The debate over climate change is..

Well, on the other side you have the guys who claim *everything* is caused by climate change, even when people in the field say there's no evidence global warming should have any impact - like, say, with hurricane strength and severity.

And when one points this out, one is branded a "denier". It's like critical thinking goes out the window once someone chooses a position.

Some people are still screaming that it isn't happening.
Some have said OK, but humans aren't doing it!

And a lot of the people saying those things are the same people. They go through the same series of denials:

1. The climate isn't changing.
2. The climate is changing but it's natural.
3. Humans are causing climate change, but it's no big deal
4. It's a big deal, but the suggested changes to deal with it are acceptable.

The worst part is that they'll concede points through the list of denials in one argument, and then turn around and go back to the top the next time they argue the point. Going through the series of denying arguments and reverting after the end of every argument is the key sign you're dealing with somebody who isn't arguing the issue in good faith.

It's just reminded me of an Asimov's piece ("The Relativity of Wrong" [tufts.edu]) that explains that the theory of plain Earth is rather inaccurate than wrong. If your bridge is short (only a couple of miles, I guess), you can ignore Earth's curvature entirely.

That statement is one of the problems. Scientific laws are never right or wrong. That implies an absolute truth. Physics is just looking for math to accurately describe repeatable physical phenomena. Measurement is never absolute, so there is always an implied N decimal points of accuracy. And Newtons laws work 100% in the realm in which the experiments are performed. That's why we call them laws. If you want to set up experiments in other realms, e.g. high speed atomic particles, of course you might need different math to describe it.

I think you missed one of the major points of Newton's contributions to the Scientific Revolution. Before Newton (and especially before Descartes and other scientists of his generation), science was concerned with "causes" and "truth" and whether explanations were "right" or "wrong." But Descartes and others tried to move toward mechanical explanations of the universe, which didn't require the same rigid definitions of "cause" in scientific theories like Aristotle's physics did.

Newton's physics required an even stronger break: he asked people to accept his purely mathematical model as a scientific explanation. He postulated unseen "forces" like gravity to make the universe work. These were very weird ideas to scientists of the time, who associated the influence of unseen "forces" acting at a distance with occult traditions -- NOT science.

But Newton changed the entire goal of science. It was NOT to come up with an ultimate explanation or cause for observed effects, but to provide predictive models, regardless of whether those models carry any formal "explanation" for what is observed. The idea of "right" or "wrong" assumes that there's some sort of absolute "truth" which science is uncovering about the universe. But it's not.

Therefore, as you rightly note, we still teach Newton's laws as the first physics most students learn. They are not "wrong" at all, since that concept doesn't apply. They are simply known now to be a mathematical model which is approximate and only works best at certain scales. For other scales (extreme speeds, extreme gravity, etc.), we need to use another model for accuracy. But, as we know, there are plenty of places where Einstein's "laws" seem to lack explanation too -- hence all of the discussion about dark matter and dark energy, which are needed in the models to keep the math working out.

That's part of the problem with those who find concepts like "dark matter" and "dark energy" to be suspicious. People often act like these are somehow flaws or show that our physical laws are "wrong." But right now they are just other mathematical correctives to help create accurate predictions -- that's mostly what science is. It is not concerned with "ultimate causes." However, there does seem to be an emphasis on "elegant theories," so if the math of dark matter and dark energy can be incorporated into some other mathematical model in an "elegant" way, that will probably be seen as "progress."

Newton's laws were never proven "wrong" -- they just lost sufficient predictive power under extreme circumstances.

Yes, but people use these undisputed facts to shut down any dissent to the projection that the human caused warming will be catastrophic. If there isn't a catastrophe looming, no one can use climate change to push their political agenda...

Yes, CO2 does increase the heat capacity of the atmosphere. Yes, industrial processes release CO2.
HOWEVER, if that was all there was to it, the global temperature increase would pretty small. (Probably measurable over a long enough period, but not enough to have a serious impact.) It is the supposed secondary effects that are claimed to produce the large changes. e.g. A slight increase in temperature increases the water evaporation rate faster than it increases the rainfall rate, so leads to an increase in cloud cover, and clouds trap heat, so the temperature goes up further. To model this sort of thing accurately you need a very good model, otherwise you get answers that are probably wrong, although also possibly just what your assumptions lead you to think it should. Early climate models did not even include clouds, and the above chain reaction was used outside the model as an 'obvious' argument for global warming. I have not looked at the current state of models for some time, but even after some started to incorporate cloud modelling they still did not include atmospheric dust. Higher temperatures lead to more ground dust, which is picked up by the wind and becomes nucleation centres for rain drops to form on, reducing the cloud cover again, counteracting the above change.
Why do you think that the models have not predicted the pause in the temperature rise for most of the last two decades, where explanations such as deep ocean heat absorption are now been suggested? It is because the models are incomplete, and so provide forecasts that may sometimes coincide with reality and sometimes diverge.
My background is as a physicist, and I used to produce computer models. Just simple ones of a dozen electrons, but changing a few parameters slightly could lead to large changes of behaviour. When somebody says that drastic action needs to be taken I need more assurance than 'The computer model says so.'

Except in this case, we don't have an experiment where we can reproduce the earth and any falsifications or confirmations will happen when we are all dead... Hence the need for debate.

Does man have some effect on climate? How could we not?

Does the effect overwhelm the natural feedback mechanisms? Certainly not, at a long enough time scale. So tiny details matter here, and we have a serious lack of understanding of the feedback mechanism that drives the 100K year cycle, or of why we're late for a return to glaciation. The climate was unnaturally stable for the past 10K years, and no one knows why. That's important. We don't have models that make better predictions than the null hypothesis yet, and that's important too.

More important, given stability is quite the anomaly, is "do we want it warmer or colder"? At my latitude, warmer is definitely less harmful. Anyone living north of the Med who doesn't get that doesn't understand ice ages.