Despite over 50 years of messaging about the reality of human-caused climate change, significant portions of the population remain sceptical. Furthermore, many sceptics remain unmoved by standard science communication strategies such as myth-busting and evidence-building. To understand this, we examine psychological and structural reasons why climate change misinformation is prevalent. First, we review research on motivated reasoning: how interpretations of climate science are shaped by vested interests and ideologies. Second, we examine climate scepticism as a form of political followership. Third, we examine infrastructures of disinformation: the funding, lobbying, and political operatives that lend climate scepticism its power. Guiding this review are two principles: (1) to understand scepticism one must account for the interplay between individual psychologies and structural forces, and (2) global data are required to understand this global problem. In a spirit of optimism, we finish by describing six strategies for reducing the destructive influence of climate scepticism.