The judge said: "This is distinctly alarmist and part of Mr Gore's 'wake-up call'." He accepted that melting of the ice would release this amount of water - "but only after, and over, millennia."ĭespite his finding of significant errors, Mr Justice Barton said many of the claims made by the film were supported by the weight of scientific evidence and he identified four main hypotheses, each of which is very well supported "by research published in respected, peer-reviewed journals and accords with the latest conclusions of the IPCC. The mistakes identified mainly deal with the predicted impacts of climate change, and include Mr Gore's claims that a sea-level rise of up to 20ft would be caused by melting in either west Antarctica or Greenland "in the near future". He said he had viewed the film and described it as "powerful, dramatically presented and highly professionally produced", built around the "charismatic presence" of Mr Gore, "whose crusade it now is to persuade the world of the dangers of climate change". The judge also said it might be necessary for the Department of Children, Schools and Families to make clear to teachers some of Mr Gore's views were not supported or promoted by the government, and there was "a view to the contrary". The "apocalyptic vision" presented in the film was not an impartial analysis of the science of climate change, he said. The judge ruled that the film can still be shown in schools, as part of a climate change resources pack, but only if it is accompanied by fresh guidance notes to balance Mr Gore's "one-sided" views. The judge made his remarks when assessing a case brought by Stewart Dimmock, a Kent school governor and a member of a political group, the New party, who is opposed to a government plan to show the film in secondary schools. The film was broadly welcomed by environmental campaigners and scientists on its release last year, and while they did point out that it contained mistakes, these were relatively small and did not detract from the film's central message - that global warming was a real problem and humans had the technology to do something about it. Mr Justice Barton yesterday said that while the film was "broadly accurate" in its presentation of climate change, he identified nine significant errors in the film, some of which, he said, had arisen in "the context of alarmism and exaggeration" to support the former US vice-president's views on climate change.
Al Gore's Oscar-winning documentary on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth, was yesterday criticised by a high court judge who highlighted what he said were "nine scientific errors" in the film.