[Previous: The revolt against reality: Harassment of scientists is escalating]
Climate change isn’t a distant future danger, but a crisis that’s already rolling over us. In the midst of the 2024 hurricane season, America is experiencing that firsthand.
Hurricane Helene wreaked devastation on the South. In Tennessee, 54 people were rescued by helicopter from the roof of a flooded hospital. In the mountains of western North Carolina, hundreds of miles from the coast, it brought apocalyptic floods and mudslides that obliterated houses, crumpled bridges, downed trees and swept people to their deaths.
Many rural communities were linked to the rest of the state by just one or two roads that were washed away in the floods. Now they’re completely stranded and isolated. It’ll be weeks, likely months, before they can be reconnected.
(Reading these stories, I had an unavoidable thought: how is this going to affect the outcome of the 2024 election, given that thousands of rural voters in Georgia and North Carolina are cut off from civilization, and there’s no way all those destroyed bridges and washed-out roads can be repaired before Election Day?)
Helene is the deadliest hurricane to strike the U.S. since Hurricane Katrina in 2005. But it may not hold that title for long. Just a few days after it passed through, an even bigger and more powerful storm, Hurricane Milton, formed in the Gulf of Mexico.
Milton grew to Category 5 faster than any other storm on record, leaving forecasters stunned and frightened by its size and strength. It made landfall this week in Florida, spawning dozens of tornadoes and bringing massive storm surges. But don’t worry, Ron DeSantis and the Republicans of Florida are on the case… by making it illegal for state government to use the words “climate change”.
No one can say that this is surprising or mysterious. It’s basic meteorology that a warmer world fuels more powerful, more destructive storms. This is the exact scenario that climate scientists and progressive politicians have been warning about for decades. There was an Oscar-winning documentary about it, for truth’s sake.
So, of course, right-wingers flatly refuse to believe it. As the wind howls and the water rises around their ankles, they’re churning out conspiracy theories at a furious rate. The most popular one is that Hurricane Helene isn’t natural, but was somehow created by the U.S. government:
The “Meteorologists” Facebook page has 51,000 followers, an iffy grasp of grammar rules, and outsized confidence in the United States’ weather engineering capabilities. “They are Aiming this KILLER Monster Hurricane Right at FLORIDA!” one user said of Hurricane Milton on Sunday morning, shortly before sharing purported photos of dinosaurs living on Mars.
By Monday afternoon, Milton had strengthened into a Category 5 storm, and the internet conspiracies were intensifying, too. People shared videos of themselves asking their Alexas, “What kind of hurricane was Hurricane Milton?” and getting answers in the past tense — proof, surely, that the government orchestrated the whole storm. “Never ever seen a hurricane form in the western Gulf and head directly EAST… It is not right,” other users mused in the comment sections of their local weather channels. A search for “cloud seeding” on Facebook further turned up dozens of posts tracking flight paths for planes belonging to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and sharing photos of ominous-looking clouds as evidence that the “government is involved.”
Meteorologists are being spammed with hate and threats just for reporting on what’s happening:
This hurricane season, Cappucci and the other meteorologists I spoke with say, conspiracy theories have been flooding their inboxes. The main one that people have seemed to latch onto is the accusation that the government can control the weather. This theory seems to be amplified with climate change creating worsening storms combined with a tense election year, and the vitriol is being directed at meteorologists. “I’ve been doing this for 46 years and it’s never been like this,” says Alabama meteorologist James Spann. He says he’s been “inundated” with misinformation and threatening messages like “Stop lying about the government controlling the weather or else.”
And of course, wherever there’s a conspiracy theory, you’ll find Marjorie “Jewish Space Lasers” Taylor Greene at the head of the mob. She reshared a conspiracy claim that storm damage from Helene was suspiciously precise:
“The storm seemed to almost methodically miss the bluest parts of those crucial swing states, while simultaneously ravaging the red parts. What a crazy coincidence!”
As usual, conspiracy theorists can’t even get their basic facts straight. The storm also ravaged Asheville, a Democratic stronghold. (But if it were true, what would that imply? When I read about this, I feel like Lucius Fox in the Batman movies: “Let me get this straight: you believe that Democrats can control the weather, and you’re voting against them?”)
