People "resist climate change" because most climate change rhetoric is transparently trying to get them to vote a different way or buy some different thing. If it was stated just in terms of a causal relationship, like rising CO2 raises global temperature, fewer people would object.

Put another way, one group conflates the fact of CO2 increases + greenhouse effect with suggested political acrions. Another group counters by conflating not agreeing with political actions with disputing the underlying physics.