[toovs]

> However, when I see skepticism towards man-caused climate change lumped in with believing in lizard people ...

As it should be. It should be viewed as even worse. The lizard conspiracy people aren't destroying our planet.

[Flimm]

There's three things wrong with this:

- you're failing to heed the warning that demonising your opponents makes them further entrenched in their position. If you're trying to save our planet by persuading climate change skeptics, you should stop doing that.

- You're equating the plausability of the lizard conspiracy to the plausability of climate change being man-made. Don't, because they're not equally implausible, and it's counterproductive.

- Your argument that climate change skeptics are destroying the planet is only true if climate change is indeed man-made, and therefore has no relevance to the determination of climate change's existence and causes.

[ythn]

> Your argument that climate change skeptics are destroying the planet is only true if climate change is indeed man-made

Even if climate change is man made (and I believe it is), the argument is only true if the predicted dire outcomes of climate change in the predicted timescales are also true (this I'm not as convinced of). There are likely currently unknown variables that will retroactively devalue the predictive strength of our models one we observe how the future actually is vs. the predictions.

Also, skeptics aren't destroying the planet any more than non-skeptics - everybody still drives cars, eats meat, and uses electricity.

It can be argued that skeptics are hindering government policies that could help mitigate negative effects of climate change, but so far the policies I've seen proposed would have a near negligible effect other than making us feel good for doing something.