The first problem is confirmation bias. You don't want to accept climate change, it's because you don't want to accept climate change--and the more you're argued with, the more you dig in because you don't want to be shown to be wrong.
Why not accept it? Because it requires you to change in ways you don't like; it assigns blame; it might require money. Many of those who accept it like some of the consequences: They want greater oversight over corporations and companies, greater control over land use. Some wanted power; some wanted to decrease others' power. No matter. They wanted this before climate change was an issue and climate change fit right in with what they wanted or even let them claim more.
You're an anti-vaxxer? You want to protect your kid and all you know is that there's an incidence of bad reaction and vaccines aren't entirely risk free. The risk of getting measles is lower than the risk of an adverse reaction to the vaccine. You also want to protect yourself. "Cold mother" as a blame-the-parent mechanism may be dead, but the reason it was so hated is alive and well: Nobody wants to be responsible for something bad that happened to their kid. Replace it with some other cause, not what the mother (and/or father) did, their genes or diet or lifestyle or job/stress ... Externalize the blame.
Like smoking? Fine. Individual rights. Anti-government oppression. Deny the science. Whatever. If you don't like smoking, then scant evidence is enough.
Same for nuclear energy, BPAs, neonic pesticides, glyphosate, etc., etc.
Then you pick your science, your facts, your standards of proof to suit your needs. Even climate change was a very hard argument to make when many progressives accepted it, and the set of data had to be carefully chosen to make the argument work.
Even the argumentation complies with confirmation bias. Rather than blame deceived humans for how they argue and what argumentation is most likely good for, and root that in some sort of psychological universal constant, we blame people because they're stupid (if we think ourselves part of the intellectual elite) or blame companies and some other "agents" for duping the people (because they're our enemies and the enemy is always out to trick us and our potential allies). But if the problem is confirmation bias and that's universal ... No, no, it can't be. If it's universal then *we* might also suffer, at least at times, from confirmation bias. Oh, noes.
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