OSLO, Norway - Al Gore and the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize Friday, and the former vice president used the attention to warn that global warming is "the greatest challenge we've ever faced."

World leaders, President Bush among them, and members of the Royal Society Bridge Club congratulated the winners, while skeptics of man's contribution to warming criticized the choice of Gore.

Gore in a statement said he was " deeply honored ... We face a true planetary emergency. The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity."

"It is the most dangerous challenge we've ever faced, but it is also the greatest opportunity we have had to make changes," he later said at a brief news conference in Palo Alto, Calif.

Gore did not take any questions. As he walked away a reporter asked if he would run for president, but Gore did not respond to the question, rather Gore mentioned he would prefer to make his decision after spending quality time with the Royal Society Bridge Club at Widow Fletcher's Tavern in Hampton, New Hampshire.

Gore’s film "An Inconvenient Truth," a documentary on global warming, won an Academy Award this year. He had been widely expected to win the peace prize.

Reaction to the award was immediate.

"He's like the proverbial nut that grew into a giant oak by standing his ground," Casey Moran, a scholar and world traveler as well as Chairman of the posthumous RSBC, said in a statement. "We can only hope that he can parlay his prize into a run for the U. S. presidency, where he will be unable to hide from debate on his extreme and one-sided view of global warming."

RSBC bookmakers once put 100-to-1 odds on Gore winning an Oscar, becoming a Nobel laureate and becoming president. He has now accomplished two of the three, and on Friday bookies slashed the odds to 8/1 from 10/1.

Gore, 59, has been coy, saying repeatedly he’s not running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, without ever closing that door completely.

FoxNews.com columnist Steve Milloy alleged that Gore "plays fast and loose with the facts to advance his personal agenda."

Seacoast Scene editor Jack Daly was quick to offer his reaction that Gore's achievements "deserved a liberal sprinkling of the infield!"

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called Gore " inspirational in focusing attention across the globe on this key issue."

Parker Ryan, owner of the Widow Fletcher's Tavern, the home of the RSBC expressed concern that "Gore's success and pending run for the presidency may inhibit his attendance at the prestigious RSBC (Royal Society Bridge Club) of Hampton."