9 ms·

Brazil's catastrophic weather spawns spate of conspiracy theories

58 points by saikatsg 2y ago

anonzzzies 2y ago
Somewhat relevant recommended read: https://books.google.pt/books?id=gtU3EAAAQBAJ https://books.google.pt/books?id=gtU3EAAAQBAJ
croes 2y ago
Interesting how people believe some chemicals in the atmosphere could cause storms and floods but at the same time deny the possibility that much more carbon dioxide could change the climate.
- PorterBHall 2y ago
  I think what fuels a lot of conspiracy thinking is an emotional preference in having a nefarious actor or government agency controlling or causing a problem than realizing no one is in control. The Devil is less frightening than entropy.
- jenadine 2y ago
  Carbon dioxide is a chemical in the atmosphere :-)
  - QuadmasterXLII 2y ago
    This is what the refrance
- prox 2y ago
  Because cause and effect need to be simple? Lots of people tune out when it comes to science. Also the outgroup in this case is science/scientists.
  - ben_w 2y ago
    There is a climate-changing chemical released by aircraft as they fly overhead — it's called "carbon dioxide". It's just, (a) CO2 is invisible, and (b) CO2 being this chemical is politically unacceptable to people who make money selling carbon rich fuels and also to people who are currently unable to switch to a different power supply.
    - ZeroGravitas 2y ago
      The contrails also have a climate effect via cloud formation. https://iee.psu.edu/news/podcast/growing-impact-contrails-and-climate-change https://iee.psu.edu/news/podcast/growing-impact-contrails-an... This was in the news recently as Google removed this aspect from its flight GHG impact estimate as it was averaging over all flights, and intends to adjust it in future so that flights at the time of day that create contrails will have more GHG impact attributed to them.
  - whstl 2y ago
    IMO the people who tune out from all science at least remain neutral. The problem is the people who spent half their day reading and sharing fake scientific articles. Those are not really "tuning out".
  - Barrin92 2y ago
    >Because cause and effect need to be simple? There's nothing simple about about government agencies and weather manipulating satellites though. It seems like the reality is the exact opposite. Science is way too boring and simple for most people, and unlike conspiracy theories science doesn't absolve you of responsibility. Therefore those people will rather invent 500 pages of crackpot lore rather than take a high school chemistry or math class.
- ajuc 2y ago
  I have a friend like that. He has M.A. in computer science, is pretty smart overall, but believes all the dumbest conspiracy theories, including the contrails one. It's fascinating and scary at the same time. It's what happens when you do motivated thinking for decades. He believes in all the alt-right crap about "gender ideology", "fake climate change", "fake pandemic", etc. He just completely ignores any data that contradicts what he thinks. In middle school he "just" disliked gays and was pretty normal overall. Now there's no subject on which you can talk with him without some batshit insane views. A big part of this is splinters of American culture war that spreads over the rest of the world as a side-effect. I can understand why some people in US think cancel culture and wokeness went too far. But then you have people repeating the same "antiwoke" alt-right points imported from USA in countries where you go to jail for criticizing Catholic Church and president together with main bishop go on anti-gay hate campaigns on state TV. And somehow it's still the alt-right that fights for "free speech", when they have no problem with "go to jail for blasphemy" laws. Once you buy into this culture war and decide you're on one side - you interpret all new data accordingly. So you cannot believe in climate change, cause that's what leftists do. So if you see climate change - it's because NWO causes it with contrails. Trump is your guy cause he hates gays. So if he does things that benefit Russia - it's his brilliant plan to deal with Putin that you simply can't understand yet. Always add more hidden variables that make your worldview consistent.
  - namaria 2y ago
    > in countries where you go to jail for criticizing Catholic Church I'm yet to hear of such a country. Aren't you thinking of lese majesté laws that some countries like Spain and the Netherlands have?
    - pineaux 2y ago
      No-one in at least a century has been sent to jail for criticizing the church in holland; and especially not the Catholic church.
      - namaria 2y ago
- gonzo41 2y ago
  I find describing Climate change is easier when you explain it like milk going bad. You can have milk that's old and fine, and then bang, the next night it's bad in a big way. The change in that milk was happening all along, it just took the right amount of time to get past that tipping point, then things got really bad. A LOT of the CC talk in the media is too complex, abstract and focuses on engineering or financial concepts that many people don't really grapple with day to day. TV shows like Clarksons Farm are better at conveying the complexity of the changes.
  - Scarblac 2y ago
    I explain it using clouds. Most people know that a clear sky at night means it cools off a lot more than when there are clouds. The effect of CO2 in the atmosphere is less than that, but it's always there. The amount can be measured with CO2 meters, and it's going up. You just don't see the cloud because CO2 is transparent.
  - Scarblac 2y ago
    I explain it using clouds. Most people know that a clear sky at night means it cools off a lot more than when there are clouds. The effect of CO2 in the atmosphere is less than that, but it's always there. You just don't see the cloud because CO2 is transparent.
- agilob 2y ago
  People discuss human-made antennas placed in Alaska changing their weather, but can't comprehend that cutting down forests and burning coal can have an impact too.
  - achenet 2y ago
