Olga Bonfiglio offers an explanation for the disconnect in her article entitled, "Some Sociological Explanations for Climate Change Denial" in which she writes:
...deniers are organized by conservative think tanks funded by the fossil fuel industry that attempt to create doubt about climate science and block actions that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions and create clean energy alternatives.
To do this they use conspiracy theories and "fake" experts with no background in climate science. They insist on absolute certainty, cherry-pick the data and ignore the larger body of evidence or misrepresent data and promote logical fallacies like "the climate has changed in the past, therefore current change is natural."
