When did the concern about “misinformation” arise? Why and how did the news media become obsessed with this paranoid fear — once mocked in a popular cartoon — that “someone is wrong on the Internet”?
We can leave aside the etiology of the “misinformation” obsession (as I’m contemplating this as the subject of a future American Spectator column) and instead ponder its teleology — where is this leading? What is the ultimate goal of the self-appointed “experts” vigilantly monitoring Twitter and Facebook in their tireless effort to prevent the spread of “misinformation”? Obviously, complete censorship is their objective. The “experts” crave the authority to be able to suppress anything they dislike or disagree with, and they seek not only the cooperation of Big Tech in this project, but also desire to use governmental power to advance their censorship agenda. In order to do this, it is necessary for them to exaggerate the dangers of “misinformation,” so that CNN would have you believe that TV meteorologists are at risk:
“Murderers.” “Criminals.” “We are watching you.”
These are just a handful of the threats and abuse sent to meteorologists at AEMET, Spain’s national weather agency, in recent months. They come via social media, its website, letters, phone calls – even in the form of graffiti sprayed across one of its buildings.
Abuse and harassment “have always happened” against the agency’s scientists, Estrella Gutiérrez-Marco, spokesperson for AEMET, told CNN.
But there has been a rapid rise recently, coinciding with extreme weather in Spain. A severe drought has shrunk water levels to alarming lows, exacerbated by record-breaking April temperatures.
The abuse got so bad that in April, AEMET posted a video on Twitter calling for an end to the harassment, and asking for respect. Even the government intervened. Teresa Ribera, Spain’s minister for the ecological transition, posted on Twitter in support of the agency: “Lying, giving wings to conspiracy and fear, insulting … It is time to say enough.”
The harassment of meteorologists by conspiracy theorists and climate deniers is not a phenomenon confined to Spain.
National weather services, meteorologists and climate communicators in countries from the US to Australia say they’re experiencing an increase in threats and abuse, often around accusations they are overstating, lying about or even controlling the weather.
In Spain’s case, much of the trolling revolves around the rehashing of an old conspiracy theory: so-called “chemtrails.”
Under many of the agency’s Twitter posts, especially those that refer to more extreme weather, users have posted images of blue skies, crisscrossed with wispy, white trails. They falsely claim the trails contain a cocktail of chemicals to artificially manipulate the weather – keeping rain away and causing climate change.
It’s a theory roundly rejected by scientists.
Airplanes do release vapor trails called contrails, short for condensation trails, which form when water vapor condenses into ice crystals around the small particles emitted by jet engines.
But scientists have been clear: There is no evidence “chemtrails” exist. . . .
Notice the conflation of “conspiracy theorists and climate deniers” — if you are skeptical about the dire global-warming predictions (produced by computer models that have proven less than reliable), then you are in the same category as kooks who promote paranoid ideas about “chemtrails” and, it is implied, are sympathetic to weirdos who make death threats against TV meteorologists. And what is causing this terrible harassment? “Misinformation”!
In France, meteorologists have been accused of exaggerating the country’s drought and heat.
Météo France, the French national meteorological service, said the agency’s communications are “the object of more and more repeated attacks,” a Météo France spokesman told CNN.
Climate misinformation on social media is particularly widespread, he said. It “seems to be on the rise, both in terms of the number of attacks directed against scientific publications but also the increasingly aggressive tone of the insults.”
So, CNN wishes us to believe, the spread of “climate misinformation on social media” is responsible for “repeated attacks.” And notice how CNN then connects this to other “misinformation” trends:
US meteorologists and climate communicators have not escaped the barrage of abuse and conspiracies.
“Whenever I posted about global topics, like the yearly temperature report, the comments section would be filled with political jabs and conspiracy theories,” said Elisa Raffa, a broadcast meteorologist with Queen City News, based in Charlotte, North Carolina.
As a woman in the media, she more often receives comments about her appearance than the science she’s communicating, she told CNN.
Jennifer Francis, a senior scientist at Woodwell Climate Research Center, said she’s seen a ramp up of abuse lately.
“I receive almost daily verbal declarations of my ignorance and climate alarmism,” she told CNN.
Some disinformation experts draw a straight line from the conspiracies that flourished during the Covid pandemic — when experts faced a slew of abuse — to the uptick in climate conspiracies.
Whoa, wait just a doggone minute there! What “conspiracies” around COVID-19 are we talking about here? Like the fact that basically everything the “experts” told us about the pandemic was wrong? As for the “slew of abuse” that resulted, I personally believe it was a small fraction of what these alleged “experts” deserved, and that Anthony Fauci should be sentenced to life in federal prison. Does that make me a “conspiracy theorist”? And as for Ella Raffa’s complaints about what people say in the comments section, or the “verbal declarations” against Jennifer Francis, my response is two words: “So what?” Being subject to criticism is just part of the job, especially when your job, in the case of Ms. Francis, is promoting “climate alarmism.”
Why do these people expect to be immune to criticism? Doesn’t this have something to do with the fact that they exist inside bubbles of groupthink, where everyone shares the same beliefs and opinions? Don’t they realize that the “consensus” agreement about climate change is an artifact, created by systematic exclusion of skeptics from the institutions responsible for producing The Science™? And a similar exclusionary process exists in institutions of academia and journalism, now run by fanatical “progressives” who would never knowingly hire anyone who might be inclined to vote Republican. Then notice who gets quoted by CNN as an authority on “misinformation”:
As Covid-19 fades from the headlines, climate change has become a strong rallying point. There’s been a big increase in “insults directed at all organizations related to the weather,” he told CNN.
“It’s a logical evolution of the broader trend around pushback on institutions, and the erosion of trust,” said Jennie King, the head of Climate Research and Policy at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a think tank focused on disinformation and extremism.
These kinds of conspiracies are usually grounded in the idea that a set of institutions is “using the pretext of climate change, or the pretext of solving public policy issues, to enact some insidious agenda,” she told CNN.
And the weather is an easy way in. Many aspects of climate science can feel very technical or abstract, but the weather is something people interact with frequently, said King.
“It’s a much more immediate way to bring a wider audience into that skepticism … planting seeds of doubt against the climate agenda writ large,” she said.
Were I inclined toward speculation, I would be likely to guess that this CNN story originated at the suggestion of Ms. King and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD). Really, think about it — how likely is it that a CNN reporter would come up with the idea for this story on her own? And what do we know about the ISD? Take a look at this list of the ISD’s “Partnerships & Funders,” which includes among other contributors, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Omidyar Group, the Open Society Foundations (i.e., George Soros), a host of government ministries from countries including Australia, Denmark, Finland, Germany, New Zealand, Norway, and the U.K., as well as the European Commission, the United Nations, and the U.S. State Department and DHS.
No conspiracy theorist could imagine a more perfect assemblage of global elites behind the ISD, and what is the real agenda served by this CNN article using the ISD as its “expert” authority? CENSORSHIP.
This think tank “focused on disinformation and extremism” is trying to promote the belief that critics of the “climate change” consensus must be silenced to prevent “harassment” of meteorologists — with the implied suggestion that such critics are a potential terrorist threat.
And CNN is just reporting the news, see?
Whereas I, on the other hand, am obviously a dangerous extremist who must be suppressed, in order to save the planet or whatever.
