Hottest Years

While the media loves headlines like this one, scientists prefer comprehensive data and independent verification with consistency over time.  For the science community, trends are independently verified using different data collections and analysis models.  

For climate change, there are arguments about whether or not human action is a contributing factor.  There are arguments about whether warming will make any difference.  Those arguments are not among the scientists, however.  Physicists, climatologists, ocean scientists, environmental scientists, and the rest of relevant fields, generally agree that human action is a primary causal factor, and that the results, while quite variable, will be detrimental.

Global climate is indeed complex.  There are continuing scientific inquiries regarding the degree of forcing, the magnitude of effect for individual factors, varying data sets, and the contributing natural cycles.  There's a difference, however, between objective scientific inquiry and politicised campaigns.

There are organizations lobbying and publishing a contrarian commentary.  Some involve the same folks who defended the tobacco industry.  Many, perhaps most, are traceably funded by industrial interests.  Do your own research.  It takes little effort and is perhaps illuminating.

For an easy starting place, Climate Change Denial: Lobbying or Global Warming Skeptic Organizations | Union of Concerned Scientists

Apart from public opinion and biased rhetoric, whatever way we choose to go forward, there are economic and cultural changes ahead that are perhaps difficult to accomplish or even to fully grasp intellectually.