In a long-awaited judgment following a 15-month inquiry, Ofcom is expected to censure the network over its treatment of some scientists in the programme, The Great Global Warming Swindle, which sparked outcry from environmentalists.

Complaints about privacy and fairness from the government's former chief scientist, Sir David King, and the Nobel peace prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will be upheld on almost all counts, the Guardian has learned.

But it is understood that Channel 4 will still claim victory because the ultimate verdict on a separate complaint about accuracy, which contained 131 specific points and ran to 270 pages, will find that it did not breach the regulator's broadcasting code and did not materially mislead viewers.

The detail of the ruling is expected to criticise Channel 4 over some aspects of the controversial programme, made by the director Martin Durkin, but executives will argue that the key test of whether or not it was right to broadcast the programme has been passed.

One source said both sides would be able to claim victory after a bitter dispute that has raged in newspapers and online since the programme, billed as "a definitive response" to Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, was first broadcast in March last year.