Thoughts on the heatwave
It's day 2 of the UK heatwave and I have a few issues on my mind that I need to discuss. In the run up to this I was monitoring the discourse online about it because I am a masochist who wants to combat climate change disinformation. So against my better judgement I started actually reading social media comments. I'm not sure if I have recovered from the psychic damage I took from this but I think there are a few issues to point out.
First up are the usual comments I have seen on the various posts from the met office, BBC and whatever other semi reliable news outlets have been posting warnings to the public. The most common seemed to be the "1976 summer heatwave which was much worse so whats all the fuss about?", next was "its just summer so calm down" and finally the more conspiratorial responses about net zero being a scam or HAARP or fearmongering about green energy. I dunno man things got weird the further I looked.
I could spend an entire post about how these are all just wrong in soooo many ways but I don't have time to debunk outlandish claims like this. These are past the point of logical explanations. I do want to address the fact that the mainstream media has probably not done itself any favours by pushing this story in its usual sensationalist style. I know there is a need for the deep reds to accurately convey the seriousness of the heat impacting the country. I also feel that it has the opposite effect with climate change deniers. It furthers their beliefs because it comes across as sensationalist which when combined with the general practice of the mainstream media doesn't help drive the point home. It's actually really difficult to express this opinion in a way that is measured and unbiased so I hope the previous bit made sense.
Second, climate deniers won't believe any data they see so trying to get the point across with a visual graphic won't really help. Ideally the ones who are on the fence will feel the actual temperatures and maybe come to their senses but the more extreme denialists most likely won't. So here we are in a situation where a serious news story can't be reported on with the seriousness it deserves because it comes across as an over reaction.
I want to say this is a vocal minority but I recently started cross posting my stuff to substack, sorry indie web, as a way to maybe put more positive discourse towards the issues I care about. A quick aside but substack is not great and is very social media like. However I have spotted some serious grifters operating in the space and they have a big following. One example is this doctor/professor of earth science who claims to be in exile, because of course they are. He recently posted that and I quote " Europe is supposedly warming faster than any other continent. Maybe that's true. But does anyone else find it odd that the region with the highest concentration of climate activists, climate policies, climate conferences, climate taxes, and climate emergency declarations is also the place allegedly warming the fastest?". This post has over 500 likes with 69 comments of equal lunacy.
I guess my overall point here is that our modern media landscape is unable to properly convey the nuance of climate change to people. There is also very little trust in these news outlets as well as the scientific bodies that produce the knowledge on these issues. The only way for those who don't believe is to feel the actual effects of the climate changing and by then it will be too late.
I was thinking about this yesterday while walking outside and like most things it made a lot more sense in my head. I'm still practicing getting more complex ideas across via the written word so I do truly hope that I have managed it here