I am sorry that the Climate Change thread was taken down from view. Unlike the Trump threads, this one was data driven from the first post that Ray made. It's unfortunate that others weighed in much later in the process and turned it into a forum for polemics as opposed to focusing on data and policy choices. We are poorer for this decision as climate change has an obvious impact on photography, both negative and positive.
Of course I agree with Alan Goldhammer on these points, not surprisingly.
After the removal of the various Trump threads, I was considering locking the Climate Change thread in the hope of preserving it, because many of the links to scientific studies, and the arguments for and against the issue, might have provided some interesting information, ideas and concepts, to future readers.
However, since I had criticized another poster for locking his own thread on climate change skepticism, because the thread wasn't going his own way, I couldn't justify locking my thread. And even if I had locked it, that would have been no guarantee that the thread would not be removed.
As has often been said, everyone can have an opinion, on whatever subject. Expressing an opinion is usually very easy. The real difficulty is in justifying the opinion with reasoned explanations and evidence.
This also applies to all critiques of photographs and camera performance. To simply state that one likes or dislikes a particular image, or that it's 'great' or 'cool', or 'crap' as the case may be, says something about the person making the comment, but nothing about the photo.
I'm also in complete agreement with Slobodan's earlier comment in this thread.
Where else I can discuss such things not with total, mostly anonymous strangers, but with real people who I got to know over the years reasonably well, from their photography, to their musings and writings about photography, from their professional history to their family history, forming a pretty good idea of who they are, and forming a respect for what they did in their life and with their life? Those are the people I am willing to listen to, engage with, exchange opinions, even if we disagree (especially if we disagree). And stay friends even if we politely disagree. Those who can not disagree politely, should be banned and the offending post removed. Not the thread.
If it was not clear from the above, I am strongly against removing whole threads and banning certain subjects.