We'll never tackle climate change if academics keep the focus on consensus | Warren Pearce

Media and political attention is being wasted on boosting the public's notion of scientific consensus, crowding out more important discussion and action

In a democracy, we hope that science helps to inform the public about its problems. In the case of climate change, believe it or not, the evidence suggests this is going relatively well.

Climate science is a vast, sprawling field of knowledge that has achieved great success in occupying the public consciousness. According to Yale University's Climate Change in the American Mind project, six in ten Americans are worried about global warming, seven in ten think global warming is happening and eight in ten think humans have the ability to reduce global warming. These figures have fluctuated very little since 2012, suggesting that the US public is relatively well informed about the risk, reality and policy potential of climate change, even in the face of well-documented attacks by climate sceptics.