I think you'll find that much of what you interpret as resistance to "climate change" is not so much resistance to the idea that it exists, or even that we should "do something" about it, but rather to the current approach where "doing something" involves grossly hypocritical billionaires and politicians distributing money to each other while lecturing everyone else on how to live and what they must sacrifice.

There are yearly conferences where hundreds of private jets emit more Co2 into the world than the average person will in their lifetime. And the people attending these conferences step off their jet, drive in a motorcade of SUVs to the venue, and sign documents committing to disburse billions of taxpayer dollars to LLCs and corporations their friends will form before next year's conference when they'll do it all over again. They'll lament about the epidemic of science denialism afflicting the common folk, and then they'll get back on their jets and fly back to one of their multiple homes to continue hoarding and growing their obscene wealth.

When you dismiss criticism of the status quo as "science denialism" or whatever perjorative is en vogue amongst your fellow saviors of "our democracy," you are serving the agenda of the biggest polluters on the planet, by looking the other way while they facilitate global corruption and forego any legitimate mitigation of the impending catastrophe you care so virtuously about preventing to stave off the existential threat so many of your fellow non-billionaires are too ignorant and science-denying to recognize.

Mostly that we can start off with modest legislative measures targeting corporations which aren't really enough to stop climate change, but will at least establish a legislation precedent to allow for more expedient changes to the law if the political climate changes, prevent people in other areas from claiming that WE'RE the ones causing the problem and thus they cannot pass similar legislation, and which will have a minor impact on everyday people. Once every major player internationally is generally on board with the idea of such measures, we can look at ramping things up a bit, as much as is politically feasible anyways. Even if we can't stop climate change even slowing it should have a measurable benefit.

I would also stress what climate change is going to mean and connect it to contemporary politics. Economic migration is for the most part a very controversial thing especially among the type of people also against reforms regarding limiting ghg emissions etc. Realistically some of this is ALREADY caused by climate change, but we're going to see a LOT more of it caused by climate change, so if people don't want it to happen in the first place and also want to plausibly convince the general electorate they have no ethical obligation to take in migrants, than doing something about climate change early is expedient. This is not just international migration it will also be national migration and yuppies fleeing coastal cities which will get much more expensive generally leading to scarcity and inflation. Climate change it likely is going to have a rather adverse effect on purchasing power, notably for food, and we're only seeing the beginnings of high food prices if not outright famine due to both production and distribution constraints. Due to these legions of practical issues, not only should people support such reforms, the political will for different countries to impose measures against powerful corporations will pick up steam.

I mean by that level or rigor, Lake Meade is not full.

The great salt lake is not even close to full.

We have less arctic ice.

Sea levels are higher.

But as you said, this isn’t an argument either of us will win, so agree to disagree?

The exciting news is that we're probably heading into another one of these terrifying periods: between Russia's aggression, growing conflict with China, accelerating climate change, and potentially catastrophic effects from AI. If we survive, whole new generations will have a lot of vivid memories to look back on.

There was more than one mass-market magazine article. There were no mass-market magazine cover stories, and yes there are fakes going around of those. There were also newspaper articles on it regularly throughout the 1970's. As well as numerous works of science fiction, and TV episodes like "in Search of...The Coming Ice Age" from 1978 narrated by Leonard Nimoy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kGB5MMIAVA.

The science it was based on, of course, was the fact that ice ages are cyclical and we are well towards what would typically be the end of an interglacial period:

"the last four interglacials lasted over ~20,000 years with the warmest portion being a relatively stable period of 10,000 to 15,000 years duration. This is consistent with what is seen in the Vostok ice core from Antarctica and several records of sea level high stands. These data suggest that an equally long duration should be inferred for the current interglacial period as well. Work in progress on Devils Hole data for the period 60,000 to 5,000 years ago indicates that current interglacial temperature conditions may have already persisted for 17,000 years."

-- https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/how-long-can-we-expect-present-int...

You also had the fact that some of the coldest (and snowiest) winters on record in the US were during the 1970's, most notably during 1977 when it snowed in Miami and the Bahamas for the only time in recorded history, and temperatures in much of the midwest stayed below freezing for over a month. So of course articles about a new ice age would attract readers, even though any return to ice age conditions would happen over centuries, if it wasn't disrupted by humans.

It really was a lot of snow though, we were out of school for like two weeks in the spring of 1978.

Maybe it didn’t catch on and it certainly seems to have been disproven but there was some serious scientific discussion about an upcoming ice age.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/1756074

I mentioned it in an earlier comment but it was also in my science textbook in my elementary school days.

Unfortunately nuclear winter is still more likely, and that likelihood grows with each passing day.

No there was some global cooling whataboutism going on in the late 70's early 80's, but I didn't hear much about it until the late 90's, when we started talking about the 33 year solar cycle.