Friday, October 12, 2007

Gore wins NOBEL PEACE PRIZE

Breaking news:

The immediate link to "peace" is not obvious although it is correct to say that issues related to climate change will undoubtedly lead to armed conflict in the future whether it is water, resources or refugee related.

Gore and UN panel win Nobel prize

Climate change campaigner Al Gore and the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have been jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

The committee said they had been chosen for "their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change".

Mr Gore, 59, was vice-president under Bill Clinton and has since devoted his efforts to environmental campaigning.

The UN's panel of 3,000 scientists is the top authority on global warming.

'Danger of war'

Announcing the award, the Norwegian Nobel Committee praised the recipients' efforts to "lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract [climate] change".

It said it wanted to bring the "increased danger of violent conflicts and wars, within and between states" posed by climate change into sharper focus.

The committee highlighted the series of scientific reports issued by the IPCC over the last two decades, which had "created an ever-broader informed consensus about the connection between human activities and global warming".

Mr Gore was praised as "probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted", through his lectures, films and books.

'Overwhelmed'

"I can't believe it, overwhelmed, stunned," IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri told reporters and co-workers after receiving the news on the phone at his office in New Delhi.

He later told a cheering crowd of co-workers and journalists outside his office in New Delhi he hoped the award would bring a "greater awareness and a sense of urgency" to the fight against global warming.

Mr Gore made a failed bid for the US presidency in 2000. Since then he has emerged as a leading climate campaigner - winning an Oscar for his 2006 film An Inconvenient Truth, an unlikely box-office hit.

The IPCC, established in 1988, is tasked with providing policymakers with neutral summaries of the latest expertise on climate change.

The two winners will share the $1.5m prize.

The Nobel committee closely guards the names of nominees, but this year speculation was high that the recipient would be linked to climate change campaigns.


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