So. What’s the right play? The cloud seeding and geoengineering people are nuts. It’s utter lunacy. Do we have an obligation to address it unprompted? Or do we just ignore it because it isn’t worth the time of day and those people are so far gone anyway?
I remember when people talked about chemtrails and the whole world laughed in their faces, let’s go back to that
What gets me is this is middle school science: Combustion creates water vapour, relative humidity goes up with temperature, mist forms at 100% humidity. Done I don't think a lack of understanding something that fits in a single line is the momentum behind this movement
*up with *lower* temperature, temperature decreases with height, ...
Personally, I think accountability online and legislation around that is needed to limit the negative effects of viral misinformation That ship has sailed, is complicated, has rights issues, and goes against the regular chants about what constitutes being American
It’s like a disease. You can’t leave it unaddressed to spread unchecked but you can’t cure it directly. So vaccinate ahead of it. Your audience isn’t the cloud seeders but folks who trust you (plus / along with/ instead of?) trad wx sources.
You can tell them that this alt wx story is bs so when they hear it in the wild from their friend, crazy cousin, work buddy, guy on radio or insta or whatev they are already primed to reject it. This way you can slow the spread.
It seems too many people are far gone at this point.
I’m not sure if addressing it helps dispel the lunacy but it can sometimes help the *targets* of those nuts to have a clear, unprompted and firm statement appear. That makes it worth doing, I think.
Leaving other things unaddressed in this current misinformation environment has let things like Anti Vax and Flat Earth go crazy. Combatting bad ideas has become important to prevent other low information individuals from going down the crazy path
Disagree. I think they have flourished despite widespread proof and many attempts to meet them halfway over the past 50 years.
You misunderstand me if you think I suggest anyone meet them halfway. They are not serious people and should not be treated as such. Their ideas shouldn't be debated, just mocked and thoroughly dismantled.
This is similar to a few years ago when flat earthers were making a big splash on social media, and the dilemma on how to cover it was the same. It seems like there's more of an educational opportunity with cloud seeding though compared to flat earth conspiracies.
They’re the same people, and you’re giving them way too much credit. They’re not interested in being educated. They like being part of a club that thinks their same dumb thoughts.
where i am currently... there's an audience that is genuinely interested and open to learning. there's a much louder (maybe bigger?) audience that has no interest in learning anything. no net positive trying to convince the loud audience but still important to lay out facts for all.
i tend to think explaining plainly, without heavily leaning into the anti-(whatever the conspiracy is) is more constructive
this is also mostly in reference to the more routine, day-to-day interactions/postings on social media. there's likely an important place for more aggressive pushback/deeper dives.
We can't ignore it because when we do they start legislating.
Times like these I wish we had the fairness doctrine. Not necessarily because these views deserve airtime, but that airtime would expose just how batshit insane some of these ideas/theories/beliefs actually are. No way they could defend these in an open forum without looking nuts.
So you think reputable sources should have to provide airtime and thus lend credibility to batshit insane ideas?
In today’s world? Absolutely not. In the time before Reagan when the fairness doctrine existed? We had an educated enough society where an idea like that would have been laughed out of the room before it even held traction. More of a “I wish we weren’t stupid” than anything.
You mean in the time of the Fairness Doctrine when global warming deniers were given airtime? When intelligent design proponents were allowed to mock evolution? When Kennedy used threats to silence opposition to his plans?
Attacks on education started in the 50s and did way more harm than the removal of the Fairness Doctrine.
We keep educating with the facts. It's on them if they want to educate themselves or believe the information presented to them. We need all the weather podcasts, shows and 101-type pieces of information we can provide at this point.
Keep educating. The audience are the uninformed people being influenced by the crazies, not the crazies themselves.
I feel like we’re playing whac a mole with various crazy people and it’s so demoralizing
especially as a soon-to-be phd student researching phased array, it scares me. not because of the cranks, but because they now directly influence (and sometimes, become) elected officials. In 2020, science became inconvenient for the first time in recent history. It hasn’t recovered since.
Legitimately what I think we need is a restart of Mythbusters. Science education on a broad scale with a “just some dudes in their garage having fun” attitude. That’s not popular anymore though, people would rather watch the real housewives of every city and their dog.
These are the same people that took an anti-parasitic livestock medication, and it shows.
I appreciate information and facts. But you’re never going to remove the scales from a conspiracy theorists eyes. They’re entrenched.
Ignore them. You’re wrong no matter what. You’re part of the problem. Time will tell them they’re wrong, regardless if they’re bandwagoning or just stupid and clinging to fake news. They are “the more that say”. Then they’ll just disappear. It’s not worth it.
They are people that have no compass yet vote Repubes. They can live in their dementia.
It’s hopeless to explain it. Don’t engage. It’s a small number of lunes compared to educated people. Don’t address it. FB is full of chemtrailers (short for everything else). X. Interesting how the lunes erupt when disasters happen in out in the boonies but not anything else. Morons abound.