Oslo's festive streets are filled with Christmas shoppers, but also with some visitors who make a point of scheduling their trips during the Nobel Peace Prize events.

Architect Karin Hansen, now a resident of Malaga, Spain, has visited her hometown for the past several years to witness the concert, torchlight procession, and performances by local children.

"I think sometimes they give the prize hoping it will lead to peace," she said. In the case of this year’s winners, she said the attention on global warming could help raise awareness of conservation, especially in the developed world.

Are Norwegians energy conscious?

Not as much as they should be, we could all do more," said Hansen.

The city of Oslo encourages residents to save energy by using public transportation.

Part of the incentive to leave the car at home is a hefty hit to the pocketbook for driving downtown. Toll booths across the city charge 20 Norwegian Kroner, or about $4, just to drive in the city. Parking fees are likewise pricey, and limited.

Suhak Kawwani works at a newsstand across the street from The Grand Hotel, where some of the Nobel events are taking place. While the kiosk always sells newspapers from across Europe, he says he has noticed a bit of extra traffic with all the dignitaries in town.

A native of Afghanistan, Kawwani is pleased that Al Gore and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change won this year’s prize.

"Just like there is peace for the soul, nature also needs peace," said Kawwani. "And we need to do more than just rely on technology to deal with it."

He said many Norwegians knew of Gore when he was vice president, but in recent years also because of his crusade to raise awareness about global warming.

Industrial design student Armand Bentzen, working the night shift at an Oslo 7-11, isn't so wowed by all the hoopla in the center of the city. And he acknowledges that developed countries like Norway, that guzzle the most power, need to take the lead in going on an energy diet.

"We are starting now to be thinking more about it, so far we are not very good at it. We waste a lot of power here," he said.

While he says it's more of an economic issue than one of being green, Bentzen doesn't own a car. He says public transportation is pretty good across the country.

He said affordable electricity in both Europe and the United States sometimes keeps people from thinking about how much they use.

"It's a difficult thing for people to change their way of living. It's a global problem, everyone needs to do their part," said Bentzen.

-- From CNN Producer Marsha Walton

Oslo is a city that really knows how to decorate and do it up for Christmas. The city twinkles with lights (all of them white) and there are Christmas Carolers everywhere.

A trio of Santas gathered outside our hotel (The Grand) last night, and apparently fueled by aquavit or something, sang Jingle Bells over and over again well into the wee hours.

I am shoehorned in a small room on the backside of the hotel (beyond the wi-fi umbrella!)

My colleagues who scored spacious suites in the front were a little more “bah humbug” about the long performance. Sometimes being in the cheap seats has its advantages.

-- From CNN Anchor/Producer Miles O'Brien

The Norwegian Nobel committee is a low key, taciturn, downright secretive group. They are appointed by the Norwegian Storting (parliament). Many of them are former members of the Storting -– and all of them are politically engaged in one way or another.

They meet just a few times a year –- sorting through the mounds of nominations mailed to the Norwegian Nobel Institute on Henrik Ibsen’s Gate here in Oslo.

They have a pretty simple mission -– in as much as their mission statement is the 200-word last will and testament of 19th century Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel.

Nobel committed most of his fortune to fund the prizes. Each year the interest from the endowment is divided evenly and awarded to the winners in each category. This year the each award was 1.5 million dollars.

The prizes go to "those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind" in the fields of physics, chemistry, medicine literature, economics as well as "one part to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses."

For reasons that remain a mystery, Nobel wrote in his will the "champions of peace" should be selected by a committee of five persons to be elected by the Norwegian Storting.

-- From CNN Anchor/Producer Miles O'Brien

Al Gore may be the object of derision at home, but he sure is on friendly turf here in Oslo. This is a left-leaning socialist country with a cradle to grave social safety net that provides, among other things, a year of maternity and paternity(!) leave for new parents.

Like most Europeans, people here need not be convinced global warming is a problem. The vast majority of them understand the science -– and concur with Al Gore's assessment of it. So you won't find any protestors here decrying the peace prize or this year's recipient.

And remember this: The Arctic Circle bisects this country -– locations at this latitude are among the first to feel the effects of climate change. The Sami (formerly known as the Laplanders) of northern Norway are just like the Inuit of Alaska and Nunavut –- they are subsistence hunters who rely on a sheet of ice in order to survive. But the ice is disappearing, of course.

As for Oslo, it remains relatively temperate because it is in the path of the warm Gulf Stream current. Should climate change stop that current (and there is a long range prediction that warns of that) Oslo would quickly enter an ice age -– Global Warming could lead to a big chill here.

For now, however, the city is much warmer than it used to be this time of year. Temperatures at night are hovering about 4 degrees above freezing. While I am still wearing my long johns, most people here remember these dark days of December being much colder.

Today, as Al Gore toured Oslo, he ran into the 3-year-old son of the leader of Greenpeace here in Norway. He gave Gore a single white flower called a wood anemone that was picked growing wild here this winter, even though it usually blossoms in the spring. The young boy’s dad sees it as a symbol.

But here is the paradox – that leads to hypocrisy. Norway is sitting on an 8 billion barrel reserve of oil beneath the North Sea. Oil and gas are the leading economic engine (if you will) here -– the country exports 3 million barrels a day. And while they are also big users of hydroelectric power here, there are some who suggest the country could do more to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

Gore met with Norway’s Foreign and Environment Ministers today to discuss some ways the country could do more. Gore said he is pleased with the "initiatives that the government may be considering" But he would not offer any more details. Must have been an awkward moment behind closed doors.

-- From CNN Anchor/Producer Miles O'Brien

No-one is certain why Alfred Nobel decided to have Norwegians preside over his peace prize. Nobel was a Swede -– and Stockholm would have been the logical place for him to establish the foundation that would select the winner and dole out the money. And in fact, Stockholm is the place where that happens for every other Nobel Prize (medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and economics) except this one.

Among the theories: That the Norwegians are among the most peace loving people in the world, their country is small and relatively isolated and they are fiercely independent -– thus making the decisions of the peace prize committee less likely to be tainted by politics -– or so Nobel may have hoped.

Of course, these days there is very little that isn't seen as a manifestation of political ideology. And so it was no surprise that many people in the U.S. assumed politics was in play when the six Norwegians on the committee (all political activists) here chose Gore –- along with the U.N. organization that synthesizes the work of the world’s leading scientists who study climate change and its impacts.

While it would be naive to say there isn't a clear message to George Bush embedded in the selection of this year's Laureates, it is worth remembering this is a fundamental difference between science and politics.

Scientists are, by nature, conservative –- not in a Red State way –- but rather they are extremely circumspect in making statements they cannot support with data. That is an important point to remember as you try to assess those "interim" reports issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Science is not a belief system –- but in the past seven years in America, that is precisely what many people have come to think. Somehow the Red Staters have come to the conclusion that it is an affront on business –- and thus their ideology -– to embrace any regulation that would protect our environment.

The notion is complete nonsense –- and in fact -– there are a lot of good sound business reasons to be in the vanguard of the effort to deal with global warming -– and the inevitable day when the fossils stop flowing.

Remember, the man considered to be the first environmentalist in the White House was Teddy Roosevelt, and the man who created the Environmental Protection Agency was Richard Nixon. In those days scientists were not treated as if they were simply another political party -– their statements carried the weight they deserved. They are, after all, not creating hot air – as they warn of its coming.

-- From CNN Anchor/Producer Miles O'Brien