Professor Brian Cox is almost certainly the prettiest physicist ever to have appeared on television. A crowded field, I know. But even I would, I suspect, happily married man though I am (and happily married man though he is too), given the right circumstances: those wonderful pouty lips; that winning perma-smile as he delivers his pearls of astronomical wisdom on his charming documentaries; the rock star cool – complete with Charlatans-style, retro haircut – a legacy of his days as keyboard player with Nineties pop band D:Ream.
So yes, I perfectly well understand why the BBC has elevated him to the position of go-to scientist on all matters of import, with TV series like The Wonders of the Solar System, and why he is constantly being invited to deliver TED talks and high profile speeches like the 2010 Huw Wheldon Memorial Lecture and the Douglas Adams Memorial Lecture.
What Professor Cox appears to think is that all those myriad computer projections over the last few decades warning us of catastrophic, unprecedented, runaway man-made global warming ought to be taken more seriously than the real world data which show no warming since 1997.
Theory, he is saying, should trump reality. Why Climate Science Is Far Too Important to Be Left to Celebrity Pretty Boy Physicists Like Professor Brian Cox