Politicians who lie about climate change should be treated the same way as TV presenters who grope their colleagues, a carbon foot-printing expert has claimed.

Lancaster University professor, researcher, author, and carbon foot-printing expert, Mike Berners-Lee has released a new book detailing these thoughts, titled ‘A Climate of Truth’.

On Newstalk Breakfast, Prof Berners-Lee said despite his area of expertise lying within climate, he’s “not specifically writing about climate, in a way”.

“I'm writing about standards of honesty in our politics, media and business,” he said.

“So what I'm saying is that I actually call for everybody to be treated with respect.

“But I am saying that if you find just one incidence of a politician in a clear cut way trying to mislead the public, then that tells you that they're not on your side, and they can't be trusted, and they're in the wrong job.”

Prof Berners-Lee said he would “absolutely” extend this issue beyond climate issues.

“I came at the subject of truth from a climate perspective, because I've been working on climate for 20 years or so, and if you unpick the reasons why we're not getting where we need to be getting as a global society, it's all got dishonesty at its roots,” he said.

“But it actually applies to, you know, all elements of environmental and social issues that we might care about - if somebody is dishonest on one topic, it tells you they don't care about truth for its own sake.

“We need to get that out of our politics, because unless we can, we can't do the quality of decision making that we need to do to take us through what is now a rising poly crisis of environmental issues that are going to hit us very, very hard indeed, if we don't find a way through.

“Trying to make the public believe anything that you don't personally believe yourself - that's deceitful - and if a politician does that, it tells you straight away that they're not on your side.”

Deceit Face With Big Nose. Image: Alamy

In his book, Prof Berners-Lee points to UK examples of this issue.

“So, you know, somebody says, ‘Look, the UK needs to dig lots of new oil and gas out of the North Sea, because otherwise our energy prices will go through the roof’ and what they actually know is that our energy prices aren't related to how much oil and gas we dig out of the North Sea,” he said.

“That's very clear cut - misleading.

“If they do that on just one issue, it tells you can't trust them on anything they say in politics, and we can all help with this, on insisting on this higher standard, it's a doable thing

“The public needs to get behind it and insist [on it].”

Anti-Brexit protest - a protester holds a sign saying "Deceit destroys democracy". 2nd July 2016. Image: Alamy