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Meteorologists face unprecedented harassment from conspiracy theorists

cnn.com

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Re: Meteorologists face unprecedented harassment from conspiracy theorists

#71

Post by somenameforme »

throw0101b wrote: post #46
RobotToaster wrote: post #23

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…

> Mainstream press never really looks at the deeper causes of why these conspiracies exist in the first place. This is because reporting on psychology is boring: * https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/people-drawn-to-c... * https://www.apa.org/news/podcasts/speaking-of-psychology/con... * https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/096372141771826... * https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/28/health/psychology-consp…

I think there's another more simple explanation:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henny_Penny

Henny Penny is Chicken Little. And this really does seem to explain these issues to the point of being a tautology. As an institution loses trust then people stop believing what they say. 'My opinion is no worse than your falsehoods.' There have been a million and one trust-destroying events in the past couple of decades. So seeing ever more people come out with their own explanations, some being somewhat less than well thought out, is hardly some inscrutable phenomena.

The Google ngram for 'conspiracy theory' [2] is also quite telling. It seems to have risen somewhat during the Red Scare years, but then just went to the Moon shortly after November 22, 1963. [3]. And it's difficult to imagine why anybody might not think everything wasn't on the up and up there. I mean it's only been 60 years, and only 3% of the records remain classified.

---

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor's_New_Clothes

[2] - https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=conspiracy%20t...

[3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_John_F._Kenne...

Re: Meteorologists face unprecedented harassment from conspiracy theorists

#72

Post by cauch »

im3w1l wrote: post #69
cauch wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the fact that the conspiracy is true or not is irrelevant. The problem of the "conspiracy theory" is that it is a witch trial: a group of people have absolutely no proof what-so-ever, they just "want to believe they are right". It does not matter if they end up being right, their logic is toxic for society, and if we are accepting their logic, then it means that tomorrow you can be fired from your job because you…

A lot of conspiracy theorists are not like that. They are more like "My neighbor is behaving suspiciously. I have no concrete proof of wrong doing, but maybe I should start bolting my door".

I don't remember anyone behaving like that being called a conspiracy theorist.

I saw a lot of people not behaving like that, spreading misinformation as if it was fact without caring about the consequences of the person they accused, but then pretending that they just "started bolting their door", though.

And the CNN article that started this conversation is certainly not talking about these kind of people (not sure if they even would call such people "conspiracy theorists"), they are talking about people who decide to destroy their neighbor's life just because, in their book, the neighbor deserved it by doing something that they decided was suspicious. In fact, this article talks about people who attacks honest scientists just doing their job who haven't done anything suspicious in the first place.

Re: Meteorologists face unprecedented harassment from conspiracy theorists

#73

Post by adhesive_wombat »

brucethemoose2 wrote: post #24

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…

29.5 billion pounds is about 13.3 million tonnes. Global air cargo is 63 million tonnes, so that's a lot, but not a physically unfeasible amount, even if you have to airlift into the stratosphere. Say 600 flights of a planes with 60 tonnes of payload per day. 300 per day per pole. That's "only" a large-ish airport's worth of flights each (about the same as Paris Orly, or half of JFK or Heathrow), and they'd presumably be fairly short-range so you'd maybe only need a few dozen planes doing Berlin Airlift-style load-fly-reload operations.

If it came to it and it was the only way, it's not that astronomical and would probably cost less than dealing with a single major weather disaster or crop failure.

Maybe it's a terrible idea for other reasons (though I would be surprised if the acidity even really registered next to existing sulphur and CO2 emissions, but then again it's all concentrated in a few places), but the cost isn't a slam-dunk "yeah, no, that's literally impossible" conclusion.

Re: Meteorologists face unprecedented harassment from conspiracy theorists

#75

Post by brucethemoose2 »

adhesive_wombat wrote: post #73
brucethemoose2 wrote: post #24

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…

29.5 billion pounds is about 13.3 million tonnes. Global air cargo is 63 million tonnes, so that's a lot, but not a physically unfeasible amount, even if you have to airlift into the stratosphere. Say 600 flights of a planes with 60 tonnes of payload per day. 300 per day per pole. That's "only" a large-ish airport's worth of flights each (about the same as Paris Orly, or half of JFK or Heathrow), and they'd presumabl…

The article (and paper) go into this. Theoretically the lift capacity is not that high, but practically the costs are amplified because existing airframes are inefficient at the job.

Also, the effects are bad enough that the habitability in the aerosol zone for the "1%” of the human population living in there is a concern. That can’t be good for the local wildlife...

Re: Meteorologists face unprecedented harassment from conspiracy theorists

#76

Post by adhesive_wombat »

brucethemoose2 wrote: post #75
adhesive_wombat wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

29.5 billion pounds is about 13.3 million tonnes. Global air cargo is 63 million tonnes, so that's a lot, but not a physically unfeasible amount, even if you have to airlift into the stratosphere. Say 600 flights of a planes with 60 tonnes of payload per day. 300 per day per pole. That's "only" a large-ish airport's worth of flights each (about the same as Paris Orly, or half of JFK or Heathrow), and they'd presumabl…

The article (and paper) go into this. Theoretically the lift capacity is not that high, but practically the costs are amplified because existing airframes are inefficient at the job. Also, the effects are bad enough that the habitability in the aerosol zone for the "1%” of the human population living in there is a concern. That can’t be good for the local wildlife...

