I'd blame a) removing the firewall between news rooms and entertainment
('80s) and b) media consolidation (1996 Telecommunications Act) before
I'd blame IQ.
Profit motives and Big Lies leave little room for facts and reason.
As other countries' media become infiltrated with uncontested Big Lies,
they stop laughing at us.
I don't have the stomach to watch folks like Alex Jones. But I follow
Media Matters https://www.mediamatters.org/blog and Right Wing Watch
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/. NewsHounds can be useful
http://www.newshounds.us/
By knowing what the fringe is up to, I can - without judgement - provide
context. For example...
'Pizzagate' Shooter to Serve Four Years in Jail
The gunman pled guilty after carrying out a violent response to
an online conspiracy theory.
https://www.theatlantic.com/news/archive/2017/06/dcs-pizzagate-shooter-sentenced-to-4-years-in-jail/531381/
Alex Jones Is Very, Very Sorry for That Pizzagate Stuff
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/3dmp49/alex-jones-is-very-very-sorry-for-that-pizzagate-stuff
Asking blame- and contemptuous-free questions is another way to engage
people. Name calling is out (i.e. "Deplorables"). Describe behavior.
Folks are waking up. But change takes a lot of work.
So set aside your judgement / fears and find ways to engage people with
respect. In my case (on my own time) I've been publishing a free, weekly
email-based newsletter with an occasional special update when something
major is about to go down in Washington or locally. I have reason to
believe that the emails get a wider reading than those on my email list.
Maribeth
On 11/23/2017 11:03 AM, David Sevier wrote:
Yet another piece of living evidence that the IQ curve predicts that
40% of the population will have an IQ of 90 or less.
Happy Turkey day to our US cousins.
Dave
*From:*[email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] *On Behalf Of *Andrew Lockley
*Sent:* 22 November 2017 23:13
*To:* geoengineering
*Subject:* [geo] Chemtrails conspiracy theorists are sending death
threats to climate scientists – VICE News
https://news.vice.com/story/chemtrails-arent-real-say-harvard-scientists-trying-to-fight-climate-change
CLIMATE CHANGE
Chemtrails conspiracy theorists are sending death threats to
climate scientists
Chemtrails conspiracy theorists are sending death threats to climate
scientists
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By *Hilary Beaumont*
<https://news.vice.com/story/author/hilary-beaumont> Nov 22, 2017
As world leaders grapple with reducing greenhouse gases, Harvard
scientists are planning to send a balloon into the stratosphere that
will spray aerosols to test their ability to reflect sunlight as a way
to cool the planet. It’s part of a promising field of research called
“solar geo-engineering” that aims to fight global warming.
But scientists are coming up against another problem: conspiracy
theorists who are convinced that they’re spraying chemicals for the
purpose of mind control.
ADVERTISEMENT
A new report <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-017-0014-3> by
Harvard researchers published in the journal Nature has found that a
whopping 60 percent of online posts about solar geo-engineering are
conspiracy theories about chemtrails. And scientists are even
receiving death threats from chemtrail believers.
“You’re a part of this mass conspiracy killing life on Earth as we
know it”
“You’re a part of this mass conspiracy killing life on Earth as we
know it,” one of the report’s authors Gernot Wagner told VICE News,
quoting some of the hate mail he has received.
Searching the term “chemtrail” yields photo after photo of white
streaks in the sky. These streaks are actually contrails — the
condensation left by planes as they zoom through the sky. But
chemtrail conspiracy theorists believe the planes are spraying
chemicals for weather control, or even mind control.
Alex Jones of InfoWars, who does not believe in human-caused global
warming, asserts that chemtrails are part of a government program in
which chemicals are secretly added to jet fuel.
“I’ve been talking about this forever,” he exclaimed in a recent video
about chemtrails, global warming and geo-engineering. “There is an
entire atmospheric terraforming geo-engineering manipulation. They
don’t call it chemtrails. And of course the CIA director admitted they
have this huge program.”
