Opinion | How climate science and conspiracy has become embedded within the culture war: The polarising response to Hurricane Milton
By Anna Dodd, Third Year, English
In the shadow of Hurricane Milton, political polarisation and conspiracy theories have arisen in regards to climate change and weather manipulation.
Within an increasingly divided and tumultuous political terrain, it is getting more difficult to be surprised by the extremity of opinions being shared online. Ever since Elon Musk infamously took over Twitter, now known as X, in the name of ‘free speech’ in 2022, the platform has been rampant with conspiracy, aggressive rhetoric and right-wing propaganda. The polarising reaction to the natural disasters the US experienced last month, has proven that nothing is safe from the hands of ‘truthers’ on the internet, not even the weather. Seeing the response to these events online compels us to wonder: when did science become political?
Hurricane Milton hit the west coast of Florida last month, becoming the second most intense Atlantic hurricane on record over the Gulf of Mexico, and is likely to be the strongest tropical cyclone of 2024. Just two weeks before, Hurricane Helene swept across six states of the US, collectively causing the deaths of more than 200 people, and evicting thousands more from their homes. These consecutive national disasters happened to fall in the middle of a charged election campaign, and thus became swept up within the ongoing ‘culture war.’ This phrase can refer to any form of cultural conflict between social groups who are attempting to impose their particular political ideology into the mainstream. However, in recent years this has become a buzzword largely used to describe arguments over identity politics and social justice movements. Matthew d’Acona explains that this phenomenon has become increasingly more potent in the last twenty years due to the ‘declining trust in institutions that were meant to hold together the cohesion of society’ as well as the development of technologies that enable and encourage people to cluster in cultural groups within online communities.
For Alex Jones, a notorious conspiracy theorist who was infamously sued over his claims about the Sandy Hook shooting, weather weapons are old news. Jones has been promoting the idea that the government have the power to install meteorological events where they see fit, for years now. He was quoted in 2013 discussing the origin of the Texan floods, asserting that ‘it was the Air Force.’ However, in the midst of Donald Trump’s election campaign, conspiracies of this nature were exceedingly amped up in the Republican party’s best interests. It is notable that one of the hurricanes coincidently hit the swing state of North Carolina, and this fact was manipulated in the Right’s favour to attest the storm was employed by the US government as a distraction tactic, to ‘steal’ the election from Trump. This implication was supported by Marjorie Taylor Greene, who was reelected as a member of Congress last week, who tweeted ‘Yes they can control the weather. It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.’
The fact that government officials are promoting these beliefs, and conspiracy theories have so viscerally entered the mainstream, no longer being reserved for niche online spaces, is objectively concerning. Alex Jones has largely become a figure of ridicule in the mainstream within the last 10 years, but this does not make the conspiracy theories he promotes any less threatening. Having successfully secured his second term in office, the leader of one of the most powerful nations in the world is a man who has declared climate change to be ‘one of the greatest scams of all time’ in a recent Pennsylvania rally. Researchers at Imperial College London revealed that Hurricane Milton was massively intensified by warm sea temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico. Their investigations concluded that in a hypothetical world without climate change, ‘a Milton-type Category 3 hurricane would instead [have] made landfall as a weaker Category 2 hurricane.’ Therefore, almost half of the economic damage caused by Milton and Helene can be attributed to climate change, which should be cause for grave concern, however, is currently being treated as a non-issue by politicians, including Trump.
In the aftermath of the violent hurricanes and a correspondingly turbulent election year, it is hard to say how much both the storms themselves, and the conspiracies that followed affected Trump’s win, but what it can lead us to consider more broadly, is the dangers of science becoming wrapped up in politics. The psychology behind promoting and believing conspiracy theories is straightforward; it makes us feel good to know something others don’t, to be part of a secret circle of individuals who all the know the truth, looking onto the clueless outsiders, ultimately giving us control in an increasingly unstable plane of existence. But I’d be willing to consider another, more terrifying reason to so fiercely promote and believe such theories, specifically when they concern something like the weather. The belief in weather manipulation/weapons indicates that someone is in charge; this is human doing, and therefore something can be done about it. The other option is actually far more emotionally difficult to comprehend and manage. Science tells us we are systematically destroying our planet, and we don’t have the will or political backing to stop it, and this reality is in fact far scarier and therefore harder to accept as true. As Brian Klaas acknowledges, ‘unfortunately, humanity has been cursed with brains instinctively tantalised by secret narratives, hidden stories, and grand conspiracies.’ Whilst this certainly isn’t the only reason why key figures of the right are rejecting science, specifically in relation to their response to Milton, it can provide insight into the psychology of conspiracy, which ultimately seems to be working in their favour.
The internet in the 21st century has become its own hurricane; a storm of misinformation, lies and conspiracy. As we are catapulted into Trump’s second term; the future feels uncertain. It is likely that conspiracy theories, not just concerning science, are only going to get more extreme as polarising online spaces become more divided, not to mention the impact AI generated content may have. This is a danger facing both the left and the right, with the rise of reliance on curated social media feeds and podcasts for news. To combat this, media literacy is crucial and this is a challenge Gen-Z and generations to come will have to address.