Beltway insiders discount the idea, but legions of Al Gore fans are still working overtime both online and off to convince the former vice president that he should jump into the race for president this year.

Speculation about Gore's chances of winning the Nobel Peace Prize this Friday for his work on climate change amped up the online buzz this week – and his supporters' hopes.

Blog mentions of Gore spiked on Sunday, after The Times of London ran an article quoting two people in the know who predicted that he is likely to win the prize, according to Technorati. That Sunday spike was also recorded by the political buzz-tracking service Wonkosphere.

A glance online shows that a significant Draft Gore movement has mushroomed in recent months, with several websites and pages on MySpace and Facebook dedicated to drafting the former presidential candidate, bestselling author and environmentalist.

On Tuesday, Gore's admirers in California launched a signature-gathering campaign to put him on the ballot in the Golden State. They need 26,500 qualified signatures by December 4, says Roy Gayhart, an entrepreneur living in San Diego who is coordinating the signature-gathering effort. That's 500 qualified signatures from registered Democrats in each of the 53 congressional districts.

Gayhart says he established the San Diego chapter of the Draft Gore movement in February after Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth won a couple of Oscars. A longtime Democrat, but not an environmentalist, Gayhart says he first saw Gore's documentary in January on DVD.

After that, he researched Gore's activities over the past seven years on the internet, read a 2002 speech that Gore gave about the consequences of invading Iraq, and was converted into a True Believer.

"If you don't (do anything), how many people are going to be sitting in front of their computers like you are – not doing anything?" he recalls asking himself, before he decided to make drafting Al Gore his political cause.

Gayhart says 1,200 volunteers in California are involved in the Draft Gore campaign. They began gathering signatures at a campaign event Monday in Cupertino, California, where Gore spoke about the environment at De Anza College. Gayhart says they've already gathered a couple hundred signatures.

Says Gayhart: "He has said in a Time magazine article in May, that 'I have no plans, I don't know what it would take for me to run for president. I guess I'd know it if I saw it.'"

"Well," Gayhart says, "this is it."