your post. I said what I wanted and that is all. I have done plenty and will do much more research on climate change. I could write an entire essay here on it and it wouldn't change anyone's mind so I won't. I don't believe anything is even close to being proven including the CO2 theory.

This forum is a place for those who believe that the Climate Prediction project is a worthwhile endevour to discuss the project.

All the best,
BB

I can respect that, Bill. I wasn't trying to egg you guys on, just wanted to set the tone of things.

I can respect that, Bill. I hope you don't think I was trying to egg you guys on. Just wanted everyone to know that OhC! has room for all viewpoints.

Regards,
Paul

Hi Pawly,

I was at work so I responded in a hurry. Didn't mean to be Curt because I'm actually Bill.

All's cool,
Bill

Since it was in my post that Disproved was used I will respond.

Ken King, I have read widely about this subject and I don't need you to tell me to "seek facts". I very clearly accept fact over rhetoric, maybe you need to broaden your fact finding to other opinions.

I obviously have come to a different conclusion to global warming than you have. Gee I must have my head stuck in the sand.

Red Atomic, if this is to be a forum of opinion, it is helpful if you can point out the basis of your opinions, else what a futile effort they are. I have laid out the bare framework of my view on global warming as my rebuttal to the 'disproved/disproven' side of the argument (I didn't mean to single your post out individually, by the way). I value sarcasm as much as the next person, but reasoned arguments make more sense in this forum.

Cheers,
KK

Gotta say I'm totally with Buffalo Bill, steve2000 and Red Atomic on this one.

I think it's all overblown by alarmists who make a lot of money pedaling fear.

http://www.friendsofscience.org/index.php?id=196

An interesting read...if a little long winded.