If this actually became necessary, I would assume we're already in a world where sea ice has been gone for a decade or more, polar wildlife is a write-off already and humanity is facing regular catastrophic climate events (storms, floods, and fires), mass migrations and famines.

My point isn't that it's an amazing idea, or even a good one, just that it's eminently within the realms of physical and economic possibility. Hell, SAC probably flew a comparable number air miles than that for decades at a time, just circling nuclear weapons near the USSR.

Re: Meteorologists face unprecedented harassment from conspiracy theorists

#77

Post by DANmode »

RobotToaster wrote: post #23

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…

You mean conspiracy theories, right?

Re: Meteorologists face unprecedented harassment from conspiracy theorists

#78

Post by colpabar »

krapp wrote: post #44
colpabar wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guess what? You claiming that cloud seeding is real makes you a conspiracy theorist to others. It’s a completely meaningless term at this point.

No one believes cloud seeding is a conspiracy, except maybe the people who believe in chemtrails, to whom the commonly understood definition of 'conspiracy theorist' clearly applies. Your comment isn't the slam dunk you think it is.

I’m not looking to slam dunk anyone, I would just like everyone to realize that the only difference between a conspiracy theory and a fact is time.

Re: Meteorologists face unprecedented harassment from conspiracy theorists

#79

Post by 411111111111111 »

croes wrote: post #64
128bytes wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This analysis is silly because it neglects the fact that the poor are disproportionally reliant on polluting infrastructure that does not have any safe and affordable alternative, while also being those most affected by its dangers. Big corporations have ways to make lots of money from so called 'green technology' and they have the capital to diversify into it and they do, poor people do not. People want to act like…

Pretty short sighted analysis of my post. The companies I'm talking about do this since more than 50 years, that's why the infrastructure wasn't changed when the costs would have been lower because there was more time This changed would have benefited the poor too. Now the time is running out and they choices are they suffer now because of higher costs or suffer later from the effects of climate change. They are the…

Their analysis is much more jaded and realistic than yours and actually reasons it out.

Yours is just three disjointed statements without anything supporting them.

Re: Meteorologists face unprecedented harassment from conspiracy theorists

#80

Post by eesmith »

somenameforme wrote: post #71
throw0101b wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mainstream press never really looks at the deeper causes of why these conspiracies exist in the first place. This is because reporting on psychology is boring: * https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/people-drawn-to-c... * https://www.apa.org/news/podcasts/speaking-of-psychology/con... * https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/096372141771826... * https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/28/health/psychology-consp…

I think there's another more simple explanation: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henny_Penny Henny Penny is Chicken Little. And this really does seem to explain these issues to the point of being a tautology. As an institution loses trust then people stop believing what they say. 'My opinion is no worse than your falsehoods.' There have been a million and one trust-destroying events in the past couple of decades. So…

> The Google ngram for 'conspiracy theory' [2] is also quite telling.

I disagree that it's telling. It could have replaced a previous term. What did people call helicopter parents before there were helicopters?

We know there were conspiracy theorists well before even the First Red Scare - Henry Ford believed in the international Jewish conspiracy theory, as described by the fabricated antisemitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion, written ca. 1900.

Or, from "Conspiracy Theories Abounded in 19th-Century American Politics" at https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/conspiracy-theories-a... :

"conspiracies flourished in the 1820s and 1830s, when modern-day American political parties developed, and the expansion of white male suffrage increased the nation’s voting base. These new parties, which included the Democrats, the National Republicans, the Anti-Masons, and the Whigs, frequently used conspiracy accusations as a political tool to capture new voters—ultimately bringing about a recession and a collapse of public trust in the democratic process."

Since you mentioned Kennedy, President Garfield's assassination also resulted in conspiracies, including using the term "conspiracy theory". From https://academic.oup.com/book/25369/chapter-abstract/1924531... :

> Conspiracy theories have been around for a long time, though how long is a matter of debate. As for the concept of conspiracy theory, it might seem reasonable to expect a more exact answer about the moment of its emergence. When do we first find people talking and writing about conspiracy theories? While much of the literature points to the twentieth-century philosopher Karl Popper and his famous work The Open Society and Its Enemies (1st edition: 1945), newspaper databases allow us to locate earlier occurrences of “conspiracy theory.” They reveal that the term proliferates in newspapers from the 1870s onward, particularly after the assassination of President Garfield in July 1881. What can this discovery then tell us about the modern-day phenomenon of conspiracy theories?

The full text, available at https://archive.org/details/uscinski-conspiracy-theories-and... , says

"First occurrence of CTs related to assassination of Garfield: "One of the conspiracy theories has been exploded," Boston Journal, July 12, 1881."

The article goes into depth on the context behind the word "theory" for this sort of description, at https://archive.org/details/uscinski-conspiracy-theories-and... with examples of "murder theory", "abduction theory", and "fraud theory" before going into details about publications of a conspiracy theory "linking Guiteau to a circle of undiscovered and unidentified associates ... that foreshadows the later shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby—Guiteau himself became the target of an attempt on his life a few days after his trial began in November 1881, speculation once more arose about a conspiracy."

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

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