Wednesday, October 30, 2024

Disaster misinformation is here to stay

Rumors and conspiracy theories run riot

Today's newsletter considers how misinformation snowballed in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, and why the same thing could happen during the next US disaster. You can read the full story online at Bloomberg.com. 

Later, read how near-record heat from Boston to Philadelphia will be impacting trick-or-treating this year. For more of our climate change coverage, please subscribe

Understanding the misinformation spike after Helene

By Zahra Hirji 

In September 2018, I was in North Carolina riding out Hurricane Florence and reporting on its impacts. For a few days, I embedded with a FEMA rescue team stationed at Hope Mills Recreation Center near Fayetteville, accompanying emergency responders as they evacuated a senior center in the middle of the night and touring flooded neighborhoods by day.

There were some false rumors circulating online at the time, including one about flooding at a nuclear power plant (it didn't happen) and another about service animals not being allowed in shelters (they were allowed). This was mostly what experts call "misinformation," or information coming from people who have their facts wrong and aren't trying to deceive. Such claims hadn't registered much with the people I interviewed.

Six years later, I watched from afar as Helene hit a different part of North Carolina. It quickly became clear that something very different was happening online, with potentially massive implications on the ground. 

A woman mounts a flag to a stack of cinderblocks in the aftermath of flooding from Hurricane Helene in Swannanoa, North Carolina, on Oct. 6, 2024.  Photographer: Mario Tama/Getty Images North America

On social media there was a surge of misinformation, as well as disinformation — when the intent of the person or people making the claim is to harm. The debunked or unsubstantiated claims were largely about the government's response to Helene, including that it was withholding aid to Republican communities and that FEMA was limiting assistance to $750 per family. Russian state media promoted some of these claims. They were amplified offline by conservative voices on the radio and TV, and at Donald Trump's rallies by the former president himself.

But what wasn't immediately clear to me in my office in Washington, DC, was why this was happening, what it meant for the recovery and if this was going to be a new normal for disasters. So weather reporter Lauren Rosenthal and I started making calls to emergency responders and disinformation experts.

Everyone seemed to agree the upcoming presidential election was one reason why North Carolina, a key swing state, was especially targeted with a large volume of falsehoods. They also said the rumors were hampering the recovery in an unprecedented way.

For example, as workers with FEMA were setting up temporary housing in a park in Boone, North Carolina, after Helene ripped through the town, there was a backlash among some locals: "We had folks that were literally protesting FEMA out at the site," says Tim Futrelle, Boone's mayor. Nearby in Swannanoa, there were rumors that officials were covering up the true death toll from the storm. The deputy fire chief took to Facebook, begging the public to stop sharing "sensationalized" information.

Members of the FEMA Urban Search and Rescue Task Force search a flood-damaged area in Asheville, North Carolina.  Photographer: Mario Tama/Getty Images North America

FEMA launched a rumor page on its website, a step it also took with Florence. "It's making sure that we're communicating the facts right," says Jaclyn Rothenberg, the agency's director of public affairs. The agency is deliberate about which pieces of misinformation it chooses to respond to and tries to find "the right balance in terms of not [giving] it more oxygen," she explains. The White House also stepped in, holding press briefings with FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell and launching a Reddit account for fact checks and updates.

These efforts were bolstered by North Carolina politicians, including Governor Roy Cooper, a Democrat, and US Representative Chuck Edwards and State Senator Kevin Corbin, both Republicans.

"You had a fire line of truth that cut across political lines, and that was helpful," says Zeb Smathers, mayor of Canton, North Carolina.

But that still wasn't enough to keep the situation from boiling over. In Rutherford County, police arrested a man for allegedly threatening to hurt FEMA workers. After that, Sheriff Aaron Ellenburg says, armed deputies were guarding FEMA staff as they helped storm survivors fill out paperwork to receive financial aid.

It's clear that emergency responders aren't ready to combat this level of misinformation and disinformation on a regular basis. And a big takeaway from our reporting is that this likely wasn't a one-off.

"It's a supply and a demand-side issue," says Jennie King, director of climate disinformation research and policy at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a nonprofit that advocates for policies to fight extremism. "Yes, there are people who are flooding the zone with deliberate false and misleading content," King says. But there's also strong demand for what they're supplying — "a desire among the general public to consume this kind of content."

—With Lauren Rosenthal

Read the full story on Bloomberg.com.

Keeping us up at night

5%
People worldwide lost this much more sleep due to high nighttime temperatures over the past five years, compared with the period between 1986 and 2005, according to the latest edition of the Lancet's study of climate and health.

Too scary to believe 

"People who are confronted with something incredibly scary often deny it. That is a protective mechanism that people engage in, probably unconsciously. Because it protects them from greater grief."
Stephan Lewandowsky
Chair in cognitive psychology at the University of Bristol
Climate denial can be a form of self-preservation for some people, according to Lewandowsky. Extreme weather is driving some of this behavior online.

Halloween is getting hotter 

For generations, trick-or-treaters across much of the US have faced a dilemma: wear a jacket and ruin the effect of their costume, or forgo the coat and freeze. But this year's Halloween across much of the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast will be different with near-record heat forecast from Philadelphia to New York to Boston.

A family trick-or-treating in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Photographer: Jemal Countess/Getty Images

"I went to a Halloween party this weekend and one of our friends was wearing one of those inflatable suits. They said, 'It's actually pretty nice in here with the fan blowing on me,'" says Torry Dooley, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Boston, which is expected to reach 81F (27C) on Halloween. "So maybe you just need to wear one of those."

The unusually warm Halloween reaffirms that climate change is not a future problem but a present one. Nationwide, fall temperatures have warmed an average of 2.5F since 1970, according to data from Climate Central. Nights have warmed even faster, particularly in the Northeast. New York City and Boston have seen October nighttime temperatures rise 4F while Philadelphia's October nights have warmed nearly 6F since 1970.

Read the full story on Bloomberg.com

More from Green

As electric car sales pick up pace far from the US coasts, a wave of new fast-charging stations coming online from the Rust Belt down to the Deep South.

Roughly 600 quick-turn stations switched on in the third quarter across the US, a 7% increase from the end of June, according to a Bloomberg Green analysis of Department of Energy data. There are now nearly 9,000 public, fast-charging sites in the US, and their proliferation has only quickened.

For the year to date, the number of fast-charging options in the US has grown by 35% over the year-earlier period. At that rate, quick-turn stations will number roughly 11,600 by the end of the year — roughly one electron station for every 10 US gas stations.

Worth a listen

As Republican and Democratic canvassers make their final push to get out the US vote, the famed tech investor Vinod Khosla has been making the case for Vice President Kamala Harris with a very specific audience in mind: Elon Musk. On the social media platform owned by his fellow billionaire, Khosla has pressed the case in a series of X posts that former President Donald Trump is the wrong candidate for the future of the planet. Although Khosla is a former Republican, he says in an interview that he will be voting for Harris. But he doesn't expect tech investors to see much fallout no matter who wins. "I don't think there'll be any difference in policy between the two when it comes to tech."

Listen now, and subscribe on Apple,  Spotify, or YouTube to get new episodes of Zero every Thursday.

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