Storms Helene and Milton have triggered rise of misinformation stoked by Trump and fellow Republicans
Meteorologists tracking the advance of Hurricane Milton have been targeted by a deluge of conspiracy theories that they were controlling the weather, abuse and even death threats, amid what they say is an unprecedented surge in misinformation as two major hurricanes have hit the US.
A series of falsehoods and threats have swirled in the two weeks since Hurricane Helene tore through six states causing several hundred deaths, followed by Milton crashing into Florida on Wednesday.
The extent of the misinformation, which has been stoked by Donald Trump and his followers, has been such that it has stymied the ability to help hurricane-hit communities, according to the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema).
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Is… is american dream is being as dumb as possible?
No healthcare, no welfare, no higher education. But I thought you had at least schools there.
But I thought you had at least schools there.
Oh between vouchers and property taxes funding schools…we’re uh, we’re working on not.
I work at a meteorological institute in Europe and we also get phonecalls from angry imbeciles insulting the meteorologists.
My passion for science and curiosity peaked when I got the job. Now I realise everything is a pipe dream if we do not revolutionise education into something that makes more decent philosophers of us all.
The system, no matter how good its education, will never be able to turn everybody into “decent philosophers”. Some people just aren’t smart, no matter how good education might get. Some just are gullible. That doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t be as well-educated as they can possibly be, but people and their capabilities just are a spectrum and always will be. And even if today’s dumbest people will be as smart as today’s “decent philosophers” by tomorrow, today’s “decent philosophers” will still outsmart them, which is an issue if there are manipulative people with hidden agendas among them. Which they will be.
This isn’t an education issue, it’s an information and misinformation issue. Giving anybody, including malicious actors, their own, personal channel to spread whatever information they want, regardless of its quality or truth, has turned out to be a terrible idea. The Internet kind of comes with the idea to give everyone access to all of humanity’s information without taking into account that there should be a certain responsibility attached to the question of the creation of that information or that there should be a separation of concerns between people who spread information and people who have other interests than just informing people in the best way possible.
Fortunately I completely disagree.
“Imagine going back to the year 1600. Even then, Western Europe was one of the more educated parts of the planet, but back then about 20% of the population could read and write. And I suspect if you went back there and you asked someone who was capable of reading and writing—say a member of the clergy—and you said: “What percentage of the population is even capable of it?” They might have said: “If you have an incredible education system, maybe 50%.” You fast-forward 400 years to today, and we know that that prediction would have been wildly pessimistic; that nearly 100% of the population can be literate. But what similar blinders we have on today? If I were to ask you: “What percentage of the population is capable of understanding quantum physics? Or what percentage of the population is capable of contributing to medical research?” You might say maybe 5 or 10%, or with a really good education system maybe 15 or 20%. But what if the answer is a 100%? What could that mean for the rate at which human society could progress? What would that mean for the human condition? But that is just one aspect of the types of blinders we have on today, that in 400 years will hopefully seem silly.” —Salman Khan, Harvard Class Day 2014
I love it.
Yeah, that’s a much better point of view. I’ll just make that my own. Ignore what I said before.
I’m a Republican who Does Her Own Research and it’s OBVIOUS that these WEATHERMEN are causing our Problems and NOT the Billionaires who gave our Supreme Court Justices MILLIONS in Gifts and Vacations! All this Pollution IS LEGAL!
Good news! The damage is reversible, we just need to lower carbon emissions to pre industrial levels! We can band together to defeat the evil weather man!
We are all going to die
I kept trying to articulate my reaction but this is about the best it gets. Oh humanity.
And thank God for that. The only things that live forever are cancers.
I crave the afterlife
This is absolutely baffling being from practically any other English speaking country.
I mean, we have our share of crazies, but they’re a tiny proportion.
It’s one thing to doubt the well established climate science (very frustrating), but it’s another thing to actually believe humans can precisely control the weather.
It’s extremely troubling knowing these people exist, and can vote in the most powerful country on earth.
😬
Something, something if you believe in things without evidence (religion) it’s not actually that surprising. And we (Australia) are much less religious than you. Though, this is certainly my bias talking.
I mean cloud seeding has been happening for a very long time. I first heard of it as a story about a dude in the '50’s pissed the ski season sucked flew up and just dumped dry ice at a lower-ish Altitude somewhere up in the ADKs and sure as shit it works… under very specific conditions and nothing like how the mad skier did it.
