Iowa meteorologist Chris Gloninger is stepping down from his job, citing PTSD as a result of a steady barrage of threats due to his reporting on global climate change. This is just an example of the terrorism targeting anyone who runs afoul of the right wing hate conspiracy. They’ve been targeting abortion providers for many years, recently expanding to election officials as well as teachers and school board members. I understand the efforts of the FBI have to concentrate on groups destroying power substations and plotting kidnappings but everybody will suffer the results of qualified people afraid to take on jobs for fear they could become targets like this.
The stupidity never stops, it seems. It used to be an embarrassment to be a moron, but now it seems to be a badge of honor in certain circles.
Good grief, even the weather man is getting death threats? This was already ridiculous. I don’t even know what to call it now. Ludicrous?
Yet another horrific breakdown of this country’s civil society.
I guess they thought the local TV Meteorologist was supposed to talk about current local weather threats like severe thunderstorms, tornados, and hail like at Red Rock yesterday. Weird someone would make domestic terrorism threats about something like that, instead of changing the channel. We are indeed living in strange times.
But of course climate change is affecting weather patterns, creating extreme weather, which a forecaster would likely mention, even if just in passing.
I like this. I think humans are starting to destabilized Earth’s climate. We’re also releasing pharmaceuticals, endocrine disruptors, other stuff that acts at ppb, into the environment. We need to be more careful.
It’s called fascism.
I think it’s because there’s a particular demographic that’s collectively bought into a sort of social/ideological package deal w.r.t. their personal identities, and that deal is to be some style of Evangelical Christian, be politically conservative, listen to country music, drink certain beer, and have very specific views on a range of things- LGBTQ issues, climate change, and so forth.
So when the TV weatherman starts talking about climate change, it’s perceived as an attack on what they believe deep down, rather than just commentary about a physical process. These people believe that climate change is false, not just intellectually think so, based on their evaluation of the evidence. Otherwise, they’d just re-evaluate and come to a different conclusion.
Unfortunately this tactic is working. I’d like to know what’s being done about threats like this. If they’re being emailed they’re either traceable or the morons doing this have help in covering their tracks. If this flood of threats are not all coming from a handful of deranged morons then someone is organizing a broader effort and they’re probably connected to the actions against other political targets.
It’s really easy to threaten someone. I think that’s why death threats are the go-to tactic for the deranged these days. So how seriously should they be taken?
No criticism of the meteorologist or anyone else who has actually received a death threat. I have no doubt it’s terrifying. But I wonder what percentage of threats result in physical harm. I realize one would have no choice but to take any death threat seriously, but do we have any idea what percentage are carried out in some way?
I think this is a very interesting way to look at this. I don’t disagree with what you said. But isn’t this clearly, by definition, biased?
I’m just saying that climate change denial seems to be limited to a fairly specific set of people, and it’s been wound into a sort of personal identity package deal that includes those other things I mentioned.
So when someone tells them they’re wrong, they’re taking it as an affront to their personal identity, in much the same way that Bud Light partnering with Dylan Mulvaney was insulting to their personal identity. That’s the sort of thing that causes death threats, not mere intellectual disagreement.
I think that when we look back on climate change denialists, they will seem as evil and foreign as the smiling whites we see standing around a corpse in old photos of lynchings, proud of what they’d done.
Yes – assuming we survive the coming chaos, mass migrations, wars, crop failures, and overall turmoil, not to mention climate effects directly inimical to life, and are still here to do the observing.
Some will survive to remember, but yeah, they did a lot of harm and they will never admit they were in the wrong.
A great comic strip on the subject
Geez, that is way too accurate to be funny – as is often the case with Tom the Dancing Bug’s comic strips.
What does that last sentence mean in this context? Who is biased about what? What does “biased” mean in your mind?
I’m not trying to be an antagonistic jerk. I genuinely don’t comprehend what that sentence means to you or is meant to mean to me/us.
I thought this was kinda biased. If you drink beer (I’ve always liked Keystone Light), listen to country music ( I like Taylor Swift) and agree with Martina Navratilova, you are the type of person who threatens Meteorologists.
Ah, I get it. Thank you for the clarity.
Agree that @bump’s comment was written with a broad brush. Probably an over-broad brush.
OTOH … Although correlation is not causation, there are a lot of cultural conservatives reactionaries who have bought into a package of Reactionary Wacko propaganda which teaches that the USA is about to be destroyed by Those Other People and their Science. Cultural reactionaries are far more likely to have bought that propaganda package than are e.g. SJWs.
You, any you, don’t necessarily buy into the propaganda just because you share certain cultural traits with the propaganda-swillers. But there is a correlation.