The latest right-wing conspiracy theory is that the heatwave isn't real

No thank you! I’m too private.

Besides- that would be cruel and unusual punishment for whoever got stuck with me.

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The late David Bellamy - an amazing botanist and popular TV scientist in the 70s and 80s who got loads of kids interested in the natural world - turned to a global warming denier late in his life and started using his platform to spread lies about climate change.

And don’t get me started on Jonny Ball…

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Harrison Schmitt - a fantastic geologist and the only professional scientist to land on the Moon - turns out he is ann arch climate change denier and Republican politician.

To be fair, most geologists are in the ‘ummm, have you see what these rocks tell you about past climates?’ camp.

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I was in Austin a couple weeks ago when temps were in the 100-105 F range for the entire week, he ascribed it to governmental weather control :roll_eyes:

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Most geologists are in the “this is a good place to dig for oil” camp.

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something something natural cycles of warming and cooling?

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Just the area name should pull them in like flies to a rotting carcass.

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Exactly. One need only imagine oneself in Putin’s place and embrace his scorched earth mood and think of all the ways one can ‘remotely’ obliterate America (and thereby all Democracies) and that by targeting its collective mind.

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Fifty years ago the consensus was that changes were relatively slow, nowadays geology favours catastrophic change in the environmental records thanks to high resolution isotope data from ice and sediments. The fragility of the climate and oceans came as a real shock when it became clear that previous changes had occurred on very short timescales following changes to atmospheric carbon dioxide in particular much slower than what we’re managing right now.

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They really aren’t. Petroleum geologists are an outlier in the field.

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Both in the unique viewpoint, and their outsized heavily-financed megaphone. Because of the latter, they’re the ones non-geologists hear from most, it seems.

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tRump knows all the best weather men! Just the other day a weather man, big guy, strong guy, came up to tRump with tears in his eyes. He said, “Sir, it’s nice outside.”

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An embarrassment to our guild. But yeah, the frustrating thing is that he used to do good work. Two Men in a Trench was groundbreaking (pun intended)

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Over the past decade, I’ve watched a few talented engineering colleagues transform from superb engineers into sub-par climate conspiracy cranks.

One strange part: I know these guys, and they do not have the commercial acumen of a carrot. It shows - no monetized channels I could find, just a lot of very impassioned social media output with not enough followers to be considered third-rate. I suspect they’re volunteers to the cause. Which is astonishing to me; if I was going to look like that big a fool, I’d want “retiring soon” levels of pay.

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In that case, are they true believers? They don’t care about looking foolish, or they see it as a necessary sacrifice for the sake of the “truth”.

I’ve seen a respected academic turn into a transphobic windbag on Twitter. He demands “answers” from trans activists, piously calls for “debate” and retweets outrage-farming hoaxes. Nobody “debates” him but prominent TERFs occasionally thank him for his support.

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I’m pretty sure they are true believers. Which is, I suppose, a cautionary tale for the rest of us.

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The TERs didn’t accept our answers because they didn’t fit with the anti-trans narrative, different answers from different people was seen as inconsistency rather than individuals being individuals. Some of us started to recognise abusive tactics from them, such as gaslighting and DARVO.

In the end we gave up because debating with a brick wall was more healthy and productive.

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