More dishonor for the Nobel Peace Prize:
"The Truth" earns Gore Nobel Peace Prize
Former US vice-president Al Gore has been hammering home the climate change message
Image caption: Former US vice-president Al Gore has been hammering home the climate change message (Keystone)
Former US vice president Al Gore and the Geneva-based United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.
Swiss climate researchers have hailed the decision, saying it is also a recognition of their work and that it will boost efforts to combat global warming.
Gore and the IPCC were honoured on Friday for their efforts to build up and disseminate knowledge about man-made climate change and to lay the foundations for fighting it.
The former vice president, who won an Academy Award earlier this year for his film "An Inconvenient Truth", had been widely tipped to win the prestigious prize but he and the agency will share it.
"His strong commitment, reflected in political activity, lectures, films and books, has strengthened the struggle against climate change," the 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 called the award meaningful because of his co-winner, calling the IPCC the "world's pre-eminent scientific body devoted to improving our understanding of the climate crisis."
He warned that global warming was not a political issue but a worldwide crisis.
"We face a true planetary emergency. It is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity," he said. "It is also our greatest opportunity to lift global consciousness to a higher level."
Bern University has played a part in Gore's achievement. Climate research carried out there, including the retreat of alpine glaciers and greenhouse gas measurements in Antartic ice cores, formed a basis for his successful documentary.
"We are naturally proud of our scientific results," said Martin Grosjean, head of the university's Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research.
"Al Gore and this year's IPCC reports took the results of climate research to a whole new level that made them understandable for more people."
Fighting climate change
The committee cited the IPCC for its two decades of scientific reports that have "created an ever-broader informed consensus about the connection between human activities and global warming.
Thousands of scientists and officials from over one hundred countries including Switzerland have collaborated to achieve greater certainty as to the scale of the warming."
It went on to say that because of its efforts global warming has been increasingly recognized. In the 1980s it "seemed to be merely an interesting hypothesis, the 1990s produced firmer evidence in its support. In the last few years, the connections have become even clearer and the consequences still more apparent."
Martin Beniston, a climatologist at Geneva University who has worked for the IPCC, welcomed the decision.
"It gives the IPCC extra legitimacy," he told swissinfo. "It will help shut up those who still openly deny global warming."
This year, climate change has been at the top of the world agenda, putting an end to a frustrating wait for many scientists.
"Climate change has effects on water conservation, on energy and food production. That leads to fighting over resources and to forced migration," Grosjean told swissinfo.
"It's not just about glaciers melting and the disappearance of a few plants."
The UN climate panel has been releasing its 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, International Polar Year has underscored concern about the melting Arctic.
swissinfo with agencies
Previous nominees:
Adolph Hitler, 1939
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Find your own:
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Winners:
Yasser Arafat, 1994
Nelson Mandela, 1993
Jimmy Carter 2002
1999 International Campaign to Ban Landmines (that worked, right?)
1988 UN Peacekeeping Forces (I didn't know oxymorons were eligible.)
1977 Amnesty International
1973 HENRY A. KISSINGER and LE DUC THO , Democratic Republic of Viet Nam. (Declined the prize.)
1964 Martin Luther King, Jr.
1962 Linus Pauling
1961 Dag Hammarskjold
1953 George Marshall, commander of all US armed forces in WW2
1925 CHARLES GATES DAWES Vice-President of the United States of America. Chairman of the Allied Reparation Commission. Originator of the Dawes Plan .
The Ruhr area was to be evacuated by Allied occupation troops.
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1919 Woodrow Wilson, who snuck the US into WW1.
Find your own favorites:
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