> and that if we don't change something, we are fucked.

This simply isn't true, it's outlandish even, and is part of why moderation is tricky. Why do you believe this?

We are not 'fucked' even at the worst estimates.

In 1990 almost 2 billion people were on less than $2.00 per day.

Were we 'fucked' in 1990?

Are we currently 'fucked' with 700 million people on less than $2.00 per day.

When someone writes "we're fucked", the only completely wrong response is to assume "fucked" has a precise and technical definition. As a bit of language, it merely means "things will be shitty". What does "shitty" mean? C'mon… yeah, this is all relative.

Can you be more specific? For example, I really doubt anyone thinks climate change is not always "happening" or that human activity has exactly zero influence on it.

A certain commander in chief has in public espoused that:

"The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive."[0].

There are plenty of misinformed people that will gladly tell you there is no such thing and if there was human activity has no effect. Pretending that there aren't and even if the issue is complex there isn't a set of clearly wrong opinions is disingenuous to the extreme.

[0] https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/26589529219124838...

I asked about "climate change". You are talking about "global warming" as if I asked about that.

Are you saying these concepts are equivalent to the aforementioned 99% of scientists and experts?

I'm really not trying to act dense, just figure out what it is people even believe about this topic.

I think "global warming" was rebranded as "climate change" to avoid people saying "well it's getting colder here!" as a rebuttal to its existence

This is splitting hairs. The consequences of human-driven climate change are widely understood to include net warming of the globe.

For example, if there is a new ice age triggered due to human activity, would that would agree with both the global warming and climate change ideas?

If cows were spherical, we could agree that cows were both cow-shaped, and sphere-shaped.

They aren't, though.

Sorry, I have no idea how this is relevant. I thought I was asking a pretty simple question: "What is it that the average person concerned about climate change actually believes is going on?"

It appears this is the wrong place to get an answer to that question.

You're asking questions that could be answered with 10 seconds of Google use and you're being kind of impolite about it. That doesn't seem like a good strategy to engage with someone usefully.

I don't consider asking this question to be impolite: Can you give a quote from what you find after 10 seconds of googling that sums it up?

This is getting off topic, but do you consider asking that to be impolite?

Well, I mean, the alternative is that it's a complex issue often touted as black-and-white to allow for taking a moral high ground against rational people that reasonably disagree on some of the conclusions and proposed methods for dealing with the issue.

And if that's true, then it's possible there's no grand conspiracy and at the end of the day, either the evidence isn't strong enough or the case isn't being made well enough to get everyone on board. If the debate is being lost before they even start telling people how dramatically their lifestyles will have to change to have a meaningful impact on the issue, what possible hope could they have when those realities are laid out?

But that's probably not true, so don't worry about it. Now are you with us or a denier?