| "...broad unwillingness to have a real discussion for fear of being shamed..." That's not exactly what I've observed. I've observed people driven to be contrarian, who use an assortment of tactics: - cherry-picking evidence for one side (this one study shows ice melting may be smaller than expected in one place, thus, I dismiss the entire AR5 report without ever even reading the executive summary); - providing contorted arguments they would never accept in a context involving, say, their own home ("the effect is small by historic standards"; "warming will have benefits that have been overlooked"); - dismissing the expertise of others in favor of their own undergrad-level science judgements ("we can't even predict the weather past 14 days, how can we predict climate") -- again, with a degree of skepticism they would never exhibit in relation to, say, their architect ("you need more shear strength there"), gardener ("it's a root fungus"), or car mechanic ("it's your oil pump"), or even Stack Exchange ("change permissions on the file and reboot"). Broadly, HN avoids the worst of the above problems - for which I'm thankful. But you will still see them here in any climate-related discussion thread. I possess some of the same contrarian tendencies, and seeing how easily skepticism turns into ignorant defense of the status quo has been a useful corrective for me. |
Whilst you've taken the worst case as your default assumption, which is why their train of thought seems off. You sound like you need a large body of evidence to disprove climate catastrophe.