Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and his wife, Tipper, leave a news conference in Pal California, yesterday. Gore was yesterday named with the UN Climate Panel as joint winners of the Nobel Peace Prize. Gore told the press he would donate his share of the prize money to the Alliance for Climate Protection. - Reuters

OSLO (Reuters):

Former United States Vice President Al Gore and the U.N. climate panel won the Nobel Peace Prize yesterday for helping galvanise international action against global warming before it "moves beyond man's control".

Political opponents saw the award as a snub to President George W. Bush who has doubted the science of global warming and rejected caps on emissions of gases believed to cause it, but the White House said it was happy for the winners and praised their work.

Gore, who lost narrowly to Bush in the 2000 presidential election and who some hope will run again in 2008, and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) were chosen to share the $1.5 million prize.

The committee awarded the prize from a near record field of 181 candidates for their efforts to draw attention to mankind's impact on the climate and measures needed to address it.

"Action is necessary now, before climate change moves beyond man's control," the committee said.

It warned that climate change - linked to droughts, floods and rising seas - could threaten living conditions across the world, prompt mass migrations and increase the risk of wars.

"We wish to put world climate on the agenda in connection with peace," committee chairman Ole Danbolt Mjoes said.

global warming

Since leaving office in 2001, Gore has lectured extensively on the threat of global warming and last year, starred in his own Oscar-winning documentary film An Inconvenient Truth to warn of the dangers and urge action against it.

"He is probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide under-standing of the measures that need to be adopted," the Nobel committee said. "The IPCC has created an ever-broader informed consensus about the connection between human activities and global warming."

The committee said the case for action to stop global warming has been made convincingly by science.