this is how the reactionary mind works. the problem isn't the problem. the problem is how THOSE PEOPLE reacted to the problem such that now I, THE REASONABLE AND INFORMED ADULT MODERATE, must now devils-advocate (aka advocate) for the problem.
As I've gotten older I've realized that "moderates" who generally agree with you but advocate for less action (and often inaction) are generally the biggest stumbling block to getting things done.
I've found in my personal life (so maybe this doesn't hold true on the internet, but maybe it does when there is something at stake, like karma points) that moderates who advocate for lesser actions, but 'agree' with me are really just people who don't agree with me at all but don't want to take an action (disagreement) they perceive as possibly being damaging to a relationship.
One Person's Source: All of the people who say 'I'm fiscally conservative but socially liberal' in my life have turned out to be veeerrrryyyy socially conservative.
So this is part of it but I've also met people who agree with me but are still resistant to action. The most obvious time for this is protests, I've met so many people who agree with what the protestors are protesting for but don't like how they are going about doing it.
Though I will say using protests as an example here while valid is a little of a unfair because people always criticise protestors for their tactics, regardless of how reasonable (I know I have in the past)
You ever though that maybe they have seen this bullshit before and realize it is not the end of the world, That we need to do something just like we did for Acid rain and the Ozone layer but that all of the bullshit predictions that where made where nothing but bullshit. They where real and valid issues, we dealt with them and we did so in measured and moderate courses. But the radicals had us all dead multiple times over while we dealt with them with moderate action.
If you think the greenhouse gas problem is comparable to the acid rain or ozone problems then you fundamentally do not understand the science, and you as an engineer fundamentally do not understand what "orders of magnitude" are.
It is only from a position of wholesale ignorance of the scientific reality that you can make such a facile equation.
To put it in a simple analogy, you just said "those alarmists told me it was going to rain last week and it didn't, therefore this hurricane warning is bullshit i'm not evacuating".
I do understand what orders of magnitude is, I also understand that none of the orders of magnitude predictions have come to pass. If you cannot make accurate predictions, it's not science plain and simple. In less than a week there have been two articles on this site attributing their phenomena to global warming. Both subjects I am extremely knowledgeable on, the first being a claim that the climate exodus has begun in the the Florida Keys due to global warming. The article was a lie on it's face, I live there, people are leaving because there is an economic crisis in the Keys. I cited very specific evidence in that discussion as I literally hear people every day talking about it and why they are leaving. I talked to the guy this morning that owns the auto-shop 1 island down from me, he told me he had a contract on his commercial property and is getting out, he is in his 70's works alone and is getting too old for it. He cannot get help due to the affordable housing crisis and can sell his property and retire so he figures it's time. This is the reason and a reporter could have spent 5 minutes in the Keys and came to that conclusion, but the headline for the story was written and then the facts where put together to fit the foregone conclusion.
The second was this one which is also bad science. I drink with some of the worlds top scientist in the coral research area, I live on the same island, my daughter volunteers at their facility and I help with reforestation efforts in this area, when they do reforestation dives. in my other posts I clearly articulate the facts as to what is causing reef die off. I did not say global warming is not a problem, I said radicals are lying and trying to co-opt every bad thing that happens in nature to AGW, because they "want" it to be orders of magnitude. They did the same thing with acid rain and the ozone layer both where fixed by addressing and banning products (lead in gas, CFC's, refrigerants) not by silly proposals like cap and trade. Or suggesting that we are all going to have to just reduce our standard of living to save the world in 10 days.
A measured approach to migrating to Solar, Wind, Tidal and electric vehicles is how we will address global warming. Not creating a stock market for carbon. It's literally the stupidest idea ever and is advocated because it's a great way to skim money off the top by the elites and to limit entry into industry via regulations.
When they attribute these things to AGW, make predictions and they don't come true then they are engaging is agenda and advocacy and not science and it causes real issues. When these lies get exposed as they have, like with the CRU and the pause-buster papers, it gives ammo to the likes of Trump and the Koch Brothers to gut the EPA and roll back hard won environmental changes that where back by real science that made accurate predictions. the radicals insistence that AGW be tied to everything, gave us opening of public land to drilling and fracking. The radicals directly defeated the hard won battles fought by the moderates that won them. So you will forgive me when I see a statement that we the moderates enable the opposition, when it has been the radicals and their willingness to bend the facts that has enabled the deniers to throw the baby out with the bath water. People that mask advocacy and agendas as science, have no right to, they are stealing hard work and research to further their agenda. Which is unfair to the people that did the real work. AS their disinformation allows the properly done work to be discredited by showing the agenda, and then pandering to it, to discredit the real data.
People just love kicking down anything or anyone popular.
But just because that is an automatic human reaction, as you mention from some "I'm smart and know better" than other people, for some emotional high, that also applies to the extremists who push it hard on both ends with the same "I know better" motivations. Often at a much higher and frequent degree.
You could make a good argument that the moderates are often the lessers of evils and the most frequently right, just as long as we stay aware of their own weaknesses as motivation killers or overly compromising middle ground that can sometimes be the worse of the three generalized positions (sometimes doing nothing is better than something for the sake of appeasing the loudest voices, which one could argue is not true moderation).
Regardless these meta discussions only have so much value and are always a massive distraction.
At our core, we are socially uncomplicated. We exhibit swarm behavior and calibrate ourselves based on our nearest neighbors (or, in a more complicated way, how social media can be used to distort our views). This is how the Overton Window works, it's why there's a bias towards appearing as a moderate.
It's a good heuristic, it's just wrong in the case of our climate situation.
There will always be plenty of grey area when it comes to what we can practically do in response to climate change, even if we all did reach a common sense type consensus on how bad it currently is.
Especially when it comes down to local level policy for such a global issue.
