Shutting down Leviathan

Is it just me, or has the quality of the conspiracy theories really been dropping off lately?

I mean, back in the day, you had your Moon-landing-was-a-hoax theory, your 9/11-was-an-inside-job theory, your Flat-Earth theory, your Egyptian-pyramids-were-built-by-aliens theory, and your microchips-in-vaccines theory.  (Not that these have gone away, or anything; but their provenance isn't new.)  Those, at least, had some panache, not to mention a conscious decision to look science and evidence directly in the face and say, "I reject your reality and substitute my own."

The topic comes up because of a link sent to me by a loyal reader of Skeptophilia, which references the enormous winter storm that blasted its way through the eastern half of North America a few days ago.  Here in my home village in upstate New York we got about fifteen centimeters of snow -- less than the predictions had suggested -- so enough to shut things down for a day, and after that leaving most of us saying, "Eh, we've had worse."  The bulk of the snow hit the south-central states, which are ill-equipped to deal with it.  Some people are still without power, and considering the bitter cold that followed in the storm's wake, this is a serious matter.

So: a bad storm, but not that far outside the norm.  It seems to have gone farther south than the typical winter storm track because of the weakening of the polar vortex, which triggered deep meanders in the steering currents -- a predicted outcome of anthropogenic climate change.  Which is why Donald Trump's hardy-har-harring over at Untruth Social about "Where is global warming?" is catastrophically stupid even by his standards.  Someone probably should mention to him that (1) it's winter here in the Northern Hemisphere so it snows sometimes, (2), as any ninth grader taking Earth Science could tell you, weather ≠ climate, and (3) it's summer in the Southern Hemisphere, and Australia is currently experiencing a devastating and record-setting heat wave.  (Okay, that last one is weather, too, but hell, sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, as my grandma used to say.)

Not that it would make a difference.  He seems to be strangely fact-proof, at least where the facts are inconvenient to his only concerns, which are making money, taking revenge on people who criticize him, and staying in power.

Anyhow, explaining the storm through natural processes apparently isn't good enough for some people, so they had to come up with a better idea.  And here, by "a better idea" I mean "an explanation that would only sound plausible to someone who had two pounds of LaffyTaffy where most of us have a brain."

You ready?

Off the coast of Virginia, there is a huge sea monster that has begun to awaken.  It may or may not be the dragon-like creature Leviathan mentioned in the Book of Job, chapter 41.  On the other hand, it might be one of the minions of Cthulhu.  Or possibly a sea-going relative of the Loch Ness Monster.

Or all three.

Screenshot of a Facebook post about the "Leviathan theory," which apparently is being taken seriously by people who should not be allowed to go outside unaccompanied

Now, the United States of 'Murika isn't gonna put up with enormous sea monsters threatening its coastline, so the crack Weather Modification Team at (choose one: NASA, the DHS, the National Weather Service, the CIA, or HAARP) got right on the job.  (Yes, I know, HAARP is located in Alaska, and hasn't been under federal control for ten years.  Stop asking questions.)  So the Team manufactured an enormous snowstorm to freeze the creature and prevent it from wreaking havoc.

And it worked!  I mean, have you seen any enormous sea monsters lately?  Q.E.D.

To most of us, this kind of thinking makes zero sense.  But honestly, there's a reason it keeps cropping up.  It seems like when bad things happen, even a far-fetched explanation can be more appealing than just shrugging and saying, "The universe is a chaotic place sometimes."  

In an interview in Vox, social psychologist Jan-Willem van Prooijen, of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, agrees. "[Conspiracy theories are] a tool to explain reality," van Prooijen said.  "We can’t always know or understand everything that happens to us.  When people are uncertain about change — when they lose their jobs, or when a terrorist strike or a natural disaster has occurred — then people have a tendency to want to understand what happened, and also a tendency to assume the worst.  It’s a self-protective mechanism people have.  This combination of trying to make sense and assuming the worst often leads to conspiracy theories."

This means, van Prooijen said, that during unstable times, we should expect conspiracy theories to sprout up like mushrooms after a rainstorm.  "They’re particularly likely to flourish in times of collective uncertainty in society.  Particularly after high-profile incidents that imply a sudden change in society or a sudden change in reality in a threatening way.  Think 9/11, but also think of disease outbreaks [or] long-term threats like an economic crisis or climate change."

And I think -- regardless of which side of the aisle you happen to be on -- you'll agree that we do live in a time of "collective uncertainty."  So while it's easy to make fun of the people who come up with this stuff -- and I've certainly done my share of snort-laughing about how ridiculous it can get -- from the standpoint of human psychology, it's exactly what we should expect.

For me, though, I'd rather actually understand what's going on than make shit up just to have a convenient scapegoat.  I'm no more fond of a chaotic model for the universe than anyone else; like all of us, I struggle with explaining why bad things happen, especially when good people fall victim to them.  But at some point, you just have to accept that you don't understand everything.  For a lot of people, they can find solace in placing their understanding in the care of a deity; if God has a plan, they say, maybe they don't need to comprehend it.

Me, I've never been able to get there.  Shit happens, you know?  And that, more or less, is that.  We have an inborn tendency to cast around for comforting answers whenever we're confronted with something outside our wheelhouse, but having a desire for an answer doesn't imply that one exists.  To me it's more honest to fall back on the trenchant words of astronomer Carl Sagan: "For me, it is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring."

