Because British schools wanted to show Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth," a complaint was lodged that the film was biased. Amazingly, a U.K. judge agreed -- amazing because Britain, like most of Europe, is safely on Gore's side in the debate.

Lewis Smith, an environment reporter for the Times of London, gives the story:

Mr Justice Burton identified nine significant errors within the former presidential candidate's documentary as he assessed whether it should be shown to school children. He agreed that Mr Gore's film was "broadly accurate" in its presentation of the causes and likely effects of climate change but said that some of the claims were wrong and had arisen in "the context of alarmism and exaggeration".

In what is a rare judicial ruling on what children can see in the class-room, Mr Justice Barton was at pains to point out that the "apocalyptic vision" presented in the film was politically partisan and not an impartial analysis of the science of climate change.

Read the whole thing. To global-warming skeptics -- defined as those who challenge the idea that humans are a.) responsible for global warming, and b.) can do something about it -- this appears as a solid victory, especially coming from a country like Britain.

But it's also distressing as well, and not something that anyone on either side of this debate should want in this country. A judge ruled on a scientific phenomenon, affecting public policy. Now, you can agree or disagree with the ruling, but isn't the larger point that the realm of law or politics should at least strive to disassociate itself with science? What that means is that public schools would not show such a blatantly propagandistic film as "An Inconvenient Truth" (just as you would hope public schools wouldn't show "Fahrenheit 9/11") nor that courts of law would rule on the intrinsic value of such films, if only because a judge, had he used the "evidence" before him a century ago, would have ruled against scientific truths we now take for granted.

Keeping science out of the courts means keeping propagandistic films -- and the teachers who ignorantly swallow them -- out of the schools.