    at least there is a bit of poetic justice here: the people suffering for this stupidity are the people responsible for it <3 of course, being stupid,they refuse to call themselves into question, which blocks them from changing their behavior, which will lead to more suffering on their part...
    - airstrike 2y ago
      I think we're all suffering
    - llamaimperative 2y ago
      Everyone is harmed by this, both directly and indirectly like via mass migrations and economic disruption. It’s good for everyone if the Floridians can stay in Florida.
    - meiraleal 2y ago
      Although I'm completely against their political view, our whole country is bleeding and helping the south go through it. There's no poetic justice in tragedy.
- cess11 2y ago
  Many feel that it's scary when there's no obvious telos to catastrophic or dangerous events, and the direct weather manipulation technique that's in use pretty much consists of putting chemicals in clouds: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_seeding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_seeding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Popeye https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Popeye
  - yard2010 2y ago
    I wonder what kind of stories people made after Pompeii.. Though back then it was easy, you could just say god
    - cess11 2y ago
      Don't know much about it, except that Pliny the Younger wrote some eyewitness account and that Josephus mentions it briefly. I'd guess it wasn't very interesting to dwell on since pretty much everyone affected died.
- jasonvorhe 2y ago
  You're not actually arguing against weather modification and cloud seeding being real, are you? Cloud seeding has been done since the 50s and it's been suspected of being able to cause floods for quite some time: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1219-rain-making-linked-to-killer-flood/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1219-rain-making-link... I mean, sure, maybe HAARP is bs, what do I know, but ruling out cloud seeding and weather modification techniques such as stratospheric aerosol injection is borderline ignorant and ignoring science.
  - brabel 2y ago
    If I understand correctly, the massive flood in Dubai was directly caused by their rain-seeding program, right? Hope I didn't buy into some conspiracy theory :D but I read somewhere that they have been seeding rains over Dubai for many years.
    - Mo3 2y ago
      They've been doing that for years, yeah. Media said it wasn't related
      - jasonvorhe 2y ago
        Always trust the fact checkers.
    - jl6 2y ago
      It was probably unrelated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Persian_Gulf_floods#Cloud_seeding_allegations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Persian_Gulf_floods#Cloud...
H8crilA 2y ago
Has anyone been to the HAARP research facility in Alaska? As a part time radio nerd I'd love to visit it. Also, did they discover something "big" there? From reading the Wikipedia page I can roughly tell what were they trying to do, but it feels like they "merely" optimized existing comms setups, especially for HF and lower frequencies, then handed it back to the local university.
anileated 2y ago
Climate change denial/misattribution that has been taking place across South America in recent years was analyzed in this paper from 2023: https://www.purpose.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Report_Misinforming-Latin-America_ENGLISH.pdf https://www.purpose.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Report_Mi...
Springtime 2y ago
I wouldn't expect a site like phys.org to try this (and I appreciate the coverage here) but I sometimes wonder if similar articles elsewhere expect to achieve a goal of changing minds of those holding the positions they express are problematic, rather than just providing some news and talking points for an audience expected to already understand and agree with a publication's positions. Since the audience that would benefit the most from actually having their minds changed are (in my experience) already used to hearing the 'normal' positions on these things but have decided to trust a different position more, though various means including familiarity and those who connect more with their state of mind at the time. It's not that such people are necessarily even 'so far gone' to be impenetrable either. I find many publications that do anything from casual to more robust debunking don't appear to be attempting to communicate with the audience who believe these things, so they write in a voice that is already beginning from a typically condescending place in the assumption their audience is already aligned with their position. I suppose the expectation is those people will then be the horizontal conduits. I've debunked various things on more personal levels with people but not by linking debunking articles as I haven't found disdain helps at all but rather understanding and then bridging what led to their position and more context that may clarify certain things (also tbf this is more a comment about many other articles I see, rather than phys' quite reasonable tone).
- mc32 2y ago
  Interestingly, Someone at the gov attempting to dispel these theories, skirts them as well: Raquel Recuero… said the conspiracy theories were likely being spread by organized groups "in search of an audience, monetization and influence." So, no certainty, just possibly, but why not put it out there?
  - achenet 2y ago
    yeah that's nice that you point out the irony in 'official' sources blaming an organized group. To my mind... I do think there is truth to the idea that if you're trying to make money in media (media = newspapers, television, internet), getting people's attention is more important than telling the truth. From what I understand and have experienced, popular 'news' television channels (Fox News in the USA, for example) do not give their audiences well thought-out, nuanced analysis of what's happening, but rather push a very "us vs them, it's all their fault, get angry" mentality, because that gets them more eyeballs for advertisers. It seems possible that social media influencers in Brazil have found that pushing the narrative of "it's the US government's fault" is more lucrative than "well, maybe we shouldn't cut down all those trees?" however, I do agree that there is no reason a priori to assume they're acting together, and that this is anything more than a side effect of incentives created by social media algorithms.
