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What is it about fossil fuels that is bad?  And why?

Too much carbon in the air - so-and-so parts per million exacerbates the increase in temperatures.  The thing that the crowd poopooing it with "the climate ebbs and flows hotter and colder naturally" doesn't seem to understand is the time element.  To potentially increase the temperatures as quickly as we have is the problem...instead of it happening gradually as it usually has, we're fast-forwarding it.  
And while the planet will be just fine, we're risking the relative comfort we've existed in and our own best interests.  
The climate is something easy to not worry about until it's an avalanche.  

What is it about fossil fuels that is bad?  And why?

Methane by itself is a very efficient greenhouse gas. Way worse than co2. 

The burning of hydrocarbons creates emissions, namely CO2, that enter the atmosphere and cause a greenhouse effect. 

I worked in a hydrocarbons facility for 15 years. I’m personally responsible for emitting millions of tons into the atmosphere. I’m ok with that, but I’m not blind to the consequences. I work with some very smart people, they all tell me the day is coming when nobody will be allowed to freely emit GHG without some kind of mitigation. 

What is it about fossil fuels that is bad?  And why?

Again, acting as a sort of basic, just drawing it out from the bottom up. We've all at one point or another inhaled fumes standing behind a car or near some sort of burning fuel. That gives off a bad physical reaction. We've seen pictures of smoggy LA back in the day. If scientists go out saying this is bad, it's somewhat easy to extrapolate that this thing that makes us feel sick when we breath it could be bad if there's a lot in the air. 

Now that's just trying to decipher reactions to things around us. Are you looking for a scientific explanation? A mechanical one?

you contribute absolutely nothing

What I love about you is that you hate my posts, but can't tell me I'm wrong.  

some of us talk about identity politics and how evil it is but Im not really sure what it really is

could someone please define what is meant by identity politics cause I think it might mean different things to different people

My impression of identity politics is when a politician assumes their audience leans a particular way based on their immutible characteristics. The one that stands out to me was when Biden was being interviewed by a black radio host, he stated "If you don't vote for me, you ain't black." He correlated peoples race with their politics basically saying that black people only vote for Democrats, not allowing for the possiblity that people of all races, have an ability to think for themselves. 

Another example was when he proclaimed that he would nominate only a black female for nomination to the Supreme Court. This bascially infers that a persons sex and race is somehow a prerequiste to enlightenment in regards to a persons ability to decide the Constitutionality of cases that will come before them. 

All this really does is virtue signal to a base of people that he is "down with their cause", whatever that is. But it is classic Identity Politics where he is basing is politcal decisions of the immutable characteristics certain people. 

I think a basic paragraph on climate change should refer to the rise in CO2 in the atmosphere due to burning fossil fuels.  (Methane is more potent, yes, but less prevalent and degrades over time.)

CO2 traps the heat from the Sun in the air, the "greenhouse effect", without which our temperatures would be substantially lower than they are.

The global warming, global cooling, climate change or whatever they are calling it now is about one thing; MONEY. As I have said multiple times, follow the money and you will see what this is all about. It is an opportunity for politicians to grab money and power by dictating what we have to do to protect from an impending disaster that is always at least 10 years away. (They have been doing this for many decades and NONE of their dire predictions have ever come to be.)

I got into discussions about CC at work with  technical folks way back when I used to lunch with the group, so I tried reading up on it.  I had the "advantage" of having journals like Science and Nature come across my desk each week, so I tried reading articles on the topic.

Suffice it to say they are complex, for me anyway, mostly about adjusting this model or that by a small amount.