These conspiracy theories are ego protection for conservatives. They can’t face the fact that their multi-decade campaign against climate legislation is the cause of their misfortune. Rather than reckon with their complicity, they concoct wild accusations so that they can blame someone, anyone else rather than admit scientists were right. It’s the same thing that happened during COVID.
For decades, conservatives have treated climate change as a partisan football that they could spike for their own advantage. They acted as if pro-climate legislation was a win for Democrats; therefore, blocking it was a win for Republicans. But they failed to realize that, no matter who wins elections, we all live on the same warming planet. There’s an underlying reality that campaign ads and gerrymandered legislatures can’t alter. Now that this is becoming clear, they’re retreating into self-delusion rather than admit their mistake. But when the rain falls and the seas rise, no amount of conspiracy posts will protect them.
Yep, that’s why they’re pivoting to blaming immigrants!
Sure. It is the Gulf of Mexico, after all. COINCIDENCE!?!?!?!?
To pile on to the reference to The Dark Knight, “Some men just want to watch the world burn.” And apparently, some are willing to set fire to it actively and then play the “never my fault” card. It’s maddening.
Criminalizing any discussion of climate change is just as effective as The Orange Idiot suggesting that not testing for Covid would cause it to go away. The republicans are delusional and stupid.
We saw that same delusional defense mechanism during the Covid-19 virus pandemic.
There was a lot of overlap between the antivaxxers and the Covid-19 virus deniers, those who denied that the Covid-19 virus even existed.
Then some of the Covid-19 virus deniers ended up in the hospital ICU, infected with…the Covid-19 virus and very sick.
Sick with a virus that didn’t even exist and in danger of dying.
Which many of this group did, dying in the ICU on a vent.
Their families couldn’t deal with a self caused death by complete stupidity.
So they blamed the hospitals and doctors instead.
Claiming that the medical system deliberately killed their relative because they got paid extra money for every Covid-19 virus death.
Then they would threaten to attack the hospitals and doctors. Attacks on medical personnel by Covid-19 virus deniers were quite frequent for a while and every hospital ended up with a serious security plan in force.
My friend who was a Covid-19 ICU worker, ended up with a concealed carry permit for a gun, on advice of the local police after one too many death threats.
@ raven; literally a couple of days ago, I had to hear all about how there were just so many people in the ICU with absolutely nothing wrong with them (because sure, that makes sense) until the evil doctors put them on a ventilator, which immediately killed them because of course the only purpose of a ventilator is to kill someone.
The fighting some people do to remain in their delusions.
There’s also that chaotic, dangerous, and not-human-caused events and situations are very, very, frightening. If we really live in a universe where everything we rely on can suddenly be upended and we can’t control it (PSA: we do live in such a universe), then disasters and existential threats are just random, can occur anytime to anyone, and will continue to occur.
It is so much more comforting to believe that all these were purposefully caused by humans, albeit evil ones. Then, all we have to do to control such events is stop the evil humans, something that *can* be accomplished, something over which we do have control. And, that would prove that the universe isn’t just random, and isn’t just as indifferent to humans as it is to everything else.
That’s where all the conspiracy theories about the JFK assasination sprung from: it was too frightening to think that some loony rando could kill the *president*, meaning, any old randos could kill anyone else. So, it was more comforting then to believe that an evil conspiracy of people were behind the assasination, and the rest of us weren’t in danger of that fate. Of course, mass shootings have now proven that we are.
Not to say that this is the only cause: as said, politcal causes have really pushed these conspiracies, but that fear of chaos that’s beyond our control is always there too.
The Rolling Stone article you excerpt also had a telling bit about an atmospheric scientist encountering mansplaining on the internet.
RS being RS they didn’t use the term mansplaining, but that’s what it was. Some jackass was telling this woman — who only wanted people to have accurate information — that if a Cat5 storm strengthens it becomes a tornado. She was explaining that tornadoes and hurricanes are very different phenomena with very different processes, life cycles, and durations. Dipshit was having none of it.
I’m not saying that curing sexism would solve the problems with misinformation, but when you let sexism run rampant, you lose the value of half of your experts.
Sexism, in other words, is an efficient way to fight against the value of expertise.
CD, why do you specifically attribute that to sexism?
(Does this same thing never, ever happen to men?)
