Where are the experts when you need them? The BBC reports today that climate change scepticism is on the increase. Apparently only 26% of 1001 Britons asked this month think climate change is happening and is now established as largely man made – a massive drop of 15% since just last November, when those agreeing with this statement constituted 41% of the respondents.

Yet the scientific consensus is striking: well over 90% of researchers agree that a significant part of climate change is related to human activity.

I’m sure the recent climate change  email fiasco and the reports that the IPCC got glacial warming wrong haven’t helped, but you do begin to wonder when the majority (not a small minority) of scientists, however well-meaning, are going to start talking to other people as well as each other, explaining their work and why this really, really matters to the general public.

Perhaps more scientists may at last agree not to act as though the actual politics of climate change is something with which they need not concern themselves.

We’ve seen from the problems with emails and reports of late (see above) that ‘even’ scientists are not always rational, let alone the rest of us.  It’s time to acknowledge this is a hearts and minds affair, as well as an exercise in calculators and graphs.