1oooqooq 2y ago
truth is much simpler. this region is like the Netherlands, it requires protection against back flood when rains change course of rivers. simple small dams. this region have been governed by workers party since forever. zero floods. well, small ones that overridden the dams. last extreme right elections put an extreme right government in that region since a long time. zero maintenance on "fake climate change" things. this is the result. it's one hundred percent like Texas power grid. hence why the right wing sock puppet accounts are pushing flat earth level disinformation. reality is always more boring. and as always, if you even acknowledge the nonsense, the trolls win.
- pineaux 2y ago
  This
- cassianoleal 2y ago
  > this region have been governed by workers party since forever. Not quite. The state of Rio Grande do Sul had 2 PT (Worker's Party) Governors: Olívio Dutra (1999-2003) and Tarso Genro (2011-2015). RS's capital city Porto Alegre had a much longer PT administration (Starting with Olívio Dutra in 1989, ending with João Verle in 2005). > zero floods. well, small ones that overridden the dams Fine, but there hasn't been this much water, and especially condensed in this small period of a few days, since ... well, I imagine always. Even the previous record flood of 1941 in Porto Alegre was due to 22 days of rain. This took about 3 or 4. > last extreme right elections put an extreme right government in that region I'm not sure I'd call Eduardo Leite (current and previous State Governor) extreme right. That said, he's a typical liberal, and as such he likes to defund the State. He decreased public spending in civil protection by 90% from last year. And that's after last year also saw floodings and cyclones. If you're talking about the Porto Alegre administration, I would maybe agree with the "extreme right" label on the current mayor, Sebastião Melo. Previous right-wing mayors have been mostly regular conservatives and/or regular liberals. Still right, still bad, but not quite Bolsonaro bad (though at least some are Bolsonaro supporters). --- I came across a document from Porto Alegre's administration in 1992 [0] (first time with the Worker's Party in office, under the always thoughtful and overly intelligent Olívio Dutra) where they do an extensive analysis of the anti-flood systems in place, options on how to improve them and how important participation of civil society is in these processes. Back then we had the world's first Participatory Budget [1] in place. In the document, the administration acknowledges that sanitation and flood prevention were not among their main flags during the election campaign, but the people voted and the administration started working on it. This is how democracy should work IMO. It's not perfect but it's way better than simply voting to put people in office. Unfortunately it's been all but dismantled after PT left the administration. [0] https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/y02s8cvxf6qts3ktgc70q/PREVENIR-O-MELHOR-REM-DIO.pdf?rlkey=eqfzhu1pmxx6x288fskhtihy0&st=2tfc9iu1&dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/y02s8cvxf6qts3ktgc70q/PREVENI... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_budgeting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_budgeting
diego_moita 2y ago
I only wish people would stop calling these "conspiracy theories" and would begin calling it "stupid political tribalism". The truth of the matter is that these stupidities are politically motivated. People saying this bullshit are the ones that deliberately want to dismiss the reality of global warming. And they will keep on overlooking evidence and speculate on the most lunatic way possible into disaster.
- lobocinza 2y ago
  True but every coin has two sides. The other side of climate change denialists is ecoauthoritarianism. There are people inserting climate change in every discussion, spreading fear and using climate change as an excuse to increase governments powers and promote authoritarianism. Climate changes make the weather more wild and unpredictable but it's not 100% the cause behind every weather phenoma. This region, Porto Alegre, experienced floodings in 1873, 1897, 1905, 1912, 1914, 1926, 1928, 1936, 1941. In 1941 anti-floodings systems where built which prevented flooding for almost a century. I don't think the magnitude of the record flooding that is happening this year could be predicted though certainly lenience towards weather phenomena mitigation is a prevalent trend in Brazil. https://www.correiodopovo.com.br/especial/conhe%C3%A7a-a-hist%C3%B3ria-de-oito-grandes-inunda%C3%A7%C3%B5es-em-porto-alegre-antes-de-1941-1.1391807 https://www.correiodopovo.com.br/especial/conhe%C3%A7a-a-his...
forinti 2y ago
The agricultural sector wants to keep fighting environmental legislation. It might seem stupid, but even though Rio Grande do Sul has lost about 50% of this year's soy harvest, you can be sure that farmers will be bailed out by the government. And so if you put the blame on anything other than the degradation of the environment, you can keep justifying chopping down more forests right up to the margins of rivers.
frank_bb 2y ago
[dead]
beauzero 2y ago
Anecdotal. Watching ag day for years, the amount of large scale farming in the central South American region has increased significantly. Expect increased runoff and decreased natural cooling from old growth forests. Not saying other things aren't a factor but as we see many farms in the US returning to cover crops in the off season for soil amendment, sand dams in Africa for water capture...we will need to find practices that help central and south South America find their balance.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

