As Al Gore receives a Nobel for his climate change work, a UK court has ruled that schools may only show his film An Inconvenient Truth accompanied by qualification of a number of inconclusive facts. While the parent who brought the case may feel vindicated, the ruling will have the benefit of demanding more thought about the science of climate change and human response to it. The “errors” seem to be inconsequential to the message of the film – humanity is causing climate change and damaging the biosphere. The “errors” include:
- The assertion that a sea-level rise of up to 20 feet would be caused by melting of ice in either West Antarctica or Greenland “in the near future”. The judge said this was “distinctly alarmist” and it was common ground that if Greenland’s ice melted it would release this amount of water – “but only after, and over, millennia.
- The assertion that the disappearance of snow on Mount Kilimanjaro in East Africa was expressly attributable to global warming – the court heard the scientific consensus was that it cannot be established the snow recession is mainly attributable to human-induced climate change.
- The reference to a new scientific study showing that, for the first time, polar bears had actually drowned “swimming long distances – up to 60 miles – to find the ice”. The judge said: “The only scientific study that either side before me can find is one which indicates that four polar bears have recently been found drowned because of a storm.”
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