John,
Of course the same thing also happens to men. A sexist necessarily believes that some people are lesser than himself (and it is usually himself). It would be very naïve not to suspect this prejudice was confined strictly to a single group.
Sometimes, it even happens to men because those men happen to have — or even be falsely perceived as having; not that this makes any difference in the eyes of the law, as the mens rea is present even by mistake — some attribute or mannerism which, in the mind of the perpetrator, labels them “no better than a woman”.
Try being a man and only 160cm. tall, for example, and visiting a camping shop looking for a sensibly-sized framed rucksack that can be adjusted to fit you comfortably. You might just about be OK if you can perhaps get by with ten litres’ worth stuff less than you originally thought, and you like the colour pink. (It might also be available in dove grey and pastel blue, but is likely to have sold out in that store.) It might even come with a free brochure detailing the “Goddess Collection”, a.k.a. how we realised we could make even more money by selling special outdoor leisure products to women and look, everyone, we really care about women, OK? As people, you understand, and not just potential sources of money, of course.
What is assuming no woman will want any article that is not pink, and all men are 180cm. or taller an example of, if not sexism?
Everyone deserves more than just a few crumbs from the table, and this is everyone’s struggle. No-one is free unless we are all free. And don’t think anyone in this movement is trying to stop you from benefitting from their gains. If there is anyone like that, well, they’re no ally of mine.
Hm.
Seems a bit forced to me, I don’t think CD would have given that response.
garnetstar@6:
Religion appears to play the same role, at least with the more right-leaning types. “God will save us”, “Whatever happens was according to some inscrutable divine plan”, and so forth are common religious platitudes, with variations occurring in nearly every major religion. Some also throw in a vast evil conspiracy by including a devil-figure and their minions, who will of course be confronted one day by their god and defeated, if we all just have a little more patience, etc. etc.
I don’t know about you, but I personally don’t find the thought comforting that there might be an uber-powerful entity with a nasty disposition (how many cities did YHWH directly destroy, and how many more were wrecked on the order of his minions? Off the top of my noggin I can immediately name two of the former, Sodom and Gomorrah, and one of the latter, Jericho … and that’s ignoring the question of whether any cities existed on the eve of the flood), no accountability to anyone or anything else whatsoever, and total control of an environment you’ll be pitched into after you die. The Bible is about as comforting a read as “I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream”, and a lot less concise. (It might be a bit more concise than Stephen King’s “Under the Dome”, though, which deals with something not altogether dissimilar, while also having clear allegories for both Trump and climate change in it. The King book is better reading, all the same. Star Trek dealt with this twice, in “Charlie X” and “The Squire of Gothos”, both times having deus ex machina plot resolutions when the wayward superbeing’s parents/guardians finally showed up to straighten him out and the mess he’d made. And funny how the perps in every case but “Under the Dome” are overtly, or at least coded, masculine…)
And now I’m getting that bug again where I get a bogus error message trying to submit this comment saying “please fill in required fields: name, email” when there are no such fields … the one that only seems to be fixed by logging out and back in again. Why won’t an admin look into this bug and fix it?
There are no admins.
Hey Adam,
First let me say I’m glad to see you on freethoughtblogs. Was going to suggest that when OnlySky was closing, but you had already made the move. Yeah, I’m a bit slow as I never seem to have time for commenting, etc. Though we did have a short email exchange years ago, as I recall.
On to the subject at hand. Left unsaid in this post (though I’m sure you know it) is the bigger picture. There was a time when Republicans acknowledged human caused climate change. Their solutions were not perfect, and sometimes just bad (Bush and the Kyoto agreement, suppressing scientific work, etc.), but recall in 2006 Pelosi and Gingrich worked together to inform Americans about climate change and the need to do something. After 2010, we saw the turn to outright denialism from the GOP. What happened in 2010? Citizens United. Now the fossil fuel industry owns the GOP. Along with the so-called “tech bros” (Musk, Thiel, etc.), other American oligarchs, and of course, Putin. All effectively working together to deny scientific understanding and other fact-based professions (teaching, doctors, etc.) and conning nearly half the country to drive us toward a feudal system simply so they (and those they deem fit) can be the ones in charge and possessing all power. Thanks to the Supreme Court, our system is awash in corruption on a scale we’ve never seen before.