58 points by saikatsg 2y ago

Somewhat relevant recommended read: https://books.google.pt/books?id=gtU3EAAAQBAJ https://books.google.pt/books?id=gtU3EAAAQBAJ

croes 2y ago

Interesting how people believe some chemicals in the atmosphere could cause storms and floods but at the same time deny the possibility that much more carbon dioxide could change the climate.

PorterBHall 2y ago
I think what fuels a lot of conspiracy thinking is an emotional preference in having a nefarious actor or government agency controlling or causing a problem than realizing no one is in control. The Devil is less frightening than entropy.
jenadine 2y ago
Carbon dioxide is a chemical in the atmosphere :-)
- QuadmasterXLII 2y ago
  This is what the refrance
prox 2y ago
Because cause and effect need to be simple? Lots of people tune out when it comes to science. Also the outgroup in this case is science/scientists.
- ben_w 2y ago
  There is a climate-changing chemical released by aircraft as they fly overhead — it's called "carbon dioxide". It's just, (a) CO2 is invisible, and (b) CO2 being this chemical is politically unacceptable to people who make money selling carbon rich fuels and also to people who are currently unable to switch to a different power supply.
  - ZeroGravitas 2y ago
    The contrails also have a climate effect via cloud formation. https://iee.psu.edu/news/podcast/growing-impact-contrails-and-climate-change https://iee.psu.edu/news/podcast/growing-impact-contrails-an... This was in the news recently as Google removed this aspect from its flight GHG impact estimate as it was averaging over all flights, and intends to adjust it in future so that flights at the time of day that create contrails will have more GHG impact attributed to them.
- whstl 2y ago
  IMO the people who tune out from all science at least remain neutral. The problem is the people who spent half their day reading and sharing fake scientific articles. Those are not really "tuning out".
- Barrin92 2y ago
  >Because cause and effect need to be simple? There's nothing simple about about government agencies and weather manipulating satellites though. It seems like the reality is the exact opposite. Science is way too boring and simple for most people, and unlike conspiracy theories science doesn't absolve you of responsibility. Therefore those people will rather invent 500 pages of crackpot lore rather than take a high school chemistry or math class.
ajuc 2y ago
I have a friend like that. He has M.A. in computer science, is pretty smart overall, but believes all the dumbest conspiracy theories, including the contrails one. It's fascinating and scary at the same time. It's what happens when you do motivated thinking for decades. He believes in all the alt-right crap about "gender ideology", "fake climate change", "fake pandemic", etc. He just completely ignores any data that contradicts what he thinks. In middle school he "just" disliked gays and was pretty normal overall. Now there's no subject on which you can talk with him without some batshit insane views. A big part of this is splinters of American culture war that spreads over the rest of the world as a side-effect. I can understand why some people in US think cancel culture and wokeness went too far. But then you have people repeating the same "antiwoke" alt-right points imported from USA in countries where you go to jail for criticizing Catholic Church and president together with main bishop go on anti-gay hate campaigns on state TV. And somehow it's still the alt-right that fights for "free speech", when they have no problem with "go to jail for blasphemy" laws. Once you buy into this culture war and decide you're on one side - you interpret all new data accordingly. So you cannot believe in climate change, cause that's what leftists do. So if you see climate change - it's because NWO causes it with contrails. Trump is your guy cause he hates gays. So if he does things that benefit Russia - it's his brilliant plan to deal with Putin that you simply can't understand yet. Always add more hidden variables that make your worldview consistent.
- namaria 2y ago
  > in countries where you go to jail for criticizing Catholic Church I'm yet to hear of such a country. Aren't you thinking of lese majesté laws that some countries like Spain and the Netherlands have?
  - pineaux 2y ago
