THE tormentors of Al Gore, who last week won a legal victory against his film, An Inconvenient Truth, are to step up their battle by sending British secondary schools a documentary attacking the science of global warming.

Channel 4’s The Great Global Warming Swindle has become one of the most notorious documentaries of the year, attracting complaints from dozens of scientists and viewers.

This weekend, however, the campaigners behind the High Court case said they planned to send copies to 3,400 secondary schools “to counter Gore’s flagrant propaganda”.

Gore is a joint winner of the Nobel peace prize for his efforts to educate the world about climate change. An Inconvenient Truth has also won two Oscars.

The distribution of The Great Global Warming Swindle is being funded by Viscount Monckton, who is part of a counter-campaign to undermine the scientific consensus on climate change.

Monckton was one of the backers of Stewart Dimmock, the Kent lorry driver and school governor who took the government to court for sending copies of Gore’s film to schools.

The two are connected through the New party, a right-wing group whose manifesto was written by Monckton and of which Dimmock is a member.

Last week Mr Justice Burton ruled that, although it was broadly correct, An Inconvenient Truth contained at least nine scientific errors and said ministers must send new guidance to teachers before it was screened. The judge said, for example, that Gore was wrong to suggest polar bears were already drowning due to ice melting when this was just a prediction.

“That ruling was a fantastic victory,” said Monckton, a former Downing Street adviser to Baroness Thatcher. “What we want to do now is send schools material reflecting an alternative point of view so that pupils can make their own minds up.”

Dimmock was awarded only two-thirds of his costs and is understood to have a bill of more than £60,000. Monckton confirmed that he was among his “backers” but refused to confirm if he had financed the case.

Monckton has obtained funding from a right-wing Washington think tank, the Science and Public Policy Institute (SPPI), to create a second film that will also be sent to schools. Entitled Apocalypse No, it parodies Gore, showing Monckton presenting a slide show in a vitriolic attack on climate change science.

Bob Ferguson, president of the SPPI, said: “We have filmed Christopher [Monckton] making a presentation to the Cambridge University Union . . . It could be sent out quite soon. We want to inform the public and policy makers that there are different views on climate change.”

Monckton has also won support from the maker of The Great Global Warming Swindle.

Martin Durkin, managing director of WAG TV, said he would be delighted for his film to go to schools. “I have become a proselytiser against the so-called consensus on climate change . . . people can decide for themselves,” he said.

Environmentalists say many questions remain about Durkin’s film. Channel 4 said that two of the scientists who took part have complained that the editing gave a misleading impression of critical data and their own viewpoints. Ofcom, which regulates broadcast media, is examining other complaints from scientists.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which shared the Nobel prize with Gore, is preparing a Synthesis Report. Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, said the report would show that the earth faced a catastrophic temperature rise within the next century.

George Monbiot, an environmentalist and critic of Monckton, said: “He is trying to take on the global scientific establishment on the strength of a classics degree from Cambridge.”

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