Gore has made it known he is not interested, although some Democratic activists are campaigning for him to get into the race, and the Nobel award on Friday further fueled their hopes.
Gore has campaigned on climate change since leaving office in 2001 after the bruising and disputed election result that put Bush in the White House.
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Gore, who appeared somber rather than elated over the award, said, "For my part, I will be doing everything I can to try to understand how to best use the honor and recognition of this award as a way of speeding up the change in awareness and the change in urgency."
"It truly is a planetary emergency and we have to respond quickly," he said.
Gore carried on with his plans despite the life-changing announcement, attending a scheduled meeting in Palo Alto in the heart of the Silicon Valley, where innovators are eager to jump start the clean technology industry.
Stanford biology professor Chris Field said the prize "adds tremendous momentum" to work on conservation, efficiency, new technology and carbon capture and storage.
"I think we are seeing there is no single solution ... but there are great opportunities in all four areas," Field said.
Gore said in a statement earlier that he would donate all of his share of the Nobel prize winnings to the Alliance for Climate Protection -- a nonprofit group Gore founded last year to raise public awareness of climate change.
"This award is even more meaningful because I have the honor of sharing it with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- the world's pre-eminent scientific body devoted to improving our understanding of the climate crisis -- a group whose members have worked tirelessly and selflessly for many years," Gore said in his earlier written statement.
