NASA chief scientist weighs in
Americans are "under siege" from disinformation designed to confuse the public about the threat of climate change, Nasa's former chief scientist has said.
Speaking to the Guardian, Ellen Stofan, who left the US space agency in December, said that a constant barrage of half-truths had left many Americans oblivious to the potentially dire consequences of continued carbon emissions, despite the science being unequivocal.
"We are under siege by fake information that's being put forward by people who have a profit motive," she said, citing oil and coal companies as culprits. "Fake news is so harmful because once people take on a concept it's very hard to dislodge it."
During the past six months, the US science community has woken up to this threat, according to Stofan, and responded by ratcheting up efforts to communicate with the public at the grassroots level as well as in the mainstream press.
"The harder part is this active disinformation campaign," she said before her appearance at Cheltenham Science Festival this week. "I'm always wondering if these people honestly believe the nonsense they put forward. When they say 'It could be volcanoes' or 'the climate always changes'... to obfuscate and to confuse people, it frankly makes me angry."
Stofan added that while "fake news" is frequently characterised as a problem in the right-leaning media, she saw evidence of an "erosion of people's ability to scrutinise information" across the political spectrum. "All of us have a responsibility," she said. "There's this attitude of 'I read it on the internet therefore it must be true'."
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(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 11 2017, @09:15PM (1 child)
The Propaganda Wars of the early 21st century marked what many believe to have been the start of the political decay of the United States of American. It would take decades of ineffective governing & infighting, extreme partisanship, and the eventual citizen uprisings, to break through the petty and poisonous environment in Washington DC. During this time America lost its position as a world leader, which it would never recover.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 12 2017, @08:49AM
They started earlier... the entire "war on drugs" started in the 80s (if not earlier) and also saw its unfair share of propaganda.