Edit: Actually, I was just looking into it, I think this claim is unsupported. Looks like climate change will cause a 5-25% less than what it would have been, but that’s as compared to the projected growth of yields due to improved technology and resources. So the picture is a little more muddy but still impactful.
Climate change isn’t really something you can deny anymore if you work in ag, and a lot of small-town conservatives have a close relationship to farming (not trying to stereotype, just speaking to my experience in Iowa). Yields have been declining basically every year for the last 10 or so, with wind, drought, and flooding being the top reasons. Temps in the central US reached the highest since the great depression and the dust bowl. For those people, denying the existence of climate change is basically saying you’ll do nothing to help farmers suffering from decreasing yields. It’s not a harmless “anti-woke” opinion anymore, it’s actively harmful to the material conditions of a lot of republicans.
That’s not to say it isn’t really interesting watching them dance around it. They’ll probably try to say, “yea, it’s real, but there’s no point in cutting back fossil fuels at this point. Here’s more farming subsidies to help with your decreasing yields”, and i’m betting that it will still be very effective for their base.-