    No-one in at least a century has been sent to jail for criticizing the church in holland; and especially not the Catholic church.
    - namaria 2y ago
gonzo41 2y ago
I find describing Climate change is easier when you explain it like milk going bad. You can have milk that's old and fine, and then bang, the next night it's bad in a big way. The change in that milk was happening all along, it just took the right amount of time to get past that tipping point, then things got really bad. A LOT of the CC talk in the media is too complex, abstract and focuses on engineering or financial concepts that many people don't really grapple with day to day. TV shows like Clarksons Farm are better at conveying the complexity of the changes.
- Scarblac 2y ago
  I explain it using clouds. Most people know that a clear sky at night means it cools off a lot more than when there are clouds. The effect of CO2 in the atmosphere is less than that, but it's always there. The amount can be measured with CO2 meters, and it's going up. You just don't see the cloud because CO2 is transparent.
- Scarblac 2y ago
  I explain it using clouds. Most people know that a clear sky at night means it cools off a lot more than when there are clouds. The effect of CO2 in the atmosphere is less than that, but it's always there. You just don't see the cloud because CO2 is transparent.
agilob 2y ago
People discuss human-made antennas placed in Alaska changing their weather, but can't comprehend that cutting down forests and burning coal can have an impact too.
- achenet 2y ago
  at least there is a bit of poetic justice here: the people suffering for this stupidity are the people responsible for it <3 of course, being stupid,they refuse to call themselves into question, which blocks them from changing their behavior, which will lead to more suffering on their part...
  - airstrike 2y ago
    I think we're all suffering
  - llamaimperative 2y ago
    Everyone is harmed by this, both directly and indirectly like via mass migrations and economic disruption. It’s good for everyone if the Floridians can stay in Florida.
  - meiraleal 2y ago
    Although I'm completely against their political view, our whole country is bleeding and helping the south go through it. There's no poetic justice in tragedy.
cess11 2y ago
Many feel that it's scary when there's no obvious telos to catastrophic or dangerous events, and the direct weather manipulation technique that's in use pretty much consists of putting chemicals in clouds: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_seeding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_seeding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Popeye https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Popeye
- yard2010 2y ago
  I wonder what kind of stories people made after Pompeii.. Though back then it was easy, you could just say god
  - cess11 2y ago
    Don't know much about it, except that Pliny the Younger wrote some eyewitness account and that Josephus mentions it briefly. I'd guess it wasn't very interesting to dwell on since pretty much everyone affected died.
jasonvorhe 2y ago
You're not actually arguing against weather modification and cloud seeding being real, are you? Cloud seeding has been done since the 50s and it's been suspected of being able to cause floods for quite some time: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1219-rain-making-linked-to-killer-flood/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1219-rain-making-link... I mean, sure, maybe HAARP is bs, what do I know, but ruling out cloud seeding and weather modification techniques such as stratospheric aerosol injection is borderline ignorant and ignoring science.
- brabel 2y ago
  If I understand correctly, the massive flood in Dubai was directly caused by their rain-seeding program, right? Hope I didn't buy into some conspiracy theory :D but I read somewhere that they have been seeding rains over Dubai for many years.
  - Mo3 2y ago
    They've been doing that for years, yeah. Media said it wasn't related
    - jasonvorhe 2y ago
      Always trust the fact checkers.
  - jl6 2y ago
    It was probably unrelated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Persian_Gulf_floods#Cloud_seeding_allegations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Persian_Gulf_floods#Cloud...

