The 2024 hurricane season has been brutal. Experts, for their part, overwhelmingly attribute its brutality to climate change: put simply, warmer oceans make for more powerful and destructive storms, and more chaotic weather patterns overall.

Conspiracy theorists, meanwhile, have baselessly decided that the devastating storm season is the work of alleged collusion by government forces to "control" the Earth's weather. And as Rolling Stone reports, they're taking their idiotic grievances out on meteorologists, who they say are part of the cover-up.

Per the Rolling Stone, meteorologists working to cover the ongoing storm season say they've been subjected to a deluge of harassment, misinformation-riddled retorts, and even outright death threats in recent weeks, as outlandish conspiracy theories that previously would've stayed relegated to the fringe have garnered steam on social media.

The meteorologists say that the misinformation embedded in the messages they've received has been varied. Some people apparently think that hurricanes can simply be nuked or blown away by a giant fan.

"An average hurricane's life cycle burns through the energy of roughly 10,000 nuclear bombs," meteorologist Matthew Cappucci told Rolling Stone. "The idea that we can even influence something like that, never mind direct it, is just so outlandish that it's almost, sadly, funny."

The central accusation across the board, however, has been the weather experts' alleged role in an imagined and truly outlandish government weather control conspiracy.

"People are just so far gone, it's honestly making me lose all faith in humanity," Cappucci told Rolling Stone. "Seemingly overnight, ideas that once would have been ridiculed as very fringe, outlandish viewpoints are suddenly becoming mainstream and it's making my job much more difficult."

"I've been doing this for 46 years and it's never been like this," Alabama meteorologist James Spann told the magazine, adding that he's been "inundated" with eerie messages telling him to "stop lying about the government controlling the weather or else."

The harassment coincides with the proliferation and, to a degree, normalization of conspiracy theorizing on Elon Musk's X, where a worsening flood of misinformation — pushed by the likes of partisan influencers, politicians, and Musk himself — has been thriving in the wake of Hurricanes Helene and Milton.

Indeed, the government weather control theory seems to have picked up steam largely due to Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor-Greene, who took to X in the wake of Hurricane Helene to declare that "they... can control the weather." After widespread ridicule, Greene doubled down on the claim, ahead of Hurricane Milton.

Milton's exceedingly unconventional path — it formed in the west and moved eastward, which is exceptionally rare for a Gulf hurricane — certainly didn't help. Soon, X was chock-full of viral posts either insinuating or outright accusing the government of controlling the weather.

And it's not just Greene proliferating these outlandish theories. Similar claims have been advanced by the likes of Grant Cardone, for example, a millionaire many times over who boasts over a million followers on X and known right-wing influencers.

Of course, meteorologists are no strangers to climate denialism. But speaking to Rolling Stone, they were clear that the onslaught of bad information and threatening messages has never been worse than it is right now. And that ultimately makes it harder for scientists and broadcasters to do their important role of delivering sound, fact-based information to the public and for emergency workers to do their jobs.

"I've seen the reactions of climate dismissives for many, many years, and it's become particularly vitriolic in the last year or two, especially on X," Miami-based meteorologist John Morales, who was overcome with emotion on air this week while discussing Milton's might, told the magazine. "This is the post-truth era and these types of crazy beliefs aren't just confined to your crazy Uncle Joe."

These days, misinformation "seems to spread with greater ease," Morales added, "and I am particularly alarmed that after Hurricane Helene it's really spread and truly impacted the work of the emergency management agencies that are trying to help people recover and have to dedicate resources to dispel rumors and trample down on the type of stuff that sadly, even some politicians are spreading."

"It costs lives," he continued, "and dishonors first responders and civil servants."

More on storm misinformation: Elon Musk Is Spreading Dangerous Hurricane Helene Conspiracy Theories


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