Award puts Gore back in spotlight

WASHINGTON — Former Vice President Al Gore completed a remarkable political renaissance Friday when he won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his relentless and sometimes controversial crusade against global warming.

Sharing one of the world's most coveted prizes with a United Nations-sponsored scientific group on climate change, the loser of 2000's razor-thin presidential election suddenly gained new stature, sparking speculation that he might use the award as a springboard to take another run at the White House.

Gore avoided that question at a news conference in California, but his spokeswoman, Kalee Kreider, said in an e-mail that he "has no intention of running for president in 2008. He is involved in a campaign of a different kind, to educate people about the climate crisis and what they can do to solve it. That's what today is about."

Gore told reporters that he would try to use the award and recognition to speed up awareness about the dangers of climate change. "It truly is a planetary emergency," he said. "We have to respond quickly."

The Norwegian Nobel Committee also said the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the U.N.-sponsored group of scientists from around the world, will share the prize with Gore.

With Friday's announcement of the prize in Oslo, Norway, skeptics also stepped up their criticism of the former vice president and the IPCC, saying that they have exaggerated the future risks of a general rise in world temperatures in recent years.

Critics noted that a British court ruled this week that Gore's Oscar-winning documentary on climate change, "An Inconvenient Truth," contained nine errors and exaggerations and should be shown in classrooms only with appropriate warnings.

But Martin Parry, co-chair of the IPCC, said in an online session that the Gore film "is broadly correct. There are some factual errors but these are few and do not affect the main argument."

The Norwegian Nobel Committee said the prize was awarded to Gore and the IPCC 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."

Some saw this statement as an indirect slap at President Bush, who has rejected mandatory steps to control carbon-dioxide emissions that get trapped in the atmosphere and contribute to global warming.

But at a news conference in New Delhi, Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, said he did not read any "such implications" in the Nobel committee's announcement.

But Pachauri added that developed countries like the U.S. "have not done enough" in combating climate change and "have been hesitant to accept any conditions that might apply to their development and thus their emissions of greenhouse gases."

A White House spokesman, Tony Fratto, said Bush was "happy" that Gore and the IPCC were chosen. "Obviously it's an important recognition and we're sure the vice president is thrilled," Fratto said.

Democratic presidential candidates praised Gore, as did Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who supports a plan to curb greenhouse gas emissions.