Presumably, that scenario still includes figures advocating complacency, so you're really comparing a situation where opinion is presented as split between comp

Presumably, that scenario still includes figures advocating complacency, so you're really comparing a situation where opinion is presented as split between complacency and moderation vs complacency, moderation, and alarmism. Both-sideism works in your favor in the latter case, and if someone digs into the numbers a bit more, they would find that the alarmists outnumber the complacents. The only real risk is that the alarmists provoke an "it's already too late to fix anything" response, which I don't think is terribly likely, as there isn't an upper bound on how bad things get until you hit a tipping point of civilizational collapse.