They most certainly were, about 50 years ago.
I think it's increasingly clear that the Climate-change lobby has basically lost the popular argument, there are several reasons for this, none of which are directly linked to the science.
1. Fatigue: Banging on about something like this year in year out ends up turning people off, you become part of the background noise people just tune out. The fact is, humans can only plan ahead a few years at a time in their own lives, although we can concience of works completed in our children's or grandchildren's day we aren't good with far off danger. This is probably an evolved trait, there's no point worrying about the snow six months from now when you have the current drought.
2. Loss of trust: Scientists have been caught several times fundging figures, and making outlandish claims. I seem to recall that around the year 2000 is was claimed their would be no Northern Ice cap by 2020, that now looks highly unlikely, and in fact the mediun size of the ice cap has been constant for 50 years or so, although it has become thinner in recent decades. Fluctuations during the Roman and Medieval period are still mostly ignored, despite there being ample evidence for previous repaid changes in temperature of several degrees over a few centuries. The problem is further compounded by lack of accurate date even 100 years ago.
3. Lack of any actual plan: This is the big problem, there has been no concerted effort to answer the question of how we will generate energy in the future, Japan showed how precarious Nuclear Power is and right now we have no convincing alternatives to fossil fuel. Instead, we get unrealistic demands for individual users to limit their personal usage when the real issue is industrial and gimmicks like those stupid lightbulbs that don't work properly and contain Mercury.
4. Wrong message: The message currently is, "The End will be Nigh, at some point." In fact, the end has been Nigh several times, several times we have broken supposed temporal or quantative polution limits at which point the whole Earth is supposed to go "Bang", take a look at Sci-Fi 30 years ago and you'll see films about people leaving Earth because Acid Rain, something nobody is all that worried about these days.
On the other hand, pumping loads of crap into the atmosphere is pretty much the definition of a Bad Idea if we want our children to live here. We shouldn't be polluting the environment, but that should a no brainer Climate Change or no.
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