Former Vice President Al Gore and the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have been awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize:

Gore, who has reinvented himself as a climate warrior since failing in his bid to become US president in 2000, said he was “deeply honored” by the award and spoke of the “planetary emergency” brought about by climate change.

The 2007 prize was jointly awarded to Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — a UN body of about 3,000 experts which has highlighted the human role in steadily mounting global temperatures.

The Norwegian Nobel committee cited the recipients “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.”

The committee said it wanted to contribute to efforts “to reduce the threat to the security of mankind. Action is necessary now, before climate change moves beyond man’s control.”

Gore, 59, is bound to attract most of the attention when the winners claim their 10-million-Swedish-kronor (1.5-million-dollar, 1.08-million-euro) prize on December 10.

Bill Clinton’s former vice president has helped put global warming at the top of the international agenda with his Oscar-winning 2006 film “An Inconvenient Truth”, based on years of lectures on the subject.

The Nobel committee described Gore as “probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted”.

Gore said after hearing the news: “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 UK Guardian reports on the U.N. IPCC chairman’s reaction:

Rajendra Pachauri, who chairs the UN panel on climate change, today expressed disbelief at the news that the body had jointly won the Nobel peace prize with Al Gore.

“I can’t believe it, overwhelmed, stunned,” Mr Pachauri told reporters and colleagues after receiving the news on the phone at his office in Delhi, India.

“I feel privileged sharing it with someone as distinguished as [the former US vice-president].”

Earlier this year, the UN intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC) made the strongest link yet between human activities and global warming.

The panel, set up in 1988, forecast that all regions of the world would change as a result of warming and that a third of the Earth’s species would vanish if global temperatures continued to rise and reached 2C (3.6F) above the average temperature in the 1980s-90s.

“I expect this will bring the subject to the fore,” Mr Pachauri said.

Reuters reports on British bookmakers’ reactions:

British bookmakers cut the odds of Al Gore becoming the next president of the United States and started to sweat as the former vice president won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday.

The reason is that in winning the prize Gore has now satisfied two of the three conditions the bookies set for a 100 to one bet they had offered — winning an Oscar, becoming a Nobel laureate and taking up residence in the White House.

Gore’s campaigning climate change film “An Inconvenient Truth” won an Oscar this year.

On Friday, after the Nobel award was announced, the bookies cut Gore’s odds of becoming the next U.S. president to 8/1 from 10/1 — although Hilary Clinton remains hot favorite at odd of 4/7.

“He seems to have the Midas touch and if his supporters encourage him to stand he may shake up the whole race,” Ladbrokes spokesman Robin Hutchison said.

The Wikipedia Nobel Peace Prize webpage lists all of the past recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize, who have included: Theodore Roosevelt (1906); International Committee of the Red Cross (1917, 1944); Woodrow Wilson (1919); Albert Schweitzer (1952), Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr (1964); Henry Kissinger (1973); Amnesty International (1977); Mother Theresa (1979); Nelson Mandela and Frederik Willem de Klerk (1994); and Jimmy Carter (2002).