OK now I have to quote this:

Bernard Woolley: What if the Prime Minister insists we help them?

Sir Humphrey Appleby: Then we follow the four-stage strategy.

Bernard Woolley: What's that?

Sir Richard Wharton: Standard Foreign Office response in a time of crisis.

Sir Richard Wharton: In stage one we say nothing is going to happen.

Sir Humphrey Appleby: Stage two, we say something may be about to happen, but we should do nothing about it.

Sir Richard Wharton: In stage three, we say that maybe we should do something about it, but there's nothing we can do.

Sir Humphrey Appleby: Stage four, we say maybe there was something we could have done, but it's too late now.

• Yes, Minister

(Note I don't mean this is an intentional strategy as applied to climate change, even one operating at a subconscious level within individuals. Given a range of skeptics with different opinions, it could be that different ones are coming into the spotlight so that the "most defensible" argument for doing nothing appears at the appropriate time. I just thought the parallel was funny.)