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Row over Al Gore’s climate change film

LONDON: The former U.S. Vice-President, Al Gore’s Oscar-winning film on environment An Inconvenient Truth, which helped him win the Nobel Prize for peace, has run into trouble in Britain after a High Court judge ruled that it is riddled with factual inaccuracies and should not be shown to school children without guidance.

In what has been hailed as a “landmark” ruling by groups, campaigning against the “paranoia” about climate change, Justice Burton found the film “one-sided” .

While the judge rejected attempts by a school governor to ban it altogether, he ruled that it should not be shown without providing the other side of the argument.

Justice Burton identified nine “scientific errors” and said teachers must point out the controversial and disputed claims made in it.

Among other things, he found Mr. Al Gore’s claim about the predicted rise in sea levels, as a result of global warming, “distinctly alarmist”. He also questioned the assertion that the disappearance of snow on Mount Kilimanjaro in East Africa was directly related to global warming.

The scientific consensus, presented before the court, was that it had not been established that snow recession was mainly attributable to human-induced climate change.

Stewart Dimmock, the school governor who brought the case said: he was “elated” by the verdict, but “disappointed” that the film was not banned.

“If it was not for the case brought by myself, our young people would still be being indoctrinated with this political spin,” he said.

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