Yes, I said it. Climate change is real. Climate is always changing. It is unavoidable, especially in a system with so many variables. There is a well-established record of climate change present in the geological record going back hundreds of millions of years.
Things we do also affect the system. There, I said it. Human activity has an effect on climate. That only makes sense. When you do stuff to a complex system, that system changes. When you alter inputs, the outputs change.
What is at issue is the magnitude of change in output from the change in input caused by human activity. Unfortunately, rather than approach this curiosity with reasoned science, it has become a political hot-button issue, which means the facts will never, EVER be found. Period. I doubt we even have the capacity to accurately model a more or less chaotic system with millions of variables.
All of that having been said, there are attitudes on both sides that are just unfathomably stupid. From the leftists who want to kill everyone but themselves and go back to living in caves, to the right-wing wackos who want to burn all the fossil fuel they can "because freedom," they are all a bunch of fucking idiots.
The rules here are pretty simple. Stop wasting shit, and stop multiplying like rabbits. The Earth has finite resources, and can therefore support only a finite amount of consumption. When we reproduce irresponsibly and consume all that we can possible consume just because we can, we're going to hit that limit a lot sooner.
I really wish the environmentalists would take a more conservationist approach rather than a purely biased political one. I am all about conservation, but I despise environmentalism, just like I despise hyper-consumptionism.
And as a disclaimer, my contributions to the conservation of world resources are: not having children, biking to work, and not having an oversized house filled with shit China told me I needed.