My concern is that people are willing to be too extreme at a potential expense of the public's perception of science/climate change. I think it's important to be precise and measured with this stuff.
And really, if we still need to convince people of the risks of climate change, we should not prioritize these people - convince if possible, but they're not the focus. Climate change is here. By now, even ~65% of Americans actually understand that, and industry and politicians here have worked really hard to maintain ignorance. The effects are felt in daily life on a regular basis - increased hurricanes, increases wildfires, droughts, rapidly dropping water tables etc.
We're living unsustainably. We can now drive off the cliff in a precise and measured way, or we can choose to change how we live.
But trends are visible, and things are happening. We just ignore them to prevent reducing consumption.
EDIT: Unfortunately there's little room for nuance and discussion when talking about environmental problems in today's political climate. People are just downvoting me because I implied not everyone agrees on climate change, which shouldn't be a controversial fact to state, but alas it is. I would appreciate if the people downvoting me would provide a substantive reply though, because otherwise the downvotes without replies seems to simply just prove that people are unwilling/unable to have a nuanced discussion about environmental problems.
Someone is pouring gasoline in our house and you're suggesting that we talk less about a catastrophic house fire and more about how they're ruining the carpet. How does that help?
Besides, what are these "environmental problems that we can actually all agree on"?
We should have clean water? No, the same people denying climate change have overturned basic protections.
Protection of endangered species? Also overturned.
Protection of national parks? Nope, acreage removed from the park system and existing reserves opened for drilling.
Increasing fuel economy standards? No.
Common sense reductions in coal usage, which is now more expensive than solar and wind (not even including carbon externalities)? No.
Both sides have extremists. But right now, an "economic growth at all costs" extremist regime is making policy. That is undeniable.
If a left-wing "criminalize eating meat, eliminate fossil fuel overnight, outlaw corporate farming and force people to live in yurts" extremist sat in the White House, do you think we should not talk about the risk of global economic collapse?
E.g. clean drinking water, I'd argue that we can all very much agree this is a priorty. I'm not sure what basic protections you're talking about which were overturned, but atleast here in Canada we have towns and reserves that still don't have access to clean drinking water.
also yes, protection of endangered species, but even more broadly just biodiversity in general (often we focus only on saving the cute ones, which is also a bit of a travesty). This topic is more polarized than clean drinking water but arguably less polarized than climate change and has much more realistic and attainable solutions.
The problem being that we're in the midst of the sixth mass extinction event and it's caused by humans (not human-induced climate change, though that may be a contributor, but it started much earlier than the industrial revolution). Much of the problem is that we destroy habitats e.g. through mass deforestation, pollution, etc.
We're currently in the midst of a massive insect apocalypse which is the result of the aforementioned deforestation and pollution, largely insecticides herbicides, etc. from bad agricultural practices.
I would much rather we focus on reforming forestry, fishing and agricultural practices using less destructive to the environment methods, which are very attainable, than focusing on mitigating climate change, which is largely out of our hands or would require such unattainable changes to society.
I think we are by and large wasting our time and effort on dubious climate change efforts which would be much better focused on real environmental problems that we can actually solve, like e.g. ovefishing, mass deforestation and habitat loss, mass pollution in water and terrestrial ecosystems. That's my point.
I do believe human-induced climate change is happening, but also not neaarrlly to the degree that alarmists and doom and gloomers would have people beleive. It's a question of how much are humans contributing to climate change change not if, but there's too many extremists that claim the apocolypse on very dubious grounds. I honestly believe the extreme alarmists are being incredibly harmful to science in general because people are liable to dismiss all science when inevitably a too-extreme climate model is proven wrong yet again.
So yeah, my point is that there's many more attainable solutions to environmental problems we can mostly all agree on that we should be going after, rather than focusing our efforts on just fighting climate change which is an extremely polarizing topic and has largely unattainable solutions.
I'll throw a few things out there: climate models. Watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJoMp-k_H3w for a comparison of predictions of major climate models vs. measured temperatures. Many, many articles and peer-reviewed research has covered this.
Overfishing being an "environmental problem that we can actually solve": this massively complex problem involves international policing of illegal fishing, national sovereignty, ecological protections vs. starving populations, increasing economic success leading to increasing consumption (see China's insatiable and growing appetite for fish), cultural issues, and on and on.
Worse, climate and agricultural impacts such as ocean acidification, temperature rise, algae blooms, and nitrogen run-off all contribute to dramatic declines in aquatic populations that lower yields and require ever-more aggressive fishing practices that further destroy the ecosystem.
Regarding the contribution of humans to climate change: there is no doubt that carbon dioxide warms the atmosphere. There is no doubt that CO2's overall contribution to warming exceeds that of other factors (including solar maxima and other denialist theories). There is also no doubt that humans emit more CO2 than any other source. See https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/... for a good overview. Without a science-based rebuttal to these issues, saying human contribution is "not neaarrlly to the degree that alarmists and doom and gloomers would have people believe" is a belief based on nothing.
You use strawmen like "too many extremists that claim the apocolypse on very dubious grounds." What does this mean? We have 411 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere now, and it continues to grow - at an accelerating rate. This leads to stronger and more frequent extreme weather events like droughts (atmospheric warming) and hurricanes (ocean warming).
So what is this apocalypse the extremists discuss? Apocalypse like having a city burned to the ground (see California)? Like hurricanes devastating coastal communities (see Bahamas)? Like 500 year weather events occurring almost annually? How many of these must happen before they strain the economies of even the richest countries? And that's not even talking about massive flooding from sea-level rise.
Blaming "extreme alarmists" for being "harmful to science" is so disingenuous it makes me angry. You really believe they're more harmful to science than those who lie about, cherry-pick, obfuscate, and bury data (see Exxon) to create the illusion of controversy to protect their trillion dollar businesses or political power? The only reason climate change is polarizing is because their efforts to undermine the science have worked. The only reason you think the solutions are unattainable is because they have convinced you that is so for 40 years. And now, perhaps, they are unattainable. Congrats to them, I guess.