Most debates end up with polarised positions taken by each side, even when the debate starts off with everybody being, "iffy". We love being at odds with others, no more so than when it comes to religion.
Secondly, it's always the laymen that makes the loudest noise and in regards to religion, everybody is a layman, because nothing can be proven and all concepts of God are pure abstraction. There can never be a religious expert, but there can be a scientific expert. The noise regarding CC is from the lay person, and this is a terrible generalisation on my part, but they look and behave in ways that are so off-putting, so that even if the average Joe was passionate about CC, he would not join in with those who have highjacked the cause. They are drowning out all the moderate voices and causing a fire-wall of resistance from the naysayers.
So this is the real connection with religion and CC. Religion loves to seperate itself from others and waste its energy trying to prove how right it is and how wrong every other religion is, all the while knowing next to nothing about its subject. CC noise is made by the same mindset. I'm right and you're wrong and both sides, just like religion, is prejudiced and sees only what it wants to see.
97% of climate scientists say that humans have influenced climate. 99.9999% of scientists say that Genesis creation is symbolic. In both cases expert opinion and empirical proof has had no impact on great swathes of people, so here is another commonality between science and CC deniers. Humans are not necessarily driven by evidence, rather by irrational emotion.
I don't think you can do to a planet what we have done and then claim that humans are not the cause of climate change. And climate change is the great blanket that covers all the more important aspects of environmental degradation that we are causing.
In some ways I think CC is a smoke screen. Don't get me wrong, it's happening, but there is so much environmental damage and degradation that the least reactive measure they can offer up for this catastrophic damage to our planet is actually CC, so that's why they are happy to have this run amok in the public forum. You neutralise people by dividing them so that their energy is dissipated bumping heads against each other. It keeps everybody occupied tilting at frigging windmills while the planet is being plundered.
Even if there are alarmists spruiking out of self-interest, because science must go endlessly to government with their begging bowl, there is still a considerable degradation of the eco-systems of this planet that our lives depend on and they are worth considering and remediating.
Meanwhile we all argue the zen of climate dynamism, just like old Nero fiddling as Rome burns.
