October 7, 2016 - "On Thursday afternoon, while Hurricane Matthew was still over the Bahamas, the political commentator and news aggregator tweeted skepticism about the dire warnings of weather forecasters.
"The deplorables," he wrote, referring to supporters of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, "are starting to wonder if [the government] has been lying to them about Hurricane Matthew intensity to make exaggerated point on climate."
The tweet (and a similarly dismissive article on his site the Drudge Report) was quickly lambasted as irresponsible: Suggesting that the storm wasn't that dangerous might convince people that there was no need to evacuate, leaving them at risk from the storm's effects.
But the political conspiracy at the heart of the idea is also worth calling out. Drudge, like the presidential candidate he supports, is prone to assuming that there's a broad conspiracy of political actors working to hide the truth from the American people.
In this case Drudge's idea (offered in another tweet) is that meteorologists and scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Hurricane Center were producing exaggerated data to make the threat of climate change seem worse. That data includes things like wind-speed measurements from sensors all over the Caribbean and on the Florida coast. The data look like this, and are made publicly available for analysis. Those measurements help provide future predictions and estimates, like this one. The predictions on Thursday were for high-speed gusts, not sustained winds; Florida so far seems to have gotten lucky, in that the eyewall — where winds are fastest — has remained offshore.
It's natural that Drudge's assumption would be that someone was hyping a threat for political purposes. That's what Drudge does nearly every day."
This site uses cookies to help personalise content, tailor your experience and to keep you logged in if you register.
By continuing to use this site, you are consenting to our use of cookies.
"Ratt Sludge", priceless!
