Live data from Hacker News

Meteorologists face unprecedented harassment from conspiracy theorists

cnn.com

31–40 of 87 posts

Re: Meteorologists face unprecedented harassment from conspiracy theorists

#31
post #26

Here's video of a typical smaller cloud seeding aircraft. https://youtu.be/nwonVY_cNS4 CNN isn't helping anyone by talking about 'conspiracy theories' and claiming '.... In Spain’s case, much of the 'trolling' revolves around the rehashing of an old conspiracy theory: so-called “chemtrails.” 'Under many of the agency’s Twitter posts, especially those that refer to more extreme weather, users have posted images of blu…

> that dismisses people's concerns. What are those concerns? That most airlines spray chemicals that keep rain from falling on Spain? There's no reason to believe that's true. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemtrail_conspiracy_theory . Or concerns that governments aren't doing enough to prevent increased global warming? Or concerns that there's a conspiracy to promote the false story about global warming? Or…

Sadly Wikipedia has now lost all credibility, and is not a credible resource for anything even vaguely controversial.

Many people think 'global warming' (or 'climate change' as it now called) is 80% snake oil and that there are many alarmist evangelizing grifters making a fortune and changing the global balance of power in its name.

This is another failed example of 'trust me I'm a scientist' that has lost a large segment of our population.

Honesty and transparency would solve most of this, not just insulting people and accusing them of believing in heretic theories that have been cooked up by a secret cabal of 'non existent' conspirators. Yuo don't win hearts and minds that way.

Re: Meteorologists face unprecedented harassment from conspiracy theorists

#32
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rain seeding is a thing of course. But that's different to contrails which are what conspiracy theorists point to as their "chemtrails"! It should be noted that rain seeding is realistically rarely used.

Another 2020 CNN article: 'China to expand weather modification program to cover area larger than India' https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/03/asia/china-weather-modificati... It's not hard to understand why people are anxious about global 'weather modification' and annoyed when they are insulted and dismissed as cranks. This is another of those obscure areas of operations that need a lot more transparency, explanation and…

This reply could have been posted regardless of what the parent actually said, since you didn't respond to any of it. The chemtrails theory refers to many long lasting contrails being chemical agents actively and secretly dispersed, at massive scale over decades, for a variety of nefarious purposes. Cloud seeding refers to the currently rare and often publicised activity of coaxing out rain, using a very different set of chemicals. No amount of the latter developing makes the previous story any more true but people love to tie the two together as it makes for a story of validity in the form "see, people were attacking cloud seeding and it was real, what else is actually real!" when that never actually happened at scale.

Re: Meteorologists face unprecedented harassment from conspiracy theorists

#33
"chemtrails", huh?!

It's too easy to use the "chemtrails" card when in reality it's only just cloud seeding, one of the different weather modification techniques https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_seeding

There are no proof that it was used in Spain, but..

When Saudi Arabia abuses cloud seeding for their needs, it's water that's gonna be missing where the cloud were headed, could be Spain, could be Italy, could also be Egypt, Turkey or Kenya

https://www.arabnews.com/node/2091101/middle-east

https://www.arabianbusiness.com/culture-society/cloud-seedin...

Same problem in Mexico: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01038-5

Wich causes problems for its neighborhoods, whoever pretend this doesn't have an effect is not a scientist

Butterfly effect, their actions have consequences elsewhere on the planet

Re: Meteorologists face unprecedented harassment from conspiracy theorists

#34
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rain seeding is a thing of course. But that's different to contrails which are what conspiracy theorists point to as their "chemtrails"! It should be noted that rain seeding is realistically rarely used.

Another 2020 CNN article: 'China to expand weather modification program to cover area larger than India' https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/03/asia/china-weather-modificati... It's not hard to understand why people are anxious about global 'weather modification' and annoyed when they are insulted and dismissed as cranks. This is another of those obscure areas of operations that need a lot more transparency, explanation and…

It is perfectly normal that people are anxious. I am myself anxious.

But the problem, and what makes those people that the CNN article talk about despicable, is that those anxious people are attacking innocent scientists just because they choose to convince themselves that these scientists are the devil, based on nothing else than crazy logic and convenient extrapolation.

Being anxious is nothing bad, and nobody is being blamed for being anxious.

Being a toxic person that does counter-productive things and put innocent scientists in real danger with their bullying is not ok, and these persons merit to be treated fairly: they are adults, they have responsibility, their actions have consequences. Anxiety is one of the cause, but the fact that all anxious people are not bullying innocent scientists is the proof that there are other causes, including the fact that these people choose hatred instead of reason.