H8crilA 2y ago

Has anyone been to the HAARP research facility in Alaska? As a part time radio nerd I'd love to visit it. Also, did they discover something "big" there? From reading the Wikipedia page I can roughly tell what were they trying to do, but it feels like they "merely" optimized existing comms setups, especially for HF and lower frequencies, then handed it back to the local university.

anileated 2y ago

Climate change denial/misattribution that has been taking place across South America in recent years was analyzed in this paper from 2023: https://www.purpose.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Report_Misinforming-Latin-America_ENGLISH.pdf https://www.purpose.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Report_Mi...

Springtime 2y ago

I wouldn't expect a site like phys.org to try this (and I appreciate the coverage here) but I sometimes wonder if similar articles elsewhere expect to achieve a goal of changing minds of those holding the positions they express are problematic, rather than just providing some news and talking points for an audience expected to already understand and agree with a publication's positions. Since the audience that would benefit the most from actually having their minds changed are (in my experience) already used to hearing the 'normal' positions on these things but have decided to trust a different position more, though various means including familiarity and those who connect more with their state of mind at the time. It's not that such people are necessarily even 'so far gone' to be impenetrable either. I find many publications that do anything from casual to more robust debunking don't appear to be attempting to communicate with the audience who believe these things, so they write in a voice that is already beginning from a typically condescending place in the assumption their audience is already aligned with their position. I suppose the expectation is those people will then be the horizontal conduits. I've debunked various things on more personal levels with people but not by linking debunking articles as I haven't found disdain helps at all but rather understanding and then bridging what led to their position and more context that may clarify certain things (also tbf this is more a comment about many other articles I see, rather than phys' quite reasonable tone).

mc32 2y ago
Interestingly, Someone at the gov attempting to dispel these theories, skirts them as well: Raquel Recuero… said the conspiracy theories were likely being spread by organized groups "in search of an audience, monetization and influence." So, no certainty, just possibly, but why not put it out there?
- achenet 2y ago
  yeah that's nice that you point out the irony in 'official' sources blaming an organized group. To my mind... I do think there is truth to the idea that if you're trying to make money in media (media = newspapers, television, internet), getting people's attention is more important than telling the truth. From what I understand and have experienced, popular 'news' television channels (Fox News in the USA, for example) do not give their audiences well thought-out, nuanced analysis of what's happening, but rather push a very "us vs them, it's all their fault, get angry" mentality, because that gets them more eyeballs for advertisers. It seems possible that social media influencers in Brazil have found that pushing the narrative of "it's the US government's fault" is more lucrative than "well, maybe we shouldn't cut down all those trees?" however, I do agree that there is no reason a priori to assume they're acting together, and that this is anything more than a side effect of incentives created by social media algorithms.

