It's been interesting over the years seeing my father go from "global warming isn't real" to "it's real, but not man-made," to "it's all China's fault and we shouldn't do anything about it"
That episode is commonly misunderstood. I too had always thought they were lampooning climate change deniers, but Matt and Trey were actually poking fun of Al Gore and An Inconvient Truth as alarmist. They've since apologized for the episode, but it's wild that it's so often confused for satirizing the very thing it was mocking. For me I just assumed that Matt and Trey wouldn't be deniers so it never occured to me until I found out their true intention and now it's pretty cringy to watch that episode since it's a lot more obvious. Here's an article about it:
Right on, that's good on them. I was honestly disappointed to learn that they were deniers years ago, which definitely effected my ability to watch the show afterwards. I'll have to check out the episode when I can.