It was the first day of the new year, and Sarah Kaplan from The Washington Post was all doom and gloom: “Global emissions are expected to hit an all-time high this year, and humanity is on track to cross the threshold for tolerable warming within a generation.”

Relax, I’m not going to go into the details (aka facts) pointing to the problem of a changing climate. Instead, let’s consider a different kind of problem, the kind inconvenient facts present.

When the problem with facts (aka detail...