When I lived in Syria, I once found myself sitting across from a general over dinner. This was long before the war. The elder Assad was still in power, Damascus still felt like a functioning capital, and Syria had not yet descended into the catastrophe that would later consume it.
At some point our conversation turned toward Islamism.
Specifically, we discussed Hama.
For those unfamiliar with the episode, the Syrian regime crushed an Islamist uprising there with overwhelming force, killing thousands in the process. It remains one of the defining moments of modern Syrian history and a subject that still provokes strong reactions.
The general listened patiently while I explained my view, then asked a simple question.
“What would you have done?”
It is one of those questions that sounds straightforward until you actually think about it.
How do you deal with people whose worldview leaves no room for compromise?
How do you negotiate with individuals who believe that you must ultimately convert, submit, or disappear?
How do you build a lasting settlement with a movement that sees every compromise merely as a temporary tactical pause before advancing to the next objective?
The uncomfortable answer is that often you cannot.
Not because compromise is undesirable.
Not because coexistence lacks value.
But because coexistence requires both sides to value it.
When one side views compromise as an end state and the other views it merely as a waypoint, the arrangement contains the seeds of its own destruction from the very beginning.
Human beings are astonishing creatures. We can learn almost anything. We can adapt to almost any circumstance. We can survive environments that would kill most species outright.
Yet there is one thing we often struggle to do.
Abandon a belief that has become part of our identity.
Once an idea migrates from the realm of opinion into the realm of faith, it becomes almost impossible to dislodge. Evidence ceases to matter. Contradictions cease to matter. Failures cease to matter.
The narrative must survive.
The movie The Matrix understood this dynamic surprisingly well.
One of its central observations was that many people plugged into the system could not simply be unplugged. Not because they lacked intelligence. Not because they lacked information.
Because they lacked the willingness to abandon the reality they had built for themselves.
They would fight to defend it.
Perhaps even die to defend it.
Reality itself becomes the enemy when reality threatens the story.
That observation applies far beyond science fiction.
It applies to politics.
It applies to religion.
It applies to ideology.
And yes, it applies to climate alarmism.
Not everyone involved, of course.
There are opportunists everywhere. There are always people who see a movement and ask themselves how they might profit from it. Those people are not true believers. They are merchants. They would happily sell a different narrative tomorrow if it paid better than today’s.
They are not particularly interesting.
The true believers are.
The genuine alarmists are not primarily defending a scientific proposition.
They are defending an identity.
A moral framework.
A vision of themselves as guardians standing between civilization and catastrophe.
And once someone has invested years, perhaps decades, of emotional commitment into such a role, changing course becomes extraordinarily difficult.
Every failed prediction must be explained away.
Every contradiction must be rationalized.
Every setback must become proof that even greater urgency is required.
The narrative cannot be allowed to fail because the narrative has become inseparable from the self.
This is why attempts to persuade the hard core often produce so little.
The discussion is assumed to be about facts.
In reality it is about identity.
Facts can change.
Identity fights back.
At some point societies must recognize this distinction.
Not everyone can be persuaded.
Not every argument can be won.
Not every movement can be reasoned back toward moderation.
History repeatedly demonstrates that deeply embedded belief systems tend not to collapse because their adherents are convinced by superior arguments.
They collapse because reality eventually imposes costs that become impossible to ignore.
The true believers usually remain true believers right up until the end.
The rest of society simply moves on without them.
That may sound harsh.
Perhaps it is.
But there comes a point where endless attempts at conversion become a distraction from the far more important task of repairing the damage already done.
The objective is not to win over the unconvertible.
The objective is to restore reality as the foundation upon which decisions are made.
The rest will take care of itself.
Eventually reality always wins.
It is remarkably patient that way.
https://www.cfact.org/2026/06/02/climate-exaggerators-wont-go-away/