It’s honestly not that baffling of a jump from cloud seeding to hurricane inseminating when you put it side by side with shit like flat earthers, Christianity, Tom Brady winning 7 rings deflating footballs, aliens building ancient architecture, the music city miracle wasn’t a forward lateral, Brett Hull’s skate wasnt in the goal crease for the 99 Stanley Cup winning goal, government using vaccines to drug the public rather than just putting drugs in toilet paper for 1/1billionth the cost and 100% distribution efficiency… etc. (Totally fucked myself by throwing a blanket over all of Christianity instead of itemizing shit like eating meat on Friday and humans have been around for only 2000 years lol)
we have our share of crazies, but they’re a tiny proportion.
Canada shambles into chat, points depressingly at Pierre “PeePee” Polivere and our CPC and PPC parties, then walks back out shaking it’s head
Even being in the US, it is just as baffling, yet it is also somehow completely believable because some of us get to see it up close.
It’s insane knee-jerk team sports but people who tend to not get affected by certain social issues.
This is relatively unique to the US because there IS a conspiracy. And it’s orchestrated by an unorganized, disconnected cabal of wealthy elite… conservatives, who have for decades advanced a remarkable campaign of anti-intellectualism. The noted scholar Donald J. Trump eloquently described their aims when he spoke about how they “love the uneducated.”
The Heritage Foundation is anything but unorganized.
Conspiracies?! Sounds like we’re over the target.
If Milton had stayed Cat 5, this could have been a self-solving problem.
Except not all the idiots lived in the path of Milton, or even where hurricanes go at all. I can’t explain why the presence of hurricanes has become yet another idiotic political issue, but the MAGA morons are latching on to it.
If you know that hurricanes come from warm waters and climate change has been making the water warmer, it makes sense why we’ve had back to back dangerous hurricanes. Climate change is completely false in MAGA world, but the amount and intensity of hurricanes has been increasing. So in MAGA world they need to answer why and they need to fill the climate change void. Since they are hitting red states in an election year, must be the Democrats controlling them.
the experiences around Helene and Milton are just an extreme continuation of a trend where the public is increasingly getting its information from extremist figures online rather than experts
Sadly, all true.
I’ve had to remind people several times that “if you go reading Twitter, please put on your intelligence analyst glasses”. To find a grain of truth in that truckload of dust.
Why is Trump allowed to keep spreading this unethical horseshit?
The rulers welcome any culture war distractions to take the masses’ eyes off the ongoing class war we have been losing for generations.
All of my this. Divide and conquer
The horrible horrible truth is – because they want it https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/
How hard would it be, to take a state, like Mississippi, wall it off completely from the US (except for the coast so they can have marine ports) get all the citizens who don’t want to be in a conservative hell hole a several year stipend and move them to somewhere else of their choosing.
Then, we set up this walled off land to be completely controlled by conservatives. They will be able to live in a conservative Utopia. We will move everyone who requests it and their stuff freely to this area.
We let them do whatever they deem necessary. Hell, we can give them a head start, by letting them stay connected to the grid, and help them organize their own government. Then once we do that, we create a massive DMZ around the state.
Then we just let them do what they will inevitably do and become a western Iran.
Your idiocy is astounding.
That’s mean I just have a wild imagination
Like a trail of tears kind of thing? That hasn’t historically worked out morally
Uhm. If I remember right, that was a forced relocation.
This would be more of like a national experiment. “Come live in a GOP paradise” “And for anyone stuck in this state, yo we got you covered.”
Maybe put like a priority housing into effect so GOP land refugees get first bids on homes, or can’t be denied apartments because they’ll have the government covering it for x many years.
Then the people who want to live in GOP land can have first class one way tickets, with all moving expenses paid, but then once they get there they gotta negotiate amongst themselves how to get property because that’s GOP land rules not modern society rules.
But yeah the first year a lot of people will kick the bucket mostly because of the lack of everything they take for granted
And then bomb them into oblivion for the crime of poisoning their neighboring states’ air.
My hope is that if we can contain it to a geographic area we would have better ways to negotiate with them on curbing emissions.
They’ll likely have enough problems with death and disease where bombing them would probably end up helping them
-Conservatives hate FEMA and want it dismantled.
-Conservatives hate the National Weather Service and want it dismantled.
-Conservatives hate climate science and want it to be silenced.
-Conservatives now also hate meteorologists.
How 'bout we compromise. Let conservative states be opted out of all of these things by default. Bundle these services into an opt-in government program called “Obama and Hillary’s Woke Weather Service”. They can opt in by calling 1-800-4 Pelosi. If all this stuff is just woke liberal propaganda, then they shouldn’t mind this at all. They should be thrilled.
