Of the many lessons to be drawn from the last decades’ battles over climate policy, one is that yelling at people about data doesn’t tend to make them do something about it. Scientists have produced a steady drumbeat of ever-scarier numbers since the 1980s, detailing the horrors to expect as temperatures rise. Many of those horrors are coming to life; July may well have been the hottest month earth has seen in 120,000 years. Despite this crush of evidence and growing public awareness, government