Sign In or Create an Account.

By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy

Climate

Misinformation Is Already Swirling Around Hurricane Milton

And it’s make a life-threatening situation even more dangerous.

Hurricanes and misinformation.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

The “Meteorologists” Facebook page has 51,000 followers, an iffy grasp of grammar rules, and outsized confidence in the United States’ weather engineering capabilities. “They are Aiming this KILLER Monster Hurricane Right at FLORIDA!” one user said of Hurricane Milton on Sunday morning, shortly before sharing purported photos of dinosaurs living on Mars.

By Monday afternoon, Milton had strengthened into a Category 5 storm, and the internet conspiracies were intensifying, too. People shared videos of themselves asking their Alexas, “What kind of hurricane was Hurricane Milton?” and getting answers in the past tense — proof, surely, that the government orchestrated the whole storm. “Never ever seen a hurricane form in the western Gulf and head directly EAST… It is not right,” other users mused in the comment sections of their local weather channels. A search for “cloud seeding” on Facebook further turned up dozens of posts tracking flight paths for planes belonging to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and sharing photos of ominous-looking clouds as evidence that the “government is involved.”

Hoaxes and misinformation reliably follow extreme weather events. Pictures of Hurricane Shark have circulated on social media after pretty much every major flood since 2011, and a photoshopped image of a storm cell over the Statue of Liberty resurfaces anytime there is bad weather in New York. In the aftermath of a major disaster, it’s especially tempting for bad actors to exploit the desperation for news and images.

But Hurricane Helene — which devastated swaths of Florida up into the Appalachians just over a week ago — revealed how far this has spun out of control. For one thing, hoaxes are simpler than ever for the average person to disseminate, thanks to the availability of AI image-making tools and the degradation of content moderation on disaster-response platforms like Twitter. These conspiracies may also then be reinforced and amplified by people with an interest in making the government’s response look bad — such as the Republican candidate for president of the United States, a Georgia congressperson, and Elon Musk.

While some lies — like Deep State cloud seeding — are relatively easy to see through, many rumors are much more difficult to fact-check when power, cell service, and internet are limited. Nicole McNeill, the Asheville, North Carolina-based director of storytelling of Climate Power, told me she and many of her neighbors fell for a widespread rumor that a second storm was going to hit the western part of the state immediately after Helene. The panic the rumor sparked risked lives: She saw a fight break out in a gas line between two men who were frantically trying to get out of town, and a young couple who were renting a home nearby tried to flee and ended up on a road that was closed. “We heard later that people had to sleep in their cars,” McNeill told me. “Local police had to be diverted from emergency response to direct traffic to clear the roads so emergency vehicles could pass. Misinformation made a desperate situation worse.” McNeill herself suffered a panic attack while trying to fix the holes in her roof from trees that had fallen during Helene, all in preparation for the second storm that would never come.

While there was no merit to those manufactured claims, the truth is in some ways even more alarming: Milton is looking like a worst-case scenario storm as it bears down on Tampa Bay, and at this point, the only thing anyone can control is getting good information to the people whose lives will depend on hearing it. Forecasters are doing a great job of that already, like South Florida hurricane specialist John Morales, who let his emotions show on air and connected the storm’s intensification to climate science.

Milton isn’t due to make landfall until Wednesday, but the misinformation already circulating online will make it more challenging for early warnings from the government and local experts to be heard and trusted. That job doesn’t get any easier after a storm. To fellow hurricane survivors, McNeill warned, “If you have patchy internet and you’re at 30% battery and worried about your phone running out, you’re often making split-second decisions. That’s where misinformation gets people.”

You’re out of free articles.

Subscribe today to experience Heatmap’s expert analysis 
of climate change, clean energy, and sustainability.
To continue reading
Create a free account or sign in to unlock more free articles.
or
Please enter an email address
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Politics

Chris Wright’s Worldview Is All Over the Senate Mega-Bill

It’s his philosophy. They’re just legislating it.

Chris Wright.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

As the Senate Finance Committee worked on its version of the reconciliation bill that would, among things, overhaul the Inflation Reduction Act, there was much speculation among observers that there could be a carve out for sources of power like geothermal, hydropower, and nuclear, which provide steady generation and tend to be more popular among Republicans, along the lines of the slightly better treatment received by advanced nuclear in the House bill.

Instead, the Senate Finance Committee’s text didn’t carve out these “firm” sources of power, it carved out solar and wind, preserving tax credits for everything else through 2035, while sunsetting solar and wind by 2028.

Keep reading...Show less
Wires and panels.
Heatmap Illustration | Abbr. Projects

When I reached out to climate tech investors on Tuesday to gauge their reaction to the Senate’s proposed overhaul of the clean energy tax credits, I thought I might get a standard dose of can-do investor optimism. Though the proposal from the Senate Finance committee would cut tax credits for wind and solar, it would preserve them for other sources of clean energy, such as geothermal, nuclear, and batteries — areas of significant focus and investment for many climate-focused venture firms.

But the vibe ended up being fairly divided. While many investors expressed cautious optimism about what this latest text could mean for their particular portfolio companies, others worried that by slashing incentives for solar and wind, the bill’s implications for the energy transition at large would be categorically terrible.

Keep reading...Show less
Podcast

It’s Easiest to Electrify This Type of Truck

Rob and Jesse talk with John Henry Harris, the cofounder and CEO of Harbinger Motors.

Harbinger.
Heatmap Illustration/Harbinger Motors

You might not think that often about medium-duty trucks, but they’re all around you: ambulances, UPS and FedEx delivery trucks, school buses. And although they make up a relatively small share of vehicles on the road, they generate an outsized amount of carbon pollution. They’re also a surprisingly ripe target for electrification, because so many medium-duty trucks drive fewer than 150 miles a day.

On this week’s episode of Shift Key, Rob and Jesse talk with John Henry Harris, the cofounder and CEO of Harbinger Motors. Harbinger is a Los Angeles-based startup that sells electric and hybrid chassis for medium-duty vehicles, such as delivery vans, moving trucks, and ambulances.

Keep reading...Show less