This is hardly a surprise as he was leaving a favorite. The Nobel committee gave Al gore the Nobel Peace Prize for his documentary "A truth that disturbs" on the dramatic consequences of global warming. Also winning alongside former vice president Americas: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) chaired by Indian Rajendra Pachauri. The Norwegian public television NRK had warned on Thursday night, that the Nobel Committee could this year to make the link between peace, in an expanded sense, and climate change. What is confirmed. The prize is jointly awarded "for their efforts for the collection and dissemination of knowledge about climate change caused by humans and for having laid the foundations for the measures needed to combat these changes," said the president in Oslo the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Ole Danbolt yesterday.

Former Vice-President Bill Clinton and Democratic candidate unhappy at the White House in 2000, Al Gore, 59, has returned to center stage last year with his book and his documentary "A truth that disturbs" which draws the alarm face of global warming. Prized for the Oscars, the film 96 minutes helped popularize a complex subject and to raise public awareness of the threat climate. "The erratic president of the United States of America," as Al Gore comes with derision, has been spent this year by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential personalities in the world. A list where the current occupant of the White House, Republican George W. Bush, the same one that had defeated in 2000, does not appear.

As for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), it makes a real work of ant, compiling and evaluating the research conducted by thousands of scientists around the world. Among its main findings, the IPCC predicted an increase of 1.8 to 4 ° C in the average global temperature by 2100, a warming whose origin "very likely" is linked to human activity. Limiting the increase to 2 ° C would have a "relatively modest cost," according to the researchers, a decrease of 0.12% of GDP growth rate from 2030.

Have been sidelined: Sheila Watt-Cloutier, 53 years, Quebec Inuit "which defends the right to be cold" to the natives of the Arctic, very dependent on the ice to survive. Or former President of Finland Martti Ahtisaari, author of numerous mediations around the world, including one, and recent successful, in the Indonesian province of Aceh. Or the lawyer Lidia Chechen Yusupova, the Muslim Chinese dissident Rebiya Kadeer and the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Quang Do, all defenders of human rights. A total of 181 individuals and organizations were nominated this year.