AFP / Antonio Scorza

According to the latest poll by British  market research company Ipsos Mori, there has been a sharp decline in public  conviction that climate change is a threat, writes the Guardian,

the proportion of adults who believe climate change is "definitely" a reality dropped by 30% over the last year, from 44% to 31%.

Same goes for the American public, where poll after poll over the last months has shown that less and less people believe that climate change is a serious problem - or, if so, that it is manmade. According to the latest Rasmussen report on US public opinion,

47% think long-term planetary trends are mostly to blame, down three points from the previous survey in January. Eight percent say there is some other reason, and 10% aren't sure. (...) Belief that human activity is the primary cause of global warming has declined significantly. In April 2008, the numbers were nearly the mirror image of the current numbers. At that time, 47% blamed human activity and only 34% named long term planetary trends as the reason for climate change.

Reasons? All this comes after months of controversy about leaked emails from climate researchers and allegations of manipulating data. The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had to admit mistakes in their estimate that Himalayan glaciers would be gone by 2035 (they are melting nonetheless, but slower than the IPCC has written in their 2007 report). And the human tendency ignore problems that are too slowly developing to really  comprehend  and require too much change from us.

Christopher Furlong/Getty Imag

An English High Court judge, Justice Michael Burton, has just ruled that green beliefs deserve the same protection in the workplace as religious convictions, reports the Economist in its weekly online column green.view, quoting Mr Burton:

“A belief in man-made climate change and the alleged resulting moral imperatives is capable, if genuinely held, of being a philosophical belief for the purpose of the 2003 Religion and Belief Regulations.”

The plaintiff in this case was Tim Nicholson, a former “head of sustainability” for a residential-property firm. He was laid off in 2008 and sued the company for unfair dismissal on the grounds of his eco-minded beliefs. Under Britain's six-year-old Religion and Belief Regulations it is unlawful to discriminate against a person on the grounds of their religious or philosophical beliefs.

Some now fear the consequences this ruling might have, writes Time.com, quoting an employment specialistthat the decision will

"result in a tidal wave of philosophical-related litigation to employment tribunals."

Nor surprisingly, this ruling is seen as the beginning of a witch hunt by not only one of the innumerable blogs with a, let's say, denialist attitude towards man-made climate change:

So when can we expect "denier" to be replaced by "infidel"?

Well, Justice Burton seems to be a judge who likes to be precise. Two years ago, he reprimed Al Gore and his film "An Inconvenient Truth" for nine scientific errors, in a much publicised case brough to court by a British climate change denier. Not that Justice Burton had a problem with the central thesis that climate change was happening and that it was being driven by emissions from humans. Quite the contrary. But nine statements in the film, the judge said, were not supported by mainstream scientific consensus.

This time he has laid out some tests to prevent frivolous claims:

the belief must be genuinely held; it must be held for a long period of time; it must relate to something of grave importance to humanity; it must reach a certain level of cogency and seriousness; and it must not trample on existing ideas of human rights. By way of example, he said belief in the supremacy of the Jedi knights of “Star Wars” fame would be excluded, but he conceded that allegiance to the doctrines of Marxism or communism might not.

Question is, on which side will the deniers end up? Could those five points hold for them as they hold for the plaintiff?