I would challenge the premise that the more scientifically literate you are, the more certain you are that climate change is either a catastrophe or a hoax. It is more likely that the more scientifically literate you are, the more certain you are that human caused climate change is a hoax.
The writers probably did not account for bias among the scientifically literate, especially those being paid to support human caused climate change, a multi-billion dollar industry.
The Yale Cultural Cognition Project needs to go back to the "drawing board" and redo their study, IMO. It also may be worthwhile to check into the source of funding for the study.
The implicit null hypothesis of AGW, or "climate change", is that the NORMAL state of "global climate" is invariant, and that the observed variances are therefore ABNORMAL (and thus require explanation).
Of course, the true state (historical, geological, oceanographic, archaeological evidence all agree) of "global climate" is chaotic, in fact strikingly so, and any observed variances in the historic period are in fact quite minor compared to the generally accepted variances of pre-history.
The whole of AGW "science" is so unscientific, it makes me wanna holler.