I had a wonderful chemistry teacher once. Someone asked him what he thought about climate change, and he gave a fantastic response.
"The atmosphere is a lot like a fish tank full of water. If you put food coloring in that fish tank, it turns slightly red. The more food coloring you put in that tank, the more red it gets. If you take a flashlight and try and shine light through one side of the fishtank and out the other side, the food coloring blocks some of the light. The more food coloring you put in, the more light it blocks... and turns to heat. Try it. You'll make the water warmer.
"That water is like our atmosphere. That food coloring is like CO2. And that flashlight is like our sun."
It's not difficult to convincingly and simply explain the evidence for man-made climate change. Evenly matched debaters would predictably win and lose if they were told to argue for or against climate change. The reason why climate scientists fail to convince TV viewers about climate change is that they are scientists: they spend more time practicing science than practicing persuading laypeople in terms that they will understand. Going up against demagogues, they have zero chance.
The game isn't bad. It works incredibly well most of the time for most of the problems we have encountered. It doesn't work so well when one side is incredibly bad at convincing common people and is not willing to change argument tactics, or when both sides are making completely subjective arguments.