A multiple exposure photo of Energy Secretary Chris Wright taken at a visit to the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory campus in Golden, Colorado, on April 3.RJ Sangosti/ MediaNews Group / The Denver Post via Getty via Grist

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Should you be worried about climate change?

The answer used to be debatable—literally.

Way back in 2007, NPR aired a debate over the proposition that “Global Warming Is Not a Crisis.” The panel had six commentators, divided equally into two sides. Those on the “not a crisis” side (which included Jurassic Park author and nonscientist Michael Crichton) argued that much of the current alarm was based on “ignorance.” Sure, the climate was changing, but that wasn’t anything new, they said. They weren’t convinced carbon dioxide was driving it this time around, either.

Those stuck arguing that global warming was not not a crisis—an awkward double negative—countered that the scientific community was in near-universal agreement that CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions were at fault. They laid out the dire consequences (rising seas, shrinking ice caps, warming oceans) and called on the audience to think of the planet their children and grandchildren would inherit.

“It can really create perceptions of false equivalence in the public sphere.”

Afterward, conservative think tank The Heartland Institute declared that the climate “realists” had beaten the “alarmists.” Polling the audience, NPR found that 57 percent thought that global warming was a crisis before the debate, but only 42 percent did afterward. The results seemed to confirm the fears that participant Gavin Schmidt, a NASA climate scientist, had outlined on his blog ahead of the event. “Is this kind of rhetorical jousting useful for clarifying issues of science…? Or does it just validate the least serious opposition?” he wrote.

In 2010, around the time when these kinds of debates were popular, almost half of Americans falsely believed there was a lot of disagreement among scientists that climate change was happening. Fast-forward to today, and the public’s understanding has evolved. More Americans acknowledge that scientists agree on climate change. People are also increasingly worried about the consequences: The intense floods, wildfires, and heat waves battering the country have sparked concern not only for the future, but for the present.  

And yet the old way of discussing climate change—framing it as a debate—appears to be coming back into fashion, this time spurred by the federal government.

A new report from the Department of Energy, “A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate,” arrived in late July. “Climate change is a challenge—not a catastrophe,”

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