Pizzas galore!

The only public honour which continues to elude Mr Gore is the US presidency. He lost out to George W Bush in the 2000 election after the Supreme Court ruled against him in the "hanging chad" row, and has for seven years born the nickname of the man "who used to be the next President of the United States".

The Nobel committee said that Mr Gore and the IPCC should be honoured "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".

Such work was of the utmost importance to mankind, said the citation, because: "Extensive climate changes may alter and threaten the living conditions of much of mankind. They may induce large-scale migration and lead to greater competition for the earth's resources.

"Such changes will place particularly heavy burdens on the world's most vulnerable countries. There may be increased danger of violent conflicts and wars, within and between states."

Expert View

People who install energy-saving lightbulbs or put on another jumper instead of turning up the thermostat are no longer dismissed as part of the tree-hugging fringe

Lewis Smith, Environment Correspondent

Related Links

• Is Nobel glittering prize or two-edged sword?

• Gore urged to run for US presidency again

• Al Gore’s inconvenient judgment

Multimedia

• Inconvenient untruths

The committee praised the IPCC for creating an "ever-broader informed consensus about the connection between human activities and global warming", by involving thousands of scientists and officials from over 100 countries.

"Whereas in the 1980s global warming 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," the committee said.

In a landmark report this year, the IPCC said it was now more than 90 per cent sure that greenhouse-gas emissions were to blame for the perceptible warming of Earth’s atmosphere in the past few decades.

After an exhaustive review of the evidence, the panel added that there were signs that this warming was already beginning to affect the climate, as seen through melting Arctic ice, shrinking glaciers and retreating permafrost. By the century’s end, temperatures could rise by by as much as 6.4C (11.5F), fuelling the risk of drought, flooding and violent storms

The committee added: "Al Gore has for a long time been one of the world's leading environmentalist politicians. He became aware at an early stage of the climatic challenges the world is facing. His strong commitment, reflected in political activity, lectures, films and books, has strengthened the struggle against climate change.

"He is probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted."

In a tumultuous week for Mr Gore, the prize was announced just two days after a High Court judge in London identified nine scientific errors in An Inconvenient Truth, which he said should not be shown to British schoolchildren without guidance notes.

Ruling after an objection for a school governor in Kent, Mr Justice Burton agreed that Mr Gore’s film was "broadly accurate" in its presentation of the causes and likely effects of climate change but said that some of the claims were wrong and had arisen in "the context of alarmism and exaggeration".

Those included Mr Gore's claims that polar bears were drowning because of disappearing ice floes in the Arctic, that the snows and glacier cover on Mount Kilimanjaro were being eroded by climate change.

The judge also disputed Mr Gore's assertion in the film that Hurricane Katrina, the storm which devastated New Orleans two years ago, was caused by global warming. "It is common ground that there is insufficient evidence to show that," he said.

Times Recommends

• UN may halt 400-year-old 'freedom of the seas'
• Where the Rosetta belongs can’t be set in stone
• Gas deal on hold, but Ukraine may pay in the end