Re: Meteorologists face unprecedented harassment from conspiracy theorists

#35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conspiracy of meteorologists suppported by the government to scare workers by the weather… do you seriously consider this a possibility? How about Ockham’s razor and much simpler explanation that the weather is actually changing?

He didn't say the weather isnt changing, he said the proposed solutions misplace the blame and spread the burdon of solutions disproportionatly from the source of the problem.

I do not really understand that “misplacing of the blame”. It’s an ordinary Joe who buys a car and a fuel for it. It is an ordinary Joe who hunts for cheap airline tickets and buys all those tiny things that are shipped overseas. The same Joe votes for politicians that deregulate and offer tax reductions and binges Netflix instead of reading some good books. Ignorance is a choice of majority of population. Ten billionaires cannot spoil the climate by overconsumption. Ten million Joes can easily do that and capitalism just found the way to help them.

Re: Meteorologists face unprecedented harassment from conspiracy theorists

#36

A group of scientists did actually come up with a "chemtrail" like plan to cool the planet... And it is horrific: > To achieve a 2 °C result, the plan would inject 6.7 teragrams (6.7 billion kg/14.8 billion lb) of sulfur dioxide per year into each pole, calling for an eye-watering total of 13.4 teragrams (29.5 billion lb) of material annually. https://newatlas.com/environment/sai-polar-refreezing/ The cost would be a…

I'm pretty sure 'chemtrail conspiracies' have their origin in the (quite real) large-scale biological & radiological warfare tests the US government conducted in the 1950s and 1960s:

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/weapon-...

> "The first Large Area Concept experiment, in 1957, involved dispersing microorganisms over a swath from South Dakota to Minnesota; monitoring revealed that some of the particles eventually traveled some 1200 miles away. Further tests covered areas from Ohio to Texas and Michigan to Kansas. In the Army’s words, these experiments 'proved the feasibility of covering large areas of the country with [biological weapons] agents.'"

Well before airplane contrails were ever associated with a plot to alter the climate, it was all about a plot to control people's minds with toxic chemicals etc.

Of course, it is entirely true that a relatively small fleet of drones could disperse enough anthrax/smallpox powder over any large American city to cause mass casualties and initiate a pandemic-scale event, which is why development of such weapons is banned under the terms of the Biological Warfare Convention, although the Soviet Union violated that treaty on a massive scale in the 1970s and 1980s, and Israel and several other states have refused to sign it - and the US government has strongly opposed anything like an inspection / verification system, so...

Almost every 'conspiracy theory' has some seed of truth hidden inside it somewhere.

Re: Meteorologists face unprecedented harassment from conspiracy theorists

#37

Mainstream press never really looks at the deeper causes of why these conspiracies exist in the first place. Looking at it dialectically, at least one possibility seems quite simple. Thesis: The government wants to make laws that attack workers, to make them pay for stopping climate change (that was primarily caused by corporations and their wealthy owners.) Antithesis: Workers don't want to be attacked. Synthesis: S…

Thesis: Governments want to make laws to stop climate change

Antithesis: Big corporation don't want to lose money, pay people to create disinformation campaign, claiming all is a ruse to get money from the workers and enforce woke lifestyles like veganism onto them.

Synthesis: Some people believe them and attack scientists and politicians who actually try to safe mankind's environment

Re: Meteorologists face unprecedented harassment from conspiracy theorists

#39
Given these people's response it seems rising oceans, droughts and extreme weather are not the main dangers of global warming, but instead the hordes of the mentally untethered looking for someone to blame for what they've warned about for years.

Re: Meteorologists face unprecedented harassment from conspiracy theorists

#40

Mainstream press never really looks at the deeper causes of why these conspiracies exist in the first place. Looking at it dialectically, at least one possibility seems quite simple. Thesis: The government wants to make laws that attack workers, to make them pay for stopping climate change (that was primarily caused by corporations and their wealthy owners.) Antithesis: Workers don't want to be attacked. Synthesis: S…

Workers in developed countries have benefited from environmental exploitation. We can travel hundreds or miles in comfortable cars, or thousands of miles in a day in planes. We can enjoy bananas and other tropical fruit in northern latitudes in the winter. We can live in relatively large spaces that are heated.

It’s the workers in developing countries who are lying the price. They’re the ones who are being told they can’t exploit their land and live the same lifestyle as their northern counterparts.

Post reply on HN