A side effect of climate change denial

For some reason climate change denialism is extremely common among American conservatives and likeminded people elsewhere who listen to those conservatives. (It's a bit strange why this particular conspiracy theory is so prevalent among American conservatives, but I have my own theory about its origins here.)

This widespread conspiracy theory has many negative consequences. The primary one is, of course, that when conservatives have the majority legislative power in the United States, they are likely to hinder the science and any actions done to remedy the problem.

However, there are several more secondary problems that this causes.

It is, after all, a bona fide conspiracy theory. I'm not just using that term in a derogatory and dismissive manner without it actually applying (as is so common nowadays), it really is a conspiracy theory. More particularly, it claims that tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of scientists, researchers, academics and scholars are in a huge almost-worldwide conspiracy in order to push this made-up "climate change" agenda, primarily for monetary reasons (ie. to receive big grants.) Or, even if not every single one of the people involved are in on the conspiracy, at a minimum they have been deluded into believing it, regardless of their own expertise and knowledge about the subject.

So what happens when people genuinely believe that the scientific community at large is in cahoots and running this kind of conspiracy?

Well, what other things are they also lying to us about, in order to defraud governments and institutions to give them big grants?

See where this easily leads to? If conservatives are so eager to believe in one huge conspiracy theory about the scientific community, how easy is it to mislead them into also believing in some other conspiracy theory about that same community? After all, if the scientific community really has the capability to coordinate a massive conspiracy of one kind, what stops them from doing the same thing with multiple other subject matters as well?

Thus, the real danger is that American conservatives (and likeminded people all around the world) are easily misled and made to believe in some other made-up theories about science. Which, in turn, can lead to lawmakers working against solving real world problems.