Dhaka, Jan 25 (UNB) - Environment and Forests Minister Dr Hasan Mahmud left for Buenos Aires on Wednesday to cruise with former US Vice President Al Gore to Antarctica as part of a campaign aimed at raising awareness against global warming.

He will reach Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina, on January 26. The voyage will begin from Argentina on January 29 and it is expected to be completed on February 6.

On October 7 in 2011, Nobel Laureate Al Gore invited Hasan Mahmud to join the voyage to Antarctica. “I’m writing to invite you to join me in what I trust will be the experience of life time, and to serve as a panelist and speaker during this voyage, to share with us your invaluable perspective as an environmental minister of a country facing the impacts of climate change,” he said in a letter to Hasan Mahmud.

Al Gore is taking his fight against climate change to Antarctica as part of a cruise organised by his Climate Reality Project.

The titled of the voyage is ‘Destination Reality-2012, A Voyage to the bottom of the earth to witness the climate crisis firsthand -- a journey to inspire, understanding, collaboration and action.’

Gore and more than 100 fellow-travellers will depart from Argentina. Scientists, including climatologists James Hansen of Nasa and Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, will join the cruise.

UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres, Professor of Michigan University in USA Rosina Bierbaum, world famous film actor James Cameron, Rockefeller Foundation president Judith Rodin and British billionaire Richard Branson will also take part in the voyage.

The Antarctic voyage is part of a larger campaign to focus on the threat posed by climate change to the world's ice sheets and glaciers -- a subject Gore highlighted in his 2007 documentary, ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, and at a 2009 conference he convened with Norway's foreign minister, Jonas Gahr Støre.