While persuasive, passionate and well-argued, An Inconvenient Truth is riddled with quite elementary errors to such an extent that it can be seen as merely adding fuel to the sceptics' fire.

Some of the mistakes in Mr Gore's film were highlighted last week by Mr Justice Barton, who had been asked to rule on whether the film should be shown to schoolchildren as an educational work.

He ruled that it could, provided certain caveats were attached to any screening, and that nine specific errors were pointed out, including exaggerating the speed at which sea levels are rising and an inaccurate claim about polar bears drowning because of melting ice caps.

To my mind, the most serious scientific error in the film was the way Al Gore puts the blame for the Hurricane Katrina disaster firmly at the door of climate change.

Speak to any respectable climatologist about this and they will hold their heads in their hands in despair. The story of Katrina and New Orleans is a story of catastrophically bad town planning, mismanagement, poor engineering, Southern lassitude and sheer bad luck. Continued...