Meteorologists face unprecedented harassment from conspiracy theorists

I do not really understand that “misplacing of the blame”. It’s an ordinary Joe who buys a car and a fuel for it. It is an ordinary Joe who hunts for cheap airline tickets and buys all those tiny things that are shipped overseas. The same Joe votes for politicians that deregulate and offer tax reductions and binges Netflix instead of reading some good books. Ignorance is a choice of majority of population. Ten billionaires cannot spoil the climate by overconsumption. Ten million Joes can easily do that and capitalism just found the way to help them.

Pretty short sighted analysis of my post.

The companies I'm talking about do this since more than 50 years, that's why the infrastructure wasn't changed when the costs would have been lower because there was more time This changed would have benefited the poor too.

Now the time is running out and they choices are they suffer now because of higher costs or suffer later from the effects of climate change. They are the victims one way or the other.

> There's always a richer class who people can be mad about.

I mean, not for one class in particular, right? One which happens to be making a whole lot of noise about this issue while not volunteering to make any sacrifices on its own part to fix it?

> The Google ngram for 'conspiracy theory' [2] is also quite telling.

I disagree that it's telling. It could have replaced a previous term. What did people call helicopter parents before there were helicopters?

We know there were conspiracy theorists well before even the First Red Scare - Henry Ford believed in the international Jewish conspiracy theory, as described by the fabricated antisemitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion, written ca. 1900.

Or, from "Conspiracy Theories Abounded in 19th-Century American Politics" at https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/conspiracy-theories-a... :

"conspiracies flourished in the 1820s and 1830s, when modern-day American political parties developed, and the expansion of white male suffrage increased the nation’s voting base. These new parties, which included the Democrats, the National Republicans, the Anti-Masons, and the Whigs, frequently used conspiracy accusations as a political tool to capture new voters—ultimately bringing about a recession and a collapse of public trust in the democratic process."

Since you mentioned Kennedy, President Garfield's assassination also resulted in conspiracies, including using the term "conspiracy theory". From https://academic.oup.com/book/25369/chapter-abstract/1924531... :

> Conspiracy theories have been around for a long time, though how long is a matter of debate. As for the concept of conspiracy theory, it might seem reasonable to expect a more exact answer about the moment of its emergence. When do we first find people talking and writing about conspiracy theories? While much of the literature points to the twentieth-century philosopher Karl Popper and his famous work The Open Society and Its Enemies (1st edition: 1945), newspaper databases allow us to locate earlier occurrences of “conspiracy theory.” They reveal that the term proliferates in newspapers from the 1870s onward, particularly after the assassination of President Garfield in July 1881. What can this discovery then tell us about the modern-day phenomenon of conspiracy theories?

The full text, available at https://archive.org/details/uscinski-conspiracy-theories-and... , says

"First occurrence of CTs related to assassination of Garfield: "One of the conspiracy theories has been exploded," Boston Journal, July 12, 1881."

The article goes into depth on the context behind the word "theory" for this sort of description, at https://archive.org/details/uscinski-conspiracy-theories-and... with examples of "murder theory", "abduction theory", and "fraud theory" before going into details about publications of a conspiracy theory "linking Guiteau to a circle of undiscovered and unidentified associates ... that foreshadows the later shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby—Guiteau himself became the target of an attempt on his life a few days after his trial began in November 1881, speculation once more arose about a conspiracy."

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

  > November 22, 1963. [3]. And it's difficult to imagine why anybody might not think everything wasn't on the up and up there. I mean it's only been 60 years, and only 3% of the records remain classified.

Not bad, but the Jack The Ripper files, from 1888, are still sealed 135 years later. Conspiracy theorists might have a field day with that, but it's done only to protect the identities of informants.

"a group of people have absolutely no proof what-so-ever"

Something not being provable underlies the definition of the term theory, Google this phrase, "is it required for a theory to have proof" to understand.

"It does not matter if they end up being right"

This is not a logical stance.

A lot of conspiracy theorists are not like that. They are more like "My neighbor is behaving suspiciously. I have no concrete proof of wrong doing, but maybe I should start bolting my door".

If this actually became necessary, I would assume we're already in a world where sea ice has been gone for a decade or more, polar wildlife is a write-off already and humanity is facing regular catastrophic climate events (storms, floods, and fires), mass migrations and famines.

My point isn't that it's an amazing idea, or even a good one, just that it's eminently within the realms of physical and economic possibility. Hell, SAC probably flew a comparable number air miles than that for decades at a time, just circling nuclear weapons near the USSR.

This reply could have been posted regardless of what the parent actually said, since you didn't respond to any of it. The chemtrails theory refers to many long lasting contrails being chemical agents actively and secretly dispersed, at massive scale over decades, for a variety of nefarious purposes. Cloud seeding refers to the currently rare and often publicised activity of coaxing out rain, using a very different set of chemicals. No amount of the latter developing makes the previous story any more true but people love to tie the two together as it makes for a story of validity in the form "see, people were attacking cloud seeding and it was real, what else is actually real!" when that never actually happened at scale.

