A businessman in Alaska has had a five-tonne ice sculpture of Al Gore built as part of a campaign to challenge the widely accepted global warming theory.

Craig Compeau from the city of Fairbanks said the idea came to him a couple of weeks ago when Alaska was hit by a record cold snap. A global warming sceptic, the businessman regularly attacks the theory that man-made emissions cause global climate change.

A 2.5 meter high statue of a shivering Al Gore, a Nobel Prize winning environmentalist who has won international acclaim for his effort to draw public attention to the issue of global warming, was unveiled on Monday. The effigy was created by local artist Steve Dean and will remain in place ‘until it melts’.

When unveiling the sculpture, Compeau taunted the former vice president to come to the northern state and explain global warming theories. If Al Gore travels by electric car and comes on a specific date to Tetlin Junction, where on January 8 the temperature dropped to a guts-freezing -60 degrees Celsius, Compeau promised he would pay for his room and board.

Climate scientists generally agree that temperatures are rising worldwide and that human actions are at least partially responsible for it.