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Meteorologists Targeted in Climate Misinfo Surge

posted by mrpg on Tuesday May 16, @01:50AM   
from the I-is-smart dept.

upstart writes:

Meteorologists targeted in climate misinfo surge:

Once trusted faces on the news, meteorologists now brave threats, insults and slander online from conspiracy theorists and climate change deniers who accuse them of faking or even fixing the weather.

Users on Twitter and other social media falsely accused Spain's weather agency of engineering a drought, Australia's of doctoring its thermometers and France's of exaggerating global warming through misplaced weather stations.

"The coronavirus is no longer a trend. Conspiracy theorists and deniers who used to talk about that are now spreading disinformation about climate change," Alexandre Lopez-Borrull, lecturer in Information and Communication Sciences at the Open University of Catalonia, told AFP.

[...] "In this context people feel alienated and end up listening to people they never listened to before, with messages appealing directly to the emotions."

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Original Submission

• Re:People lack a basic understanding of science Re:People lack a basic understanding of science (Score: 3, Insightful) by driverless on Tuesday May 16, @05:59AM (4 children)

  by driverless (4770) on Tuesday May 16, @05:59AM (#1306517)

  I mean, your volt/ohm/ampere meter has a zero adjust*, does that mean it's lying to you?

  * Jebus, am I ever showing my age, everyone else has gone digital.

  The vacuum tubes in it drift over time, and even with temperature, so it's perfectly sensible to allow you to re-zero them.

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• Re:People lack a basic understanding of science (Score: 5, Insightful) by Opportunist on Tuesday May 16, @07:30AM

  by Opportunist (5545) on Tuesday May 16, @07:30AM (#1306526)

  So does our knowledge of the universe. It changes. We learn. We gain new insights. We realize that we were wrong.

  The difference between dogmatic belief and science is now that one admits that mistake, learns from it and corrects its position and the other one doubles down on it with additional excuses why whatever bollocks they originally claimed was right.

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• Re:People lack a basic understanding of science Re:People lack a basic understanding of science (Score: 3, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday May 16, @05:29PM (2 children)

  by DeathMonkey (1380) on Tuesday May 16, @05:29PM (#1306567) Journal

  The vacuum tubes in it drift over time, and even with temperature, so it's perfectly sensible to allow you to re-zero them.

  The same is true of thermocouples but suddenly it's a conspiracy theory to fake global warming.

  And I've seen this exact bullshit right here on several occasions.

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  • Re:People lack a basic understanding of science (Score: 2) by gnuman on Tuesday May 16, @05:56PM

    by gnuman (5013) on Tuesday May 16, @05:56PM (#1306572)

    The same is true of thermocouples but suddenly it's a conspiracy theory to fake global warming.

    Is this fake an "adjective" or a "verb"?

    If it's meant to be a verb, then it's probably better to say " ... but suddenly it's being turned into a conspiracy ..."

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  • Re:People lack a basic understanding of science (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday May 17, @03:43AM

    by khallow (3766) on Wednesday May 17, @03:43AM (#1306663) Journal

    The same is true of thermocouples but suddenly it's a conspiracy theory to fake global warming.

    If global warming is real, then why are my thermocouples cold?

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