Gore, UN Climate Panel Share 2007 Nobel Peace Prize (Update3)

[Snowden]

Gore, UN Climate Panel Share 2007 Nobel Peace Prize (Update3)
By Bunny Nooryani and Kim Chipman




Oct. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and a United Nations panel on the environment won this year's Nobel Peace Prize for raising awareness about the threat of climate change.

Gore, 59, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were honored for ``their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about manmade climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change,'' said Ole Danbolt Mjoes, director of the Oslo-based Nobel Committee that picks the winner.

The peace prize tops off a year of accolades for Gore, marking a turnaround that some say makes him ``the comeback kid,'' a moniker typically associated with his former boss, Bill Clinton. The former vice president last year published the book and released the Oscar-winning documentary film ``An Inconvenient Truth'' as part of a campaign against global warming.

India's Rajendra Pachauri, 67, is chairman of the IPCC, which was set up by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environmental Program in 1988. The group has about 2,500 scientists whose mandate is to assess ``scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant for the understanding of climate change.''

``I am deeply honored to receive the Nobel Peace Prize,'' Gore said in an e-mailed statement. ``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.''

The prize is ``a recognition of the contribution of the scientific world,'' Pachauri told reporters today in New Delhi.

Human Cause
The IPCC said in a report in February that the probability that humans are causing global warming is 90 percent, and world temperatures and sea-levels will increase by the end of the century. The Bush administration said the human role in climate change is ``no longer up for debate'' following the report.

``There are already climate wars unfolding and the worst area for that is the Sahel belt in Africa,'' Jan Egeland, head of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, told reporters in Oslo on Sept. 28. ``Nomads fight pastoral farmers because there is less land available, because of long-term climate change.''

``Clearly we are endangering all species on earth, we are endangering the future of the human race,'' Pachauri said in an interview earlier this year. ``We are probably beyond the stage where we could have called it urgent. I would say it is immediate,'' he said, referring to the need for governments to reduce emissions.

Glaciers Melting
Scientists have said global warming caused by manmade emissions is responsible for melting glaciers and ice sheets, and increased instances of storms, droughts and floods. Over this century, those effects may be magnified, according to the February report.

``The consequences of inaction will be devastating to both the environment and the economy,'' Gore told the U.S. Congress at a special climate change hearing this year.

Gore, vice president from 1993 until 2001, drew an audience of an estimated 2 billion people on July 7 with Live Earth, a single day of concerts on seven continents aimed at promoting awareness of what he terms a ``climate crisis.''

Growing up, Gore's time was divided between Washington, where his father was in the U.S. Senate, where he would later serve, and his family's sprawling farm in Tennessee.

Harvard Graduate
Shortly after graduating from Harvard University in 1969, Gore enlisted in the Army and served for six months as a military reporter in Vietnam. He then spent five years at the Tennessean, a Nashville newspaper. He also attended, yet never graduated, from Vanderbilt University's divinity and law schools. He was first elected to the House of Representatives in 1976.

Gore married his wife, Tipper, in 1970. They met at Gore's high school prom at St. Alban's, an elite Washington prep school. They have four children, Karenna, Kristin, Sarah and Albert III. Gore has multiple homes, though his main residence is in Nashville.

As President George W. Bush and his former colleagues in Congress grapple with record-low job approval ratings, Gore has spent the last year basking in the limelight and taking his environmental message to venues ranging from the Grammy Awards to ``The Oprah Show'' to Capitol Hill. In May, he also published ``The Assault on Reason,'' a best-selling book that's highly critical of the Bush administration.

Gore's success is seen by supporters as vindication for a man who acknowledges his discomfort in a political world driven largely by sound bites.

Panned by Pundits
The former Tennessee senator was panned by some pundits and late-night comics during the 2000 election for reportedly claiming to ``invent the Internet'' and similar types of comments, at least one of which was later shown to be misquotation.

Former President George H.W. Bush derided Gore as ``ozone man'' during his 1992 campaign against Clinton. In his 2000 race against George W. Bush, Gore was widely ridiculed by Republicans as too much of a stiff ``know-it-all'' to connect with average voters.

Yet Gore's popularity surged after the release of ``An Inconvenient Truth,'' a documentary film featuring the former vice president lecturing worldwide about the threat of global warming. The movie also touches on Gore's personal life, including the psychological aftermath of his stinging loss to Bush in the disputed 2000 presidential election.

British Case
Gore's documentary has been distributed to all British secondary schools by the U.K. government. A High Court judge in London this week ruled that the film contains scientific errors and that students must view it with guidance notes to prevent political indoctrination. The film has nine main errors with some arising in the context of ``alarmism and exaggeration,'' Judge Michael Burton ruled.

The film garnered critical and commercial praise, earning two Academy Awards. Gore also won an Emmy award last month for Current TV, a cable and satellite television network for young people that's based on viewer-created content and ``citizen journalism.'' Gore co-created the channel and serves as its chairman.

Gore is chairman of Generation Investment Management LLP, a firm focused on long-term sustainable investing. Gore also is a board member of Cupertino, California-based Apple Inc. and has been a senior adviser to Google Inc., owner of the world's most popular Internet search engine.

Gore was awarded stock options at both Apple and Google that have made him a multimillionaire, a fact supporters point to when talking about the possibility of Gore jumping into the 2008 presidential fray.

2000 Election
Gore won the popular vote for president in 2000, though he lost the presidency to Bush when the Supreme Court by a 5-4 vote ordered the end to a vote recount in Florida.

While Gore has repeatedly said he has no plans to run for office, the prospect of his Nobel Prize win has reinvigorated a grassroots campaign calling for the former vice president to declare his candidacy.

This week a group called DraftGore.com placed an open letter in the New York Times urging Gore to run. The letter, in the form of a full-page advertisement, said 136,000 people have signed its petition asking Gore to run.

Other Democratic candidates don't have Gore's ``vision, standing in the world, and political courage,'' the group said in the letter. The group criticized the Bush administration's policy on the war on terrorism and commended Gore's early stance against the war in Iraq.

``There are times for politicians and times for heroes. America and the Earth need a hero right now,'' the letter said. ``Please rise to this challenge, or you and millions of us will live forever wondering what might have been.''

Alfred Nobel
The peace prize, worth 10 million kronor ($1.56 million) was created in the will of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel more than a century ago. Past recipients include Archbishop Desmond Tutu, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and the Red Cross. The prize was first handed out in 1901.

Bangladesh's Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank won last year for advancing social and economic development by giving loans to the poor.

The honor is formally awarded at a ceremony in Oslo on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death in 1896. Nobel also set up prizes for achievements in physics, medicine, chemistry and literature, which were announced earlier this week by the Stockholm-based Nobel Foundation.

The recipient of an economics award, established in memory of Nobel by Sweden's central bank in 1969, will be made known on Oct. 15.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aLWgzABvJQ9s&refer=home

[conlor]

Well, he couldn't win anything else.

[Woodmonkey]

I'm confused (so what else is new?).

Climate Panel - peace prize.

Hasn't it been awarded to people who actually did something for world peace in the past?

[Snowden]

There was a time when the Nobel Prizes were given for worthwhile things and to people with real accomplishments, Katie. Madame Curie, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Dag Hammarskjöld, Cordell Hull, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Henry Kissinger, Mother Teresa, Mohamed Anwar Al-Sadat and Menachem Begin, to name a few whose names are familiar.

Somehow it went astray, I think. Arafat? What a misuse of this prize that was! I really haven't had any respect for the Nobel Prize since then, I'm afraid.