Every time there is a longer period of cold weather in the warm season I see populists on social media ironically asking where is this climate change supposed to be. People have a short context window. It doesn't help that our efforts to combat climate change consist in large part of petty consumer regulations that are annoying to individuals while not achieving much.

Social media is so easy to fill with unaccountable non-genuine activity (bots, shills, trolls, influencers, guerilla marketers, reputation managers, bored attention seekers) that I no longer consider most social media a valid heuristic for what "everyone thinks." I made this decision after looking at the profiles of those who tended to post like that, most of the time they seem fake.

What is the valid heuristic is that what you see on it all the time is clearly what someone wants you think.

Someone in real life that cites rando social media too much is probably on their phone too much or themselves in a non-genuine activity group.

It's difficult to reliably sort the "it's a myth" believers from the opportunists, the selfish, and the lazy.

The US has a president that has routinely supported the "it's a myth" viewpoint [0], which increases the visibility and credibility of climate change contrarians regardless of their motivations.

[0] https://www.factcheck.org/2024/09/trump-clings-to-inaccurate...

Don't forget nonzero % of actual bots and sock puppet meatcloud boiler room operations trying to manipulate sentiment / manufacture consent by flooding the zone with trolling, contrariness, and low-effort "opposition".

The most fascinating thing about him is that from day to day and topic to topic he can switch between looking (convincingly) like he's either selling the grift or buying it.

There's plenty, but they don't know the difference between weather and climate.