1oooqooq 2y ago

truth is much simpler. this region is like the Netherlands, it requires protection against back flood when rains change course of rivers. simple small dams. this region have been governed by workers party since forever. zero floods. well, small ones that overridden the dams. last extreme right elections put an extreme right government in that region since a long time. zero maintenance on "fake climate change" things. this is the result. it's one hundred percent like Texas power grid. hence why the right wing sock puppet accounts are pushing flat earth level disinformation. reality is always more boring. and as always, if you even acknowledge the nonsense, the trolls win.

pineaux 2y ago
This
cassianoleal 2y ago
> this region have been governed by workers party since forever. Not quite. The state of Rio Grande do Sul had 2 PT (Worker's Party) Governors: Olívio Dutra (1999-2003) and Tarso Genro (2011-2015). RS's capital city Porto Alegre had a much longer PT administration (Starting with Olívio Dutra in 1989, ending with João Verle in 2005). > zero floods. well, small ones that overridden the dams Fine, but there hasn't been this much water, and especially condensed in this small period of a few days, since ... well, I imagine always. Even the previous record flood of 1941 in Porto Alegre was due to 22 days of rain. This took about 3 or 4. > last extreme right elections put an extreme right government in that region I'm not sure I'd call Eduardo Leite (current and previous State Governor) extreme right. That said, he's a typical liberal, and as such he likes to defund the State. He decreased public spending in civil protection by 90% from last year. And that's after last year also saw floodings and cyclones. If you're talking about the Porto Alegre administration, I would maybe agree with the "extreme right" label on the current mayor, Sebastião Melo. Previous right-wing mayors have been mostly regular conservatives and/or regular liberals. Still right, still bad, but not quite Bolsonaro bad (though at least some are Bolsonaro supporters). --- I came across a document from Porto Alegre's administration in 1992 [0] (first time with the Worker's Party in office, under the always thoughtful and overly intelligent Olívio Dutra) where they do an extensive analysis of the anti-flood systems in place, options on how to improve them and how important participation of civil society is in these processes. Back then we had the world's first Participatory Budget [1] in place. In the document, the administration acknowledges that sanitation and flood prevention were not among their main flags during the election campaign, but the people voted and the administration started working on it. This is how democracy should work IMO. It's not perfect but it's way better than simply voting to put people in office. Unfortunately it's been all but dismantled after PT left the administration. [0] https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/y02s8cvxf6qts3ktgc70q/PREVENIR-O-MELHOR-REM-DIO.pdf?rlkey=eqfzhu1pmxx6x288fskhtihy0&st=2tfc9iu1&dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/y02s8cvxf6qts3ktgc70q/PREVENI... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_budgeting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_budgeting

diego_moita 2y ago

I only wish people would stop calling these "conspiracy theories" and would begin calling it "stupid political tribalism". The truth of the matter is that these stupidities are politically motivated. People saying this bullshit are the ones that deliberately want to dismiss the reality of global warming. And they will keep on overlooking evidence and speculate on the most lunatic way possible into disaster.

lobocinza 2y ago
True but every coin has two sides. The other side of climate change denialists is ecoauthoritarianism. There are people inserting climate change in every discussion, spreading fear and using climate change as an excuse to increase governments powers and promote authoritarianism. Climate changes make the weather more wild and unpredictable but it's not 100% the cause behind every weather phenoma. This region, Porto Alegre, experienced floodings in 1873, 1897, 1905, 1912, 1914, 1926, 1928, 1936, 1941. In 1941 anti-floodings systems where built which prevented flooding for almost a century. I don't think the magnitude of the record flooding that is happening this year could be predicted though certainly lenience towards weather phenomena mitigation is a prevalent trend in Brazil. https://www.correiodopovo.com.br/especial/conhe%C3%A7a-a-hist%C3%B3ria-de-oito-grandes-inunda%C3%A7%C3%B5es-em-porto-alegre-antes-de-1941-1.1391807 https://www.correiodopovo.com.br/especial/conhe%C3%A7a-a-his...

forinti 2y ago

The agricultural sector wants to keep fighting environmental legislation. It might seem stupid, but even though Rio Grande do Sul has lost about 50% of this year's soy harvest, you can be sure that farmers will be bailed out by the government. And so if you put the blame on anything other than the degradation of the environment, you can keep justifying chopping down more forests right up to the margins of rivers.

frank_bb 2y ago

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beauzero 2y ago

Anecdotal. Watching ag day for years, the amount of large scale farming in the central South American region has increased significantly. Expect increased runoff and decreased natural cooling from old growth forests. Not saying other things aren't a factor but as we see many farms in the US returning to cover crops in the off season for soil amendment, sand dams in Africa for water capture...we will need to find practices that help central and south South America find their balance.

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