Today we have politicians coming out and declaring every single major natural disaster was because of man-made climate change. Does anyone feel that this helps convince skeptics?
In the United States in particular, climate change skepticism isn't about evidence or science. It's tied up with political ideology, personal identity, social identification, and a host of other very non-scientific factors. For instance, that some of the proposed solutions for fighting climate change wound up aligning pretty close with other liberal policy ideas (carbon taxes and cap and trade, for instance, were easy to malign as "increasing taxes"), which helped prime the pump for denying climate change altogether by seeming suspicious to other groups. Getting around these issues, especially now that denial/skepticism has become deeply entrenched along party lines, is one hell of a difficult problem to figure out.
There are no such proven predictions made by modern politically funded climate science. All they have are computer models which are constantly being disputed for being fudged to produce any result you want, and cannot even begin to predict past climate phenomena, let alone future ones. So to attack people you see as misinformed as 'not discussing the science' doesn't make a lot of sense. Global warming stops being a scientific issue when you start demanding forced government action. Especially action that would cripple the world economy and send humanity back to the stone age if it were taken enthusiastically.
> There are no such proven predictions made by modern politically funded climate science.
> All they have are computer models which are constantly being disputed for being fudged to produce any result you want,
> and cannot even begin to predict past climate phenomena
> So to attack people you see as misinformed as 'not discussing the science' doesn't make a lot of sense.
It is very clear that you are not discussing the science, you're only discussing your political view because all of your "scientist" claims are just wrong
May I assume you are that layman? What a remarkable mind you possess.
That's how you end up with people like Trump in charge. Did Trump ever have to debate the effect of automation on the economy and how he was going to handle an economy with more supply of unskilled workers than demand? Hell no, it just turned into a pissing match over a misogynistic comment and no information of value was disseminated into the public sphere for three quarters of the election campaign.
People are far more interested in lauding their moral superiority over people they (often wrongly) perceive to be less intelligent than themselves, than they are in learning new information. A well researched counter-argument to the latest scientific publication on climate change will get about 10 clicks and convince nobody, an article one step up from "durrrr this idiot politician thinks climate change causes every natural disaster" will get millions and sway an election.
That's why it's the job of everyone in politics to provide the best, and only the best, possible argument for whatever position they take. You need to give your opponent only one thing to talk about if you expect a response to it.