“Ha, you picked up on that,” Denton wrote back. “I’m a natural sceptic and I respect those who don’t simply defer to expert consensus. There was much the same level of agreement about the Soviet threat, the abolition of the economic cycle, acid rain and the inexorable economic rise of Japan, to name just a few.”

According to a February BBC poll, Denton joins an increasing number of British people in questioning the science behind climate change. Twenty-five percent of poll respondents doubt that global warming is real, up from 15 percent in November 2009. According to another February poll, conducted by Populus for the Times of London, 38 percent of respondents said that “climate change is happening but not yet proven to be largely man-made,” up from 32 percent in Nov. 2009.