Climate change and projections of impacts are based on real data and reliable thermodynamic calculations. The climactic "cycles" are defined by sets of data points covering a very long time span - at least in human terms. The 26,000 year "wobble" in earth's rotation has little effect because the rotational tilt remains the same. Real changes can be correlated with the earth's orbit; however, all of these are on time scales much longer than those currently being observed. Further, there are direct statistical and anecdotal correlations between use of fossil fuels and both mean temperature increases and effects of weather pattern changes.
For any closed system there is a tipping point beyond which it loses the ability to self-regulate: it becomes a "runaway" system that stabilizes only at some undetermined, and entirely new set of conditions.
Public confusion arises not from the observed changes, but from an ignorantly-politicized dispute about why the sudden changes (150 years is incredibly "sudden" in climatology). Frozen dogma is useless in attacking and moderating the observed changes. The human population of earth is the only entity with the capability of remediating mean temperature increases. It is not certain what will happen if we act. If we do not act the math is clear and the impacts on all life on earth will be significant.
For those who point to events like the cold outbreak in the central and southern US and say "So how can this be global warming?" the response is that this is exactly the kind of effect expected from an increasingly chaotic weather system. Greater variability, greater intensive, unanticipated departure from historic and prehistoric patterns, all are predicted on large scales but are not understood (yet) on the small scale of local regions.
For coin collectors, the takeaway is: don't put coins in a bank box in a 1,000 year flood plain.