Brazil's catastrophic weather spawns spate of conspiracy theories
phys.org
phys.org
Also the outgroup in this case is science/scientists.
It's just, (a) CO2 is invisible, and (b) CO2 being this chemical is politically unacceptable to people who make money selling carbon rich fuels and also to people who are currently unable to switch to a different power supply.
https://iee.psu.edu/news/podcast/growing-impact-contrails-an...
This was in the news recently as Google removed this aspect from its flight GHG impact estimate as it was averaging over all flights, and intends to adjust it in future so that flights at the time of day that create contrails will have more GHG impact attributed to them.
The problem is the people who spent half their day reading and sharing fake scientific articles. Those are not really "tuning out".
There's nothing simple about about government agencies and weather manipulating satellites though.
It seems like the reality is the exact opposite. Science is way too boring and simple for most people, and unlike conspiracy theories science doesn't absolve you of responsibility. Therefore those people will rather invent 500 pages of crackpot lore rather than take a high school chemistry or math class.
It's fascinating and scary at the same time. It's what happens when you do motivated thinking for decades. He believes in all the alt-right crap about "gender ideology", "fake climate change", "fake pandemic", etc. He just completely ignores any data that contradicts what he thinks.
In middle school he "just" disliked gays and was pretty normal overall. Now there's no subject on which you can talk with him without some batshit insane views.
A big part of this is splinters of American culture war that spreads over the rest of the world as a side-effect. I can understand why some people in US think cancel culture and wokeness went too far. But then you have people repeating the same "antiwoke" alt-right points imported from USA in countries where you go to jail for criticizing Catholic Church and president together with main bishop go on anti-gay hate campaigns on state TV. And somehow it's still the alt-right that fights for "free speech", when they have no problem with "go to jail for blasphemy" laws.
Once you buy into this culture war and decide you're on one side - you interpret all new data accordingly. So you cannot believe in climate change, cause that's what leftists do. So if you see climate change - it's because NWO causes it with contrails. Trump is your guy cause he hates gays. So if he does things that benefit Russia - it's his brilliant plan to deal with Putin that you simply can't understand yet.
Always add more hidden variables that make your worldview consistent.
I'm yet to hear of such a country. Aren't you thinking of lese majesté laws that some countries like Spain and the Netherlands have?
There's about 50 people sentenced per year.
My point wasn't that, my point was that people supporing these consider themselves "fighting for free speech" because they want to be able to insult minorities.
Only obvious one where this may be currently enforced is El Salvador? Though I can't quickly find any recent examples, so maybe that's not true. And places like Monaco still haven't repealed those laws. Edit: also Poland – from a sibling comment.
My friend works in IT and earns probably in the 99th or 98th percentile in the country. It's not that. In fact I don't think economic wellbeing is related at all. Poland has been doing great economically for the last 30 years, and yet the conspiracy theories are spreading.
I mostly blame social media. Previously if you wanted to know how the climate works you looked it up in encyclopedia, watched some TV or asked a teacher. They mostly weren't spreading bullshit.
Now you search internet and there's so much bullshit confirming all your wrong ideas you can spend weeks reading just that.
I also know a huge amount of conspiracy theory believers in the medical area. Also otherwise competent.
If anything, the correlation with loneliness or low status was reverse: the richer and high-status, the more blatant and visible those beliefs were. People in low-prestige professions, or poor? It was very rare to see them talk about it.
I'm don't believe in conspiracy theories however, because I'm mature enough to accept that sometimes bad things happen for reasons other than "evil underground cabal of satanists".
especially this one - these people seem like they're in denial about their actions causing climate change causing their catastrophic weather, so they invent invisible bogeymen to blame.
I imagine that when they get dumped by their girlfriend, they'll blame it on George Soros manipulating her via 5G raditation instead of "well maybe she didn't like you being an abusive alcoholic who cheated on her?"
What was once used to create a laugh, the absurdness of tangents and conspiracies, is now serious because it's attributed to a virtualized antagonist, who is manipulating our lives and making fun of it, by exploiting collective behavior, pulling the strings.
It's us that do not see we are manipulated, and that we are propelled to invest towards what's not in our own interest, taking them for a ride to an unwanted future. They must feel their control over their own lives is being taken away.
Perhaps like the jews knowingly went to the slaughter, and they could not be convinced to revolt themselves and fight for their life?
