Gore shares Nobel Peace Prize with U.N. panel

(CNN) -- Former Vice President Al Gore and the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for their work to raise awareness about global warming.

Gore said he was "deeply honored," adding that "the climate crisis is not a political issue it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity," according to a written statement.

The former vice president said he would donate his half of the $1.5 million prize to The Alliance for Climate Protection, a U.S. organization founded by Gore that aims to persuade people to cut emissions and reduce global warming.

During its announcement, the Nobel committee cited the winners "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 award ceremony will be held December 10 in Oslo, Norway.

"Through the scientific reports it has issued over the past two decades, the IPCC has created an ever-broader informed consensus about the connection between human activities and global warming," Ole Danbolt Mjoes, chairman of the Nobel committee, said in making the announcement.

"Thousands of scientists and officials from over 100 countries have collaborated to achieve greater certainty as to the scale of the warming."

The Nobel committee praised Gore as being "one of the world's leading environmentalist politicians."

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

The Nobel caps a series of prestigious awards associated with Gore, including two Oscars this year for the documentary film, "An Inconvenient Truth," which followed him on a worldwide tour publicizing the dangers of climate change.

Last month he also picked up an Emmy -- the highest award in U.S. television -- for "Current TV." The show, which Gore co-created, describes itself as a global television network that gives its viewers the opportunity to create and influence its programming.

Previous American recipients of the peace prize include former presidents Jimmy Carter in 2002, Woodrow Wilson in 1919 and Theodore Roosevelt in 1906.

In 1973, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger shared the award with North Vietnam's Le Duc Tho. The Rev. Martin Luther King received the honor in 1964.

Gore served as vice president for eight years under President Bill Clinton. He won the Democratic presidential nomination in 2000 and ran against George W. Bush.

But he failed in his bid for the White House -- despite winning more votes than Bush -- when the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his challenge over voting results in Florida, securing an electoral college majority for Bush.

In recent weeks Gore has been the target of a campaign to persuade him to enter the 2008 presidential race.

Gore has repeatedly denied that he has any plans to run again, but this week a group of grassroots Democrats calling themselves "Draft Gore" took out a full-page ad in the New York Times in a bid to change his mind. Watch more on the movement to draft Gore »

"Your country needs you now, as do your party, and the planet you are fighting so hard to save," the group said in an open letter.

"America and the Earth need a hero right now, someone who will transcend politics as usual and bring real hope to our country and to the world."

A spokeswoman for the IPCC, which draws on the work of 2,000 scientists, said the panel was surprised that it had been chosen to share the award with Gore and praised his contribution to environmental campaigning.

"We would have been happy even if he had received it alone because it is a recognition of the importance of this issue," spokeswoman Carola Traverso Saibante said, The Associated Press reported. E-mail to a friend

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