It can be difficult to measure the impact of disinformation, since it's not something that occurs in a vacuum, and you can't know if a lie is spreading because people think it's true, or don't care if it is or not, and are sharing it for ideological or financial reasons. But one of the reasons the fossil fuel industry spends millions, if not billions, of dollars a year on disinformation is that it makes the anti-regulatory position they pay politicians to espouse appear reasonable.
A new study in Nature Communications shows the damage that's been done to the average American, who is now living in "a false social reality" in that while a supermajority of 66-80% of Americans support climate policy, "80–90% of Americans underestimate the true level of concern for climate change" and estimate that it's only backed by a 37-43% minority.
"All partisan groups underestimate concern for climate change at both the national and state level by roughly 20–30%."
"Thus," states the abstract, "supporters of climate policies outnumber opponents two to one, while Americans falsely perceive nearly the opposite to be true."
Depending on the specific question, about how many people are "worried about climate change" or support a carbon tax or the Green New Deal, "between 79% and 88% of our national sample underestimate public concern or each policy support."
What's more, "when Democrats, Independents, and Republicans estimate how the nation feels on these issues, their estimates of other Americans’ support for these policies only really resemble actual Republican levels of policy support." And even that actually underestimates the level of support, as Republicans actually tend to approve of renewables at a higher rate than people expect.
Because the conservative media machine gives their minority (disproportionately made up of white men, aka the people our society treats as "normal") an outsized megaphone, everyone thinks that the country agrees with them. But they're not a silent majority, they're a screeching minority.
And that screeching has an effect, as "those who consume conservative outlets are more likely to have more erroneous views."
While the study cautions against solely blaming conservative media, as there are other psychological mechanisms at play, like liberals wanting to believe they're special and unique and not everyone shares their enlightened opinions.
But still, people don't think Republicans are even more opposed to climate action than they actually are by accident.
It's hard to believe that the fossil fuel industry and its conservative billionaire buddies are pouring money into the conservative pseudo-media ecosystem if they weren't getting a return on their investment.
And what more could they ask for, than to pay so many people to shout about how climate change policy is the real problem that it makes the country think everyone's opposed to climate action, so we're scared to bring it up in public or believe meaningful action is impossible?