The latter part of your comment was hard to parse for me, I can only say that some Jews did revolt (for example in Warsaw Ghetto). But I'm not sure what was your point with this analogy.
A LOT of the CC talk in the media is too complex, abstract and focuses on engineering or financial concepts that many people don't really grapple with day to day.
TV shows like Clarksons Farm are better at conveying the complexity of the changes.
The effect of CO2 in the atmosphere is less than that, but it's always there. You just don't see the cloud because CO2 is transparent.
The effect of CO2 in the atmosphere is less than that, but it's always there. The amount can be measured with CO2 meters, and it's going up. You just don't see the cloud because CO2 is transparent.
of course, being stupid,they refuse to call themselves into question, which blocks them from changing their behavior, which will lead to more suffering on their part...
It’s good for everyone if the Floridians can stay in Florida.
Though back then it was easy, you could just say god
I mean, sure, maybe HAARP is bs, what do I know, but ruling out cloud seeding and weather modification techniques such as stratospheric aerosol injection is borderline ignorant and ignoring science.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Persian_Gulf_floods#Cloud...
It might seem stupid, but even though Rio Grande do Sul has lost about 50% of this year's soy harvest, you can be sure that farmers will be bailed out by the government. And so if you put the blame on anything other than the degradation of the environment, you can keep justifying chopping down more forests right up to the margins of rivers.
Since the audience that would benefit the most from actually having their minds changed are (in my experience) already used to hearing the 'normal' positions on these things but have decided to trust a different position more, though various means including familiarity and those who connect more with their state of mind at the time. It's not that such people are necessarily even 'so far gone' to be impenetrable either.
I find many publications that do anything from casual to more robust debunking don't appear to be attempting to communicate with the audience who believe these things, so they write in a voice that is already beginning from a typically condescending place in the assumption their audience is already aligned with their position. I suppose the expectation is those people will then be the horizontal conduits.
I've debunked various things on more personal levels with people but not by linking debunking articles as I haven't found disdain helps at all but rather understanding and then bridging what led to their position and more context that may clarify certain things (also tbf this is more a comment about many other articles I see, rather than phys' quite reasonable tone).
Someone at the gov attempting to dispel these theories, skirts them as well:
Raquel Recuero… said the conspiracy theories were likely being spread by organized groups "in search of an audience, monetization and influence."
So, no certainty, just possibly, but why not put it out there?
To my mind... I do think there is truth to the idea that if you're trying to make money in media (media = newspapers, television, internet), getting people's attention is more important than telling the truth.
From what I understand and have experienced, popular 'news' television channels (Fox News in the USA, for example) do not give their audiences well thought-out, nuanced analysis of what's happening, but rather push a very "us vs them, it's all their fault, get angry" mentality, because that gets them more eyeballs for advertisers.
It seems possible that social media influencers in Brazil have found that pushing the narrative of "it's the US government's fault" is more lucrative than "well, maybe we shouldn't cut down all those trees?"
however, I do agree that there is no reason a priori to assume they're acting together, and that this is anything more than a side effect of incentives created by social media algorithms.
Television channels initially ignored the floodings because they were focused on covering Madonna, them they ignored the severity of the floodings, them they attacked valid criticism and ignored the contribution of volunteers and other non-state actors. No wonder why journalists from the biggest news channel, Globo, are frequently harassed on the streets. e.g. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/b2v8CAV6zBI
> To my mind... I do think there is truth to the idea that if you're trying to make money in media (media = newspapers, television, internet), getting people's attention is more important than telling the truth.
I think that is true in the short term but I believe that in the long term telling the truth is more sustainable. With all it's issues, the Internet is an improvement, it descentralizes information, people get to news quicker and with less filters.
Also, did they discover something "big" there? From reading the Wikipedia page I can roughly tell what were they trying to do, but it feels like they "merely" optimized existing comms setups, especially for HF and lower frequencies, then handed it back to the local university.
The truth of the matter is that these stupidities are politically motivated. People saying this bullshit are the ones that deliberately want to dismiss the reality of global warming.
And they will keep on overlooking evidence and speculate on the most lunatic way possible into disaster.