Let them find out about storms and let them deal with those storms without all of our woke liberal interference. Let them pray and let their God sort them out. In this way, they get everything they are demanding so they can stop whining like a bunch of little bitches all the time. When they have disasters, we can save some of our hard-earned money and just toss them a roll of paper towels like their dear leader likes to do.
There was some maga posts who wanted to shoot up weather machines and people agreeing with it in the comments.
In response to that, we could have.
-Progressives hate MAGA and want it dismantled.
-Progressives hate the National Rifle Association and want it dismantled.
-Progressives hate the Greed Over People and want it to be silenced.
-Progressives now also hate the Heritage Foundation.
It’s nice to put myself in the other person’s shoes like this every once in a while to double check that holy shit I have NOT been tricked into supporting the baddies.
(Relatively speaking, of course)
I mean, yes?
All the things conservatives hate are non partisan services to humanity whereas the things you named are blights upon our nation.
I would send the crying shit stain loser MAGATs cheeseburgers and Diet Cokes. Do not waste a good tree product on them.
Conservatives can literally already choose not to consume or make decisions based on information from NOAA.
We can do better than that. We can make the data for their affected regions available only by logging into a system when their state has opted in. They don’t want NOAA to exist, so there’s no reason to bother them with information they don’t want imposed upon them.
Hey – I live here and can move but a lot of people are impoverished and can’t. Feels wrong to collectively turn the back to them
To those who disagree with the above:
- Moving is damn expensive.
- Don’t forget that the Republicans are working hard to prevent legitimate voters from voting, namely anyone who is more likely to support NOAA, NHC, climate science, education, FEMA, etc.
opt-in government program
Sounds like they’re welcome to swallow their pride anytime in their plan
Honestly it would be funny to see Biden do some of this. He only has a few months left and can do whatever because of the supreme court. He could just go on TV an be like: “You know what? The conspiracies are true. We’re gonna turn off the doppler radars in southern states. No more flying. No more weather forecast. We’re going to ban farm laborers to come harvest your crops. The unpredicted weather is gonna ruin the crops anyways. We’re going to stop FEMA from giving aid in your republican states. Communism is unacceptable. We’re gonna ban fossil fuel in the south because that drives the weather crazy. No more cars. Enjoy the 1800s. Bye”
can do whatever because of the supreme court
No he can’t, because he’s biden/democrat. The supreme court made it particularly clear that they get to be the arbiters of what is allowed. They are going to allow everything if the president is republican, and deny everything otherwise.
They have forgotten we grouped up and share for the betterment of our species, not just ourselves.
They have forgotten what it’s like to be without any support cause they have felt unsupported.
Its easy to feel invulnerable and capable when you still haven’t been tested.
I pity them even though I don’t want to give them money either.
When reality is too hard these people will always make up a new one and retreat into conspiracies to help them cope.
What, you want us to help save the planet? But that would mean some sacrifices… No, the hurricanes are caused by the libruls and their evil weather machines, not us. Next. Meteorologists are just the scapegoats in their collective delusions.
I just saw someone on Facebook saying the aurora being bigger than usual was caused by the weather radars.
I mean ignoring the fact that the aurora has gone through phases for all of recorded history, the amount of energy it would take to generate that is enormous. Do they think we’ve launched a bunch of nuclear power plants into orbit to power these things? Or maybe the giant nuclear power plant in the sky might be the real reason?
No, they just don’t understand the scale of things because they’re used to their small town thinking. Just like they don’t understand how much a billion dollars is and why one persons shouldn’t be allowed to have that much while others have none.
We need to stop pretending this is due to a lack of education or critical thinking. Sure, that’s true for some, but I’m betting the vast majority of these conspiracy theories are spread by people that know that they are lies and don’t care. Evil Russian propaganda bots aren’t a great explanation for the totality of the phenomena. People say outrageous things because it gets them clicks on the internet and hurts the “other team”.
We saw it recently with the lady lying about hatian immigrants eating cats - link. She didn’t care how true it was - only that it hurt the other team. They have it comin’, anyway, is their perspective when they’re saying these things.
Do they think
no.
I don’t want to live on this planet - in this star system anymore.
When people lack information or are uneducated about a subject, they make up their own information to compensate. The less education, the more conspiracies.
I dont think it’s a good strategy to assume that conspiracy nutters are uneducated. My anecdotal data is that I know at least two college educated people who are big Alex Jones fans and were completely on board the pizzagate and sandy hook train. They’re by no means stupid but self-radicalized with YouTube and Fox News. It’s easy to get caught up in the propaganda machine.
There are of course smart people who get caught in conspiracies, but, in general, it’s easier to work your way out of it if you are educated and know how to do proper source criticism and check your own biases against the facts.
