Pay Attention: Disinformation Dress Rehearsal for 2024 Election in Progress
Can we add a Climate Change warning label to weather forecasts?
Want to see the future as far as the 2024 election is concerned? Look around, the future is now. The disinformation strategy of the Republican Party’s presidential campaign is in full swing.
As Hurricane Milton jumped from a category One to a category Four storm, Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis was busying himself by ensuring Floridians have the right to purchase a handgun during hurricanes and refusing to accept phone calls from the vice president. (During the Trump years, it was VP Mike Pence who made the calls to politicians about disasters, by the way.)
While Republicans have feigned outrage over false allegations of FEMA misappropriating disaster funds, the DeSantis administration’s theft of $10 million from the state's emergency management agency... to traffic migrants to Massachusetts on private planes… has been conveniently forgotten.
The victims of hurricane Helene and the predicted disaster in Florida of Milton are the vehicles for this disinformation dress rehearsal, aiming to test the limits of credulity without regard for human lives, aka If they’ll believe this, they’ll believe anything.
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The situation with the early development of Milton is extraordinary. It was birthed in the Gulf of Mexico by waters pushed to 4 degrees Fahrenheit (2.2 degrees Celsius) higher than normal. This increase in temperature is the result of climate change, not some government-run entity intent on bringing chaos to a chosen few, as Congress member Marjorie Taylor Greene would like us to believe.
To give better context to how huge 1-3°C change in the Gulf of Mexico is:
A 1°C increase in surface temp would require- 6.64 × 10¹⁸ joules.
Or 105,412 Hiroshima size bombs of energy being released into it.
A 3°C increase being around 316,236 bombs.
Below is a chart from the National Oceanographic Center showing world wide changes in average ocean water temperature.
Heath Cox Richardson at Letters from an American shared an anecdote from a long-respected meteorologist:
Hurricane Milton spurred meteorologist John Morales to step forward to take a stand, sharing his thoughts after Hurricane Helene hit. “Something’s shifted,” he wrote. “And it’s not just the climate.” He noted that with Helene on the way, “I did what I’ve done during my entire 40 year career—I tried to warn people. Except that the warning was not well received by everyone. A person accused me of being a ‘climate militant,’ a suggestion that I’m embellishing extreme weather threats to drive an agenda. Another simply said that my predictions were ‘an exaggeration.’
“But it wasn’t an exaggeration,” he wrote.
“For decades I had felt in control. Not in control of the weather, of course. But in control of the message that, if my audience was prepared and well informed, I could confidently guide them through any weather threat, and we’d all make it through safely…. But no one can hide from the truth. Extreme weather events, including hurricanes, are becoming more extreme. I must communicate the growing threats from the climate crisis come hell or high water—pun intended.”
I’m not being specific about who or what originates this disinformation, but I can note the uniformity of GOP officials who have repeated its central untruths in the media.
From Politico’s Playbook this morning:
We asked Trump spokesperson KAROLINE LEAVITT if the GOP nominee felt any responsibility to tamp down the feverish false accusations coming largely from his supporters. “The only misinformation is coming from the Biden-Harris Administration,” she responded, accusing Jean-Pierre of downplaying FEMA spending on migrants. (Those funds, we’ll note, are appropriated separately from disaster relief funding by Congress.)PLAYBOOK
I can also note that Az. Sen. Mark Kelly, who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, went on Face the Nation this weekend and reported that 20-30% of falsehoods in social media are coming from one or all of three external sources: Russia, Iran and China.
The loss of life is accepted as collateral damage in this disinformation campaign. Instead of mourning the loss of life and property of natural disasters (enhanced by the overheated waters of the Gulf of Mexico), the aim is to portray both the survivors and fatalities as victims of… whatever imagined evil entity people are inclined to believe.
Antisemites can blame the Jews; libertarians can blame the government; the weak minded will blame the illuminati, evangelists will point to a vengeful higher power, and Republicans will blame the current administration, or some combination thereof.
Via the Washington Post:
Top officials in North Carolina and at the Federal Emergency Management Agency responding to Helene are being subjected to a flurry of antisemitic attacks, causing some of them to fear for their safety as they prepare for another hurricane to strike Florida.