It is perfectly normal that people are anxious. I am myself anxious.

But the problem, and what makes those people that the CNN article talk about despicable, is that those anxious people are attacking innocent scientists just because they choose to convince themselves that these scientists are the devil, based on nothing else than crazy logic and convenient extrapolation.

Being anxious is nothing bad, and nobody is being blamed for being anxious.

Being a toxic person that does counter-productive things and put innocent scientists in real danger with their bullying is not ok, and these persons merit to be treated fairly: they are adults, they have responsibility, their actions have consequences. Anxiety is one of the cause, but the fact that all anxious people are not bullying innocent scientists is the proof that there are other causes, including the fact that these people choose hatred instead of reason.

Those cloud seeding programs are expensive and require dedicated hardware.

They are not installed on commercial passenger airlines. If they were, that would mean a huge number of aircraft maintenance workers and ground crew know about it, and are keeping it secret from the public - a conspiracy. Where are the chemicals stored at the airport? Are the fire/safety teams also in on the conspiracy?

If not on commercial passenger airlines, then which ones? Are there fleets of planes which are not on publicly available flight trackers? Or are a lot of those flights lying about their cargo and mission? If so, that's a conspiracy.

Those weather modification programs are not done in clear skies. The video you linked to earlier makes that very explicit. All cloud seeding does it change the timing of where rain falls. It doesn't work without a lot of water already in the air.

For rains to not fall, when it would have without active intervention, means the water had to be forced out before reaching Spain - doing it over Spain would be worthless. So pictures of clear-sky "chemtrails" over Spain can't be weather modification keeping rain out of Spain. Where are these flights based? Where do they travel? What conspiracy keeps us from knowing this about Europe, when we know about China's efforts?

That's why these are called 'conspiracy theories'. They require a large number of people to conspire to keep something secret, and have at best only weak circumstantial evidence to support it. ("People can modify the weather, so the droughts in Spain must be caused by people modifying the weather" needs a few more underpants gnomes worked out.)

Thing is, we know that contrails modify the climate, without a doubt. 9/11's flight shutdown made that analysis possible. "9/11 study: Air traffic affects climate" at https://edition.cnn.com/2002/TECH/science/08/07/contrails.cl... or https://www.nature.com/articles/418601a if you want the publication. It helped reduce the daily range in daytime highs and nighttime lows.

Which makes continued flights a form of weather modification right there, just like dumping massive amounts of CO2 in the air is another form of global weather modification.

But notice that those are both side-effects of a much more profitable business.

Who benefits in keeping the rain out of Spain, and how do they keep those activities hidden so well? Oh, right - a global conspiracy.

What is the right solution if people are extremely anxious for strongly illegitimate reasons?

No one believes cloud seeding is a conspiracy, except maybe the people who believe in chemtrails, to whom the commonly understood definition of 'conspiracy theorist' clearly applies. Your comment isn't the slam dunk you think it is.

Let me see..

You discredit the media. You discredit Wikipedia. You discredit the scientists. Then you make up some numbers to support your claim that people are being fooled by a powerful group working in the shadows.

I'm sorry, isn't this starting to sound like a conspiracy theory??

This discussion goes nowhere if you reject the credibility of anyone you disagree with.

In that case, you also have lost all credibility. And you can say I've no credibility either.

> This is another failed example of 'trust me I'm a scientist'

No, it isn't. There's a large amount of engineering to do to make these work. How are the chemicals deployed? Who designed the deployment mechanism? Who makes the chemicals? How and where are they stored? Who transports them to the airports? Who is in charge of safety should things go wrong? If one of these flights crashes, how is evidence destroyed so it stays secret? Where are these flights based? Who are the flight crew? Why do airlines and cargo flight operators do this work? Is it more profitable than flying passengers and cargo? Or are there secret orders requiring them to work?

Somehow all of these operations must be kept secret.

"Trust me I'm a scientist" answers precisely none of these questions, any more than "trust me I'm Batman" does.

Where are the credible information sources which show theis required infrastructure exists? Because all I hear is "trust me, scientists can do it." Which carries no credibility.

> Many people think 'global warming' (or 'climate change' as it now called) is 80% snake oil and that there are many alarmist evangelizing grifters making a fortune and changing the global balance of power in its name.

Who cares at all what “many people think”? How is that even a relevant consideration when deciding what and how to report?

The job of media should not be to coddle people or be a “safe space” that validates their nutty notions, it should be to report the truth. Convey uncertainty when it exists, but don’t invent false balance just to make viewers feel better about themselves. The truth is climate change is real and chemtrails are not.

> Is this at all related to the ongoing negotiations at the World Meteorological Organization over access to data?

To me, questioning if it is "related" implies intent, and "trying" implies an active subversive effort.

But if you really mean this is all just a coincidental situation for the WMO to take advantage of... that still doesn't make any sense, because the tweets aren't from a specific country.