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Aftermath of the storm

The biggest winter storm yet this season has spun its way out into the north Atlantic, after burying parts of the northeast under as much as four feet of snow, and this has activated two groups of people.

The first is the cadre of folks who don't understand meteorology, and think that multi-variable analysis of winds, surface and upper atmosphere temperatures, air moisture content, and pressure gradients should give you predictions of snowfall totals accurate to five significant figures.  You have your people who got more snow than they thought they were going to, inconveniencing their lives (clearly the weather forecasters' fault), and the ones who got less than they feared, causing them to batten down the hatches unnecessarily (again, blame the forecasters).

"I want that job!" one person commented.  "Half right half the time, no better than guessing, and they still get paid."

I dunno.  Considering that Long Island, most of Boston and Providence, and coastal Maine are still digging themselves out, the forecasters did pretty damn well.  We'd have experienced a tad more inconvenience, don't you think, if we hadn't had any warning that the storm was coming?

Aftermath of Winter Storm Juno in New York [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

But worse than the scoffers is the group of people who think that "it gets cold in winter" is equivalent to "climate change isn't real."  These include Donald Trump:

This very expensive GLOBAL WARMING bullshit has got to stop.  Our planet is freezing, record low temps, and our GW scientists are stuck in ice.

Amazing that someone could pack so much nonsense into two sentences.  First of all, "global warming" hasn't been "very expensive" yet, because we haven't done a fucking thing about it, mostly because our leaders are still arguing over whether it exists.  The planet's not freezing, nor are we experiencing "record low temps;" in fact, 2014 was the hottest year on record.  And you'd think Trump himself would be nice and warm, considering the dead possum he wears on his head.

Then there's RedState.com's Erick Erickson, who added a religious filagree to the whole thing with the following baffling statement:

The difference between people who believe in the 2nd coming of Jesus and those who believe in global warming is that Jesus will return.

Maybe if Jesus does return, he could explain to these mental midgets the difference between "weather" and "climate."

Then there's Fox Business's Stuart Varney, who apparently not only doesn't know the difference between weather and climate, but doesn't understand the Law of Conservation of Mass.  A recent study found that Antarctic sea ice was increasing in volume, and Varney says that because of this, we should be "looking at global cooling, not global warming" -- neglecting the fact that Antarctica is losing continental ice faster than it's gaining sea ice, meaning that there's a net loss.  (And even the gain in sea ice was predicted by climate change models; it's due to warmer air temperatures, higher humidity, and higher precipitation in the form of snowfall.)

But no such spew of foolishness would be complete without Rush Limbaugh weighing in.  Every time his name comes up, I marvel that anyone is still listening to this bloviating gas bag, but apparently enough people are that he's still on the air.  And here's his take on the weather:

I can't tell you the number of times a record or major snow storm has been forecast -- this year alone -- I was just trying to think last night, trying to recall a couple of instances where they forecast something that is going to be really, really bad, and it hasn't even come close to being, not even close to bad, much less really, really bad. And not just in New York but elsewhere around the country. It's been a horrible, horrible year for forecasts. And the reason is, if i can cut to the quick, the left has corrupted everything. Just like the left has corrupted the professoriate, the faculty at major institutions of higher learning, the left has populated all of these bureaucracies. The Department of Commerce runs the National Weather Service, and do not believe that they're not politicized.

So now the weather has a liberal bias?

What earthly reason would liberals (or anyone else, for that matter) have for exaggerating storm impacts?  Oh, wait, I forgot; the left wants to destroy America.  Because, um, bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, that's why.  So they bring major cities along the East Coast to their knees with warnings about a nonexistent winter storm, so as to accomplish their evil goals.  And then... the storm shows up, pretty much right on target, bringing the cities even more to their knees.  Faked 'em out, didn't they!  Ha!

That's how evil those liberals are.

Maybe the liberals even created the storm, you think?  Using their commie pinko leftist snow-making machines, imported directly from the Soviet Union.  (Yes, I know the Soviet Union doesn't exist any more.  Shush, I'm on a roll.)  Who knows what they'll do next?  Maybe this year they'll use their Tornado-making Machine to send tornadoes to Kansas, and their Hurricane-making Machine to launch hurricanes at the Gulf Coast, thereby sending these areas exactly the kind of weather they usually get.

Now that's some first-class evil.

Look, as I've mentioned before, I'm really not very political myself.  I'm a science nerd, not a political science wonk.  I'm much happier wearing my lab coat and my black plastic-framed glasses with electrical tape around the middle than I am discussing policy.  So although I don't much care what you believe in terms of politics, I can say with some authority that we all need to stop believing the talking heads like Rush Limbaugh and Erick Erickson and Donald "Scalp Possum" Trump, and start listening to the scientists.  They may not be 100% accurate, but their models and predictions are a damn sight better than they were even ten years ago.

On the other hand, maybe it's just easier to wait until a really hot day this summer, and point out that if a snowy day in winter disproves climate change, then a hot day in summer proves it.  If that's the kind of logic that works with these people, it's worth trying.

It's a little like the guy who is asked by his friend to go behind his car and see if the turn signal is working, and yells back, "Yes.  No.  Yes.  No.  Yes.  No."