>But in the case of climate change anyone over thirty-five or so knows damn well the weather has gone funny.

A very similar logic leads people to conclude "it was cold last week, so global warming is nonsense". Being able to understand the scientific case for climate change requires a level of scientific literacy and critical thinking that most people could readily develop, but isn't taught in schools.

It's not logic even slightly.

Multicellular organisms have internal mechanisms to track environmental changes and forecast things like how many offspring to have.

This sort of "thinking" isn't neurological, it takes place in epigenetic systems that can span generations, especially in mammals due to gestation.

Climate change denial isn't denying some inevitable thing that is so horrible it makes sense not to think about it; there ARE steps we can take to fix the problem.

I don't understand what you're saying, do you mean there are people who deny the problem yet still take steps to fix it?

No, I am just commenting that it only makes rational sense to ignore a doomsday-type problem if there is no way to avoid it.

For example, we all know we are going to die at some point. It is inevitable, and nothing we do is going to prevent us from eventually dying. Because there is nothing we can do, it makes sense for us to ignore the problem, and possibly even to delude ourselves that we will live forever. There is no cost, since we are going to die eventually no matter what we tell ourselves.

However, with climate change, there ARE steps we can take today to prevent the catastrophe. Therefore, there is no rationalization for ignoring the problem.

I know human brains don't work rationally, though, but I thought it was useful to make the distinction.

Ah, well, when I say "climate denialism is an obvious coping mechanism" I don't mean that people are rationally thinking about the situation and deciding to put their heads in the sand. I think it is "Denial" in the Freudian sense:

> The same word, and also abnegation (German: Verneinung), is used for a psychological defense mechanism postulated by psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, in which a person is faced with a fact that is too uncomfortable to accept and rejects it instead, insisting that it is not true despite what may be overwhelming evidence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial

BTW, I think human brains do work rationally to the extent that the world is rational, because they are evolved organs. But human personalities or minds are not necessarily consciously deliberately rational. Like how computers must use physics on the hardware level but can be programmed to model impossible physics in a simulated virtual world.

I think more likely some obvious deep fakes will be circulated, people will cry about it and beg for regulations, government will step in and regulate the shit out of the internet. Congrats now we are back to getting all our news from the oh so trustworthy unbiased mainstream media.

Certainly in China and the UK we are seeing the status quo reassert itself, I think.