In another recent video Jones says, “There is manipulation of the
weather. It’s mainstream news, and the media always picks it up and
says I’m crazy. It’s on the Weather Channel that there are secret
programs. It’s just so secret we don’t know the details.”
Chemtrails are not real. They have been widely debunked, Wagner’s
paper states, but 2016 survey data showsbetween 30 and 40 percent of
the general U.S. public believes in them.
A plane with contrails behind it. The white streaks are condensation
left by planes as they zoom through the sky.
The Harvard report used an algorithm to analyze a decade of social
media posts about solar geo-engineering between 2008 and 2017, mostly
on Twitter, to see how many were conspiracy theories and how many were
scientific. The majority — 60 percent — were conspiracy theories.
Some of the same people who believe in chemtrails are also tweeting
about Alex Jones and InfoWars, Wagner told VICE News. Anonymity online
helps spread these ideas, he says.
Wagner says he has received “plenty of emails” accusing him of being a
mass murderer. His colleagues have received them, too.
“It is a pretty frustrating situation to be in”
In one of his recent chemtrail videos, Jones said scientists can “kill
anybody they want” under “research provisions,” which could explain
some of the threats Wagner and his colleagues have faced.
“It is a pretty frustrating situation to be in,” Wagner says.
“This is a relatively new topic,” Wagner says of solar
geo-engineering, which has only been researched for 15 years as a way
to fight global warming, “There is very little discourse on
geo-engineering in general, and now what happens is it’s being dwarfed
by, dominated by, those spreading this conspiracy theory.”
WHAT IS SOLAR GEO-ENGINEERING?
As greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) continue to increase, they are
trapping heat from the sun’s rays, warming the earth and contributing
to climate change. The vast majority of world leaders and scientists
believe the best way to limit global warming is to reduce greenhouse
gas emissions by switching to renewable energy sources. Another
strategy is to capture carbon from the atmosphere and store it
underground.
Scientists see it as a complement to reducing GHGs, or a last resort.
For the past 15 years, scientists have been studying solar
geo-engineering in the lab as another possible tool to limit global
warming. Scientists see it as a complement to reducing GHGs, or a
possible last resort if emissions continue to rise. The research is
hypothetical at the moment, and has not yet been tested in the real
world, Wagner says.
When they send a balloon to the stratosphere next year as part of a
project called ScopeX, Harvard scientists will be taking the
technology from the lab into the real world for the first time.
The ScopeX project. (Harvard)
Spraying aerosols to reflect sunlight is a relatively cheap option.
Scientists are essentially copying a natural mechanism that has been
proven to cool the planet: volcanic eruptions. Volcanoes release
sulphur which turns into sulphate aerosol at high altitudes. These
aerosols have been shown to reflect sunlight, almost like a sunscreen.
But sulphur is also known to deplete ozone, a gas which helps protect
the planet by filtering sunlight as part of the ozone layer, which
makes the technology risky. Scientists want to experiment with
different reflective substances like calcium carbonate (found in
limestone) or even diamond dust to find the safest option.
There are known risks.
For instance, a study published last week in the journal Nature used
computer models to investigate how sulphur dioxide injections would
impact hurricanes in the North Atlantic. The research shows injecting
it into only the Northern hemisphere would reduce hurricanes in the
North Atlantic. However, if it was injected only in the Southern
hemisphere, the sulphur dioxide would increase the number of hurricanes.
The takeaway from this and previous studies was that solar
geo-engineering, if used evenly across the planet, could reduce the
impact of global warming, and if it isn’t used evenly, it could be
risky. However, no one in the solar geo-engineering community is
advocating for it to be deployed unevenly, according to Anthony Jones
of the University of Exeter in the U.K.
The scientific community is first asking for world leaders to reduce
GHG emissions, and if that is not successful, they want solar
geo-engineering to be properly researched and regulated so if it is
eventually used in the fight against climate change, officials will be
able to weigh the potential risks and rewards.
As for chemtrail conspiracy theorists, Wagner says all scientists and
journalists can do is present the facts and hope they win out in the end.
Cover: Maia Boakye/Vice Illustration
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