Press Release

Press published reports help IPCC win Nobel Prize

FRIDAY 12 October, Europe

Influential reports published by the Press have helped attract a Nobel Peace Prize to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Press-published reports into climate change have made a major contribution to the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which shares the prize with climate change campaigner Al Gore.

The Press publishes all of the IPCC’s reports as well as the highly influential Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change. The Stern Review came out in January this year and had an immediate impact on shaping thinking on climate change around the world.

The series of scientific reports issued over the last two decades by the Press on behalf of the IPCC was credited by the Nobel committee with having "created an ever-broader informed consensus about the connection between human activities and global warming.”

The IPCC comprises more than 2,000 leading climate change scientists and experts. Established in 1988, it is tasked with providing policymakers with neutral summaries of the latest expertise on climate change.

The organisation involves hundreds of scientists working to collate and evaluate the work of thousands more. The results are then published by the Press.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee praised the recipients' efforts to "lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract [climate] change".

Speaking in Washington, Mr Gore praised the IPCC saying its "members have worked tirelessly and selflessly for many years".

IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri said he was "overwhelmed" by the award.

He told a cheering crowd of colleagues and journalists outside his office in Delhi that he hoped the award would bring a "greater awareness and a sense of urgency" to the fight against global warming.

Press Chief Executive Stephen Bourne said: ”This is wonderful news and the Press can be very proud of its involvement. We now publish the strongest list in climate change and the environment, amongst all of the publishers in those fields in the world, and it is wonderful to know we have contributed to the IPCC’s Nobel Prize. We send our heartfelt congratulations to Dr Pachauri and the rest of the panel.”

Among the IPCC publications produced by the Press are: ‘A History of the Science and Politics of Climate Change’; ‘Safeguarding the Ozone Layer and the Global Climate System’; ‘Climate Change: The Physical Science Basis’ and ‘Climate Change: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability.’

Sophie Graham
UK (Cambridge)