The climate crisis is no laughing matter, no matter what those on Radio 4’s Today programme think | Bill McGuire

As a scientist, I’m faced with indifference and a failure to understand the reality of the climate crisis every day. We must wake people up

Bill McGuire is professor emeritus of geophysical and climate hazards at UCL

Do you find climate breakdown funny? Do you think it’s a laughing matter that we are on track to bequeath to our children and their children a planet changed for the worse beyond all recognition? I don’t – and I’m sure the presenters of Radio 4’s Today programme don’t either. But I couldn’t help feeling we were having a bit of a Don’t Look Up moment yesterday, hearing them brush off predictions by top climate scientists that our world will end up at least 2.5C hotter as depressing and “gloomy”. This is not to say that laughter and grim news shouldn’t or can’t go together. I work with comedians to help get the climate crisis message across, but we use humour to aid understanding and to help cope, not to denigrate and mock.

The truth is that most people, including many professional journalists, and most politicians, don’t really “get” climate breakdown. Partly this reflects a heads-in-the-sand attitude, but mainly it flags a poor understanding of just how bad things are set to get.