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posted by cmn32480 on Sunday June 11 2017, @06:36PM   Printer-friendly
from the just-look-at-the-comments-below dept.

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'."

No editorial comment included.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 12 2017, @04:42PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 12 2017, @04:42PM (#524483)

    The multiple previous changes weren't, for lack of humans ;) but OK.

    This is true, but those previous changes occurred over a longer period of time and have different characteristics. None of that precludes human industry from being a major factor today.

    There is a tipping point where the atmospheric changes accelerate and our problems become much worse. It is like cancer, if you wait for the miracle cure instead of starting chemotherapy you will likely be dead before it is ready. At some point you can not fix the problem. If we get massive shifts in weather patterns we could have a global food shortage, droughts, and potentially flooding of high population areas near sea level. We have had the tech, there is no need to raise it to a new level. What we need is for the obstructionist greedy turds to get out of the way and stop spreading propaganda that gets people to fight against their own interest!