Gore: Award Puts Focus on Global Warming
Pastor Dale Morgan
Oct 12, 6:32 PM EDT
*Gore: Award Puts Focus on Global Warming*
By SETH BORENSTEIN and LISA LEFF
Associated Press Writers
PALO ALTO, Calif. (AP) -- For years, former Vice President Al Gore and a
host of climate scientists were belittled and, worst of all, ignored for
their message about how dire global warming is. On Friday, they were
awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their warnings about what Gore calls
"a planetary emergency."
Gore shared the prize with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change, a United Nations network of scientists. This scientific panel
has explained the dry details of global warming in thousands of pages of
footnoted reports every six years or so since 1990.
Gore, fresh from a near miss at winning the U.S. presidency in 2000,
translated the numbers and jargon-laden reports into something people
could understand. He made a slide show and went Hollywood. His
documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" won two Academy Awards and has been
credited with changing the debate in America about global warming. For
Gore it was all about the message.
"This is a chance to elevate global consciousness about the challenges
that we face now," he said Friday at the offices of the Alliance For
Climate Protection, a nonprofit he founded. "The alarm bells are going
off in the scientific community."
Despite a live global stage, Gore did not take questions from reporters,
avoiding the issue of a potential 2008 presidential run. His aides
repeatedly say he won't enter the race. Gore donated his share of the
$1.5 million prize to the nonprofit.
"For my part, I will be doing everything I can to try to understand how
to best use the honor and the recognition from this award as a way of
speeding up the change in awareness and the change in urgency," Gore
said in brief remarks. "It is a planetary emergency and we have to act
quickly."
In announcing the award earlier in the day in Oslo, Norway, Nobel
committee chairman Ole Danbolt Mjoes said the prize was not a slap at
the Bush administration's current policies. Instead, he said it was
about encouraging all countries "to think again and to say what can they
do to conquer global warming."
Gore is the first former vice president to win the Peace Prize since
1906 when Theodore Roosevelt, who by that time had become president, was
awarded. Sitting Vice President Charles Gates Dawes won the prize in
1925. Former Presidents Jimmy Carter won it in 2002 and Woodrow Wilson
in 1919.
Gore, who learned of his award from watching the live TV announcement -
hearing his name amid the Norwegian - was not celebratory Friday. His
tone was somber. He spoke beside his wife, Tipper, and four Stanford
University climate scientists who were co-authors of the international
climate report. Outside the building, schoolchildren held a sign saying,
"Thank you Al."
For years, there was little thanks. From the late 1980s with his book
"Earth in the Balance," Gore championed the issue of global warming. He
had monthly science seminars on it while vice president and helped
negotiate the 1997 Kyoto Protocol that called for cuts in greenhouse gases.
"When he first started really working on the climate change issue, I
remember he was ridiculed in the press and certainly by political
opponents as some kind of kook out there in la-la land," said federal
climate scientist Tom Peterson, an IPCC co-author. "It's delightful that
he's sharing this and he deserves it well. And it's nice to have his
work being vindicated."
Since his loss to George W. Bush in 2000, Gore put aside political
aspirations and become a global warming evangelical. He traveled to more
than 50 countries. He presented his slide show on global warming more
than 1,000 times. He turned that slide show into "An Inconvenient Truth."
The film won praise but also generated controversy. On Wednesday, a
British judge ruled in a lawsuit that it was OK to show the movie to
students in school. High Court Judge Michael Burton said it was
"substantially founded upon scientific research and fact" but presented
in a "context of alarmism and exaggeration." He said teachers must be
given a written document explaining that.
More than 20 top climate scientists told The Associated Press last year
that the film was generally accurate in its presentation of the science,
although some were bothered by what they thought were a couple of
exaggerations.
Gore's movie was deeply personal. It was about him after losing the 2000
election and about his travels, and he talked about the changing climate
in a personal way.
"He has honed that message in a way that many scientists are jealous
of," said University of Michigan Dean Rosina Birnbaum. She was a top
White House science aide to Gore and President Clinton. "He is a master
communicator."
Climate scientists said their work was cautious and rock-solid,
confirmed with constant peer review, but it didn't grab people's attention.
"We need an advocate such as Al Gore to help present the work of
scientists across the world," said Bob Watson, former chairman of the
IPCC and a top federal climate science adviser to the Clinton-Gore
Administration.
Watson and Birnbaum, who regularly briefed Gore about global warming,
described him as voracious, wanting to understand every detail about the
science. Birnbaum recalled one Air Force Two journey with Gore and the
head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
"Gore was such a consummate scientist that he would keep asking and
asking and asking deeper and deeper questions until at one point Jim
Baker of NOAA and I ran back to our seats to go back through textbooks
to get the answers," Birnbaum said. "It was both exhilarating and
exhausting to be part of his science team."
Scientists and Nobel committee members said it was not a stretch to
award the Peace Prize to Gore and the scientists. Studies by national
security experts say a hotter world with changes in water and food
supply can lead to wars and terrorism.
"We're already seeing the first climate wars, in the Sahel belt of
Africa," said Jan Egeland a Norwegian peace mediator.
The man who beat Gore in 2000, President Bush, had no plans to call Gore
to congratulate him. But spokesman Tony Fratto called it "an important
recognition" for both Gore and the scientific panel.
Some in the shrinking community of global warming skeptics and those
downplaying the issue, were dubious, however.
"I think it cheapens the Nobel Prize," said William O'Keefe, chief
executive office of the conservative science-oriented think tank the
Marshall Institute. O'Keefe, a former oil industry executive and current
consultant to fossil fuel firms, called Gore's work "rife with errors."
As he was leaving the alliance's office, Gore was asked whether the
Nobel would quiet climate naysayers. He said the award would help the
cause of fighting global warming overall: "I hope we have a chance to
really kick into high gear."
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Borenstein reported from Washington. Leff reported from Palo Alto.
Science Writer Malcolm Ritter in New York contributed to this report.
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On the Net:
http://www.nobelpeaceprize.org
Nobel Peace Prize Laureates:
http://nobelprize.org/nobel-prizes/peace/laureates/index.html