Thank you for this comment, and for describing this dynamic so clearly. As you said, I doubt it was intentional, but GP's comment stuck out to me because it wa

Thank you for this comment, and for describing this dynamic so clearly. As you said, I doubt it was intentional, but GP's comment stuck out to me because it was in response to a rather innocuous statement of disbelief. I would liken it to witnessing the following exchange: > A newly released climate change report from ExxonMobil has sparked controversy ... >> It boggles my mind that there’s any debate about whether there's climate change when we literally have studies from fossil fuel companies detailing the evidence and predicting its future impact. >>> In fairness, "change" is not well defined, and is routinely misused. For example, if we're talking about the recent storms in the midwest, and I invoke "climate change" to imply that these storms were directly linked to rising global temperatures and will lead to the collapse of the North American food supply, you could point out that the storms are still consistent with local weather phenomena observed in the area's recent history, at which point I would retreat to ... >>> In my experience, people who are willing to be honest, precise, and consistent in their terminology tend to have more reasonable and productive debates about weather events. They can often agree on many things with the people who are supposed to be their enemies and the disagreements are more understandable. Notably, most Americans probably agree that these storms were damaging to farmers in the midwest. >>> EDIT: People are fixating on the example and assuming that the reported rate of destruction to the corn crop in Iowa underrepresents the rates in neighboring areas, and ... , but when taking into account reduced demand from China and ... , there's clearly no threat of a food supply collapse. So while it's fair to argue that agricultural scientists are failing to account for something, we're not talking about ignorant people making stupid extrapolations. If we're going to go off-topic, then let's at least make it a productive, enlightening digression. How do you point this out effectively, so that people can realize that they're fixated on arguing against a strawman of their own creation, and so they don't just double down?