No, they’re not. But there are estimable ones all around Washington and the rest of the sizzling globe, and they’re happy to share their wisdom. The United Nations panel did precisely that, cautioning that a continued failure to reduce emissions of those gases would yield “food shortages, refugee crises, the flooding of major cities and entire island nations, mass extinctions of plants and animals, and a climate so drastically altered it might become dangerous for people to work or play outside during the hottest times of the year,” as The Times’s Justin Gillis wrote, laying out the stakes. They couldn’t be graver.

President Obama used his executive authority earlier this year on a plan to cut emissions some. But Congress has been largely useless, with a relationship to science that toggles between benign neglect and outright contempt. And many Americans have a similarly curious attitude, distinguished by woefully insufficient gratitude for the ways in which science has advanced our country and elevated our lives.

On the one hand, we’re enthralled by the idea and occasional romance of science. We certainly love it in our popular entertainment. The most watched comedy on television is “The Big Bang Theory,” which showcases physicists. Their social fumbling is lampooned, but their brainpower is revered.

The biggest event of the fall movie season is the space extravaganza “Interstellar,” which opens this week and is so chockablock with sophisticated physics and rife with cosmological argot that Time magazine assigned a cover story not to a Hollywood reporter but to the senior editor who supervises science coverage.

And Bill Nye, “the Science Guy,” has become a veritable cultural icon.

But look at the title of his new book on evolution, also out this week. It’s called “Undeniable,” because, yes, there are many Americans who still deny what Darwin and other scientists long ago proved. They elect mysticism over empiricism.