Climate changes make the weather more wild and unpredictable but it's not 100% the cause behind every weather phenoma. This region, Porto Alegre, experienced floodings in 1873, 1897, 1905, 1912, 1914, 1926, 1928, 1936, 1941. In 1941 anti-floodings systems where built which prevented flooding for almost a century. I don't think the magnitude of the record flooding that is happening this year could be predicted though certainly lenience towards weather phenomena mitigation is a prevalent trend in Brazil.
https://www.correiodopovo.com.br/especial/conhe%C3%A7a-a-his...
this region have been governed by workers party since forever. zero floods. well, small ones that overridden the dams.
last extreme right elections put an extreme right government in that region since a long time. zero maintenance on "fake climate change" things. this is the result.
it's one hundred percent like Texas power grid. hence why the right wing sock puppet accounts are pushing flat earth level disinformation.
reality is always more boring.
and as always, if you even acknowledge the nonsense, the trolls win.
Not quite. The state of Rio Grande do Sul had 2 PT (Worker's Party) Governors: Olívio Dutra (1999-2003) and Tarso Genro (2011-2015).
RS's capital city Porto Alegre had a much longer PT administration (Starting with Olívio Dutra in 1989, ending with João Verle in 2005).
> zero floods. well, small ones that overridden the dams
Fine, but there hasn't been this much water, and especially condensed in this small period of a few days, since ... well, I imagine always. Even the previous record flood of 1941 in Porto Alegre was due to 22 days of rain. This took about 3 or 4.
> last extreme right elections put an extreme right government in that region
I'm not sure I'd call Eduardo Leite (current and previous State Governor) extreme right. That said, he's a typical liberal, and as such he likes to defund the State. He decreased public spending in civil protection by 90% from last year. And that's after last year also saw floodings and cyclones.
If you're talking about the Porto Alegre administration, I would maybe agree with the "extreme right" label on the current mayor, Sebastião Melo. Previous right-wing mayors have been mostly regular conservatives and/or regular liberals. Still right, still bad, but not quite Bolsonaro bad (though at least some are Bolsonaro supporters).
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I came across a document from Porto Alegre's administration in 1992 [0] (first time with the Worker's Party in office, under the always thoughtful and overly intelligent Olívio Dutra) where they do an extensive analysis of the anti-flood systems in place, options on how to improve them and how important participation of civil society is in these processes.
Back then we had the world's first Participatory Budget [1] in place. In the document, the administration acknowledges that sanitation and flood prevention were not among their main flags during the election campaign, but the people voted and the administration started working on it.
This is how democracy should work IMO. It's not perfect but it's way better than simply voting to put people in office. Unfortunately it's been all but dismantled after PT left the administration.
[0] https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/y02s8cvxf6qts3ktgc70q/PREVENI...
In most of Europe, South America and probably the other continents, the US Democrats are somewhere between centre-left and centre-right.
I wouldn't call anyone in the WEF a progressist. At least not because of that, since I consider the WEF a reactionary organisation.
You're right. WEF is globalist. Recently there is a strong convergence between globalist and progressist narratives but yep they aren't the same.
As I see the WEF and globalists in general are rich people buying their way into politics, stablishing a global financial elite in the seats of power. Do you consider it to be reactionary because it's in their interest to maintain the status quo?
As you wrote, the left governed there for decades, and no adequate containment for this event was built, nor it was built by the following center-left following governments. There was never a right or far-right government there since the 70s. Unless you are referring to Bolsonaro, but then it would be weird since he’s already superseded by the worker’s party by a year and a half now.
This is false. Quoting from my sibling comment:
Not quite. The state of Rio Grande do Sul had 2 PT (Worker's Party) Governors: Olívio Dutra (1999-2003) and Tarso Genro (2011-2015).
RS's capital city Porto Alegre had a much longer PT administration (Starting with Olívio Dutra in 1989, ending with João Verle in 2005).
I came across a document from Porto Alegre's administration in 1992 [0] (first time with the Worker's Party in office, under the always thoughtful and overly intelligent Olívio Dutra) where they do an extensive analysis of the anti-flood systems in place, options on how to improve them and how important participation of civil society is in these processes.
[0] https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/y02s8cvxf6qts3ktgc70q/PREVENIR-O-MELHOR-REM-DIO.pdf?rlkey=eqfzhu1pmxx6x288fskhtihy0&st=2tfc9iu1&dl=0
This has to be a joke. Aside from those administrations I cited, everyone single one of the others has been right-wing.