Meteorologists, new target of climate misinformation

Meteorologists, long regarded as trusted experts, are now facing threats, insults and smears online from climate change deniers and conspiracy theorists, who accuse them of faking or even manipulating the weather.

On Twitter and other social networks, some users accused the Spanish climate agency of causing a drought, its Australian counterpart of manipulating thermometers and the French agency of exaggerating climate change through misplaced stations.

“Coronavirus is no longer a trend, conspiracy theorists and deniers who talked about it are now spreading misinformation about climate change,” Alexandre Lopez-Borrull, professor of Information and Communication Sciences at the Open University of Catalonia, told AFP.

“These scientific entities are considered part of the ‘establishment’, so anything that say it is disputed on social networks ”he added.

threats

Members of the Spanish State Meteorological Agency (AEMET) received threats on Twitter, by telephone and by email.

“Murderers”, “criminals”, “they will pay”, “we are watching them”, the messages said.

They came from people who believe in the discredited theory that condensation trails from planes are actually chemicals sprayed by authorities to poison people or create weather disasters.

Some speak of the “2030 agenda”, a theory according to which global elites would have a plan to subjugate the people through climate policies and against covid.

“Do you want us to publish your contacts and those of your family?”, said a tweet addressed to an AEMET employee.

“Thieves! They are destroying nature by orders of the damn 2030 agenda″, says another.

“We have seen an increase in insulting messages as a result of a thread we posted about traces of condensation” on April 10, AEMET spokeswoman Estrella Gutiérrez-Marco told AFP.

Lopez-Borrull cited a “significant increase” in climate change denial, especially among far-right sympathizers who see it as a leftist cause.

“People mistrust politicians, judges and the press, and the cost of living is going up,” he said.

“In this context, people feel alienated and end up listening to people they had never heard, with messages directed directly to the emotions.”

australian thermometers

In another case investigated by AFP Factual, conservative media and Facebook users shared unverified information claiming that Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) manipulated data from its thermometers.

Based on an analysis of data, well-known climate skeptic Jennifer Marohasy claimed that the agency’s digital thermometers were 0.7C warmer than old mercury thermometers.

But the experts who analyzed the data assured that the affirmation is false.

Meville Nicholls, professor emeritus at Monash University, noted that the differences between digital and mercury devices is almost non-existent, between zero and 0.1 degrees.

“This difference is very small compared to the strong warming trend in average temperature in Australia,” 1.4 degrees in the last century, Nicholls told AFP.

Temperatures in France

In France, where record temperatures were recorded in March in the southwest, a social media critic posted that the national weather service exaggerated warming by relying on station readings in urban districts, where it tends to be hottest.

“Another way of making us feel fear and guilt”, a woman commented on the post, which spread on Facebook.

But experts consulted by AFP denied the information, pointing out that the limited network of 30 stations indicated by the publication is not the one used by scientists to measure climate change, and that the climate is also measured in rural districts.

“Meteo-France researchers use all possible measurements and create computer models with various hypotheses and longer timeframes for their analysis,” said Christine Berne, a climatologist at the French climate agency.

Source: AFP