I agree with basically everything in this comment, except maybe this part: "The emotional impact makes it less easy to treat your belief in it as a tool for impressing your friends and irritating your enemies, rather than something to actually worry about and try to solve if it's real."

I just don't think the argument goes through: "The emotional impact being stronger, makes it LESS easy for you to treat your belief as a tool for impressing friends/irritating enemies". (Citing HPMOR: "For it is a sad rule that whenever you are most in need of your art as a rationalist, that is when you are most likely to forget it.")

Also, I think the emotional impact of climate change was, for some people more extreme, and proximal/immediate; definitely more than how they experience AI risk. Especially people who lived in places where the ecosystem was more fragile/environmental damage happened in a rapid and extreme visible way (coral reefs for example changed in ways that were rapid even by human standards?) and who have only just started thinking about "maybe AI will take my job".

Still, just more reason to stay focused, and fight the polarization as best we can!!