Well, you've now had over 200 replies and what they show is a bitter divide between those who do accept the climate is changing by or under human influence, and understand it; and people who not only do not believe it but will not try to understand it.
The idea is that it is some sort of "hoax" (i.e. a gigantic international lie by unidentified people for no discernible purpose and benefit) is untenable on simple logic.
Especially since many of those countries are otherwise generally hostile to each other, or at least self-centred, so hardly likely to co-operate in creating and maintaining a massive lie (the "hoax" as you say some call it). Lies are very hard to maintain even by individuals, and lies eventually break, so it would be impossible to create and maintain an enormous lie at State level even between friendly nations.
Calling such a lie a "hoax" is a bit euphemistic. A hoax is a lie by definition.
Instead, the increasingly weak lies are those of leaders and their followers of a very few, lone, isolationist governments who want to deny the fact and reasons for the climate's artificial changes, for purely personal or political/economic reasons.
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The reason for recognising we are changing the climate and trying to minimise the damage - which will be hard for us all - is obvious. The consequences of our ameliorating actions will not be easy or comfortable and I doubt anyone thinks they will be; but the consequences of inaction would be even worse.
The reasons some so desperately to keep calling it a "hoax" or "lie" are opaque, especially if they can only stoop to insults rather than honestly stating their rationale. Some seem genuinely confused by reading about palaeo-climates without really understanding the subject. Others perhaps realise the implications and (understandably) fear them so try to deny the fact as if that will make it go away. Still others may have political or other interests in denying anthropogenic climate-change - or even just climate-change.**
I think the major problem is that one or two major countries, but by no means all, have allowed the matter to become a very divisive but very shallow, domestic political spat whereas of course, it transcends all ideologies, creeds and cultures, and affects everyone on the planet. Otherwise, even in multi-party democracies, the matter is largely agreed across the board and the parties differ only on policy details.
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What would happen if we carried on as if nothing is happening? Well apart from the large areas of the world becoming inhospitably arid and many coastal areas being inundated.... Eventually we will run out of coal and oil, but what do do then?
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We are the last major species to have evolved on Earth - our genus is only about 4M years old, our species <1M - yet has become the most dangerous and destructive of all animals, ultimately to ourselves. We won't destroy the planet (that "save the planet" slogan is plain silly), nor drive ourselves into extinction; but we are certainly heading for terrible times ahead, by our own acts.
We started to recognise the problems more than 100 years ago but have only just started to address them.. I think that was largely because much of the 20C clung to a naive assumption that Science and Engineering would solve everything. They could help us now, and are trying to; but not alone and not as we had thought for about 200 years, by ever-bigger, ever-more, so increasing profligacy of exhaustible natural resources.
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What would happen if we carried on as if nothing is happening?
Well apart from large areas of the world becoming inhospitably arid and many coastal low-lands becoming inundated, with dreadful social damage....
Eventually we will run out of coal and oil, and some metal ores, but what then?
Never mind, it will be for our descendants to face.
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*The geologists are studying evidence in sediments, ice-cores etc. of the Quaternary climate oscillations to establish what the climate did in the past couple of million years when Nature had it all to herself. This allows determining what we could expect if humanity had not spent the last couple of thousand years messing it up at an ever-increasing rate. And also what to expect as a result of our interference, on temperatures, ice-covers and sea-levels.
**Interestingly, a president of one major nation tried to deny man-made climate-change for direct, domestic political purposes; yet also hinted at wanting his nation to take over another country's Arctic territory that could well lose its ice-sheet by the climate warming. He was told "certainly not", of course; but it does not take much thinking to comprehend his duplicity.