The attacks, which include wild claims that Jewish officials are conspiring to orchestrate the disasters, sabotage the recovery or even seize victims’ property, are being fomented largely on Elon Musk’s X. Antisemitic tropes have commingled on the site with false rumors and conspiracy theories amid the chaos of the recovery effort, according to a report released Tuesday by the nonprofit Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD).
The online vitriol is compounding the challenges facing emergency management officials dealing with the aftermath of Helene and readying a response to Milton, a Category 5 hurricane barreling toward Florida. The volume and virulence of the X posts have dismayed experts who warn that they risk undermining lifesaving response measures.
Two aspects of this induced anger/confusion are dehumanizing the people trying to provide disaster relief and undermining people’s willingness to trust the federal government. The heightened sense of paranoia that accompanies those features will come in handy as the BIG LIE, Version 2024 is rolled out over the next few months.
Just as forecasters have predicted the paths of these tropical behemoths, the intended victims of the wall of shit coming their way are doing what they can to get prepared.
The Associated Press reported today that officials are especially concerned about disinformation in the aftermath of election day.
It’s a threat taken seriously by intelligence analysts, elected officials and tech executives, who say that while there’s already been a steady buildup of disinformation and influence operations, the worst may be yet to come.
“It’s not like at the end of election night, particularly assuming how close this election will be, that this will be over,” said Sen. Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee. “One of my greatest concerns is the level of misinformation, disinformation that may come from our adversaries after the polls close could actually be as significant as anything that happens up to the closing of the polls.”
Analysts are blunter, warning that a particularly effective piece of disinformation could be devastating to public confidence in the election if spread in the hours after the polls close, and if the group behind the campaign knows to target a particularly important swing state or voting bloc.
Every service provider on the ground and in DC, along with many (Republican!) elected officials have rolled out their own version of fact checking. Some are smart enough to lead with reality and intentions, others are sucked into the trap of repeating falsehoods before presenting their message. Disinformation is still getting the lion’s share of social media attention.
While the Hurricane disinformation occupies officials, candidate Trump is laying the groundwork for his next bout of election denialism, as described in the New York Times:
Trump’s allies have all but acknowledged that his fixation on the 2020 election, which he has falsely maintained was marred by fraud, is a political liability. It was just a week ago on the debate stage that Senator JD Vance, his running mate, tried to avoid a question about whether Trump had actually lost the election, saying that he preferred to focus on the future; two days later, Harris and her most prominent Republican supporter, former Representative Liz Cheney, campaigned together in Wisconsin and called Trump a threat to democracy.
But here in Juneau, as he does nearly everywhere, Trump railed about the last election and made dark warnings about the next one.
“They’re going to cheat. They cheat. That’s all they want to do is cheat, and when you see this, it’s the only way they’re going to win,” Trump said. “And we can’t let that happen and we can’t let it happen again.”
Remember:
Misinformation is false or inaccurate information-“getting the facts wrong”
Disinformation is false information which is deliberately intended to mislead-“intentionally misstating the facts.”
On the other side of the Atlantic, another system (Karl) is about to enter the history books, as it’s predicted to be the first ever to keep tropical storm wind speed and hurricane features through France and into Germany.
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Tuesday’s Other News to Think About
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The book also contains new details about Trump’s relationship with the Russian president. In 2020, Woodward writes, Trump had “secretly sent Putin a bunch of Abbott Point of Care Covid test machines for his personal use.”
During the height of the pandemic, Russia and the United States did exchange medical equipment such as ventilators. But Putin — who infamously isolated himself over fears of Covid — told Trump on a phone call to keep the delivery of the Abbott machines quiet, Woodward reports.
“Please don’t tell anybody you sent these to me,” Putin said to Trump, according to Woodward. “I don’t care,” Trump replied. “Fine.”
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New Ridership Record for San Diego Public Transit Reached During 2024 Free Ride Day by Brooke Binkowski at Times of San Diego
The annual event recorded more than 340,000 passenger trips on their systems.
For MTS, the preliminary ridership numbers represent a 15.4% increase in ridership compared to the previous week’s daily average, the highest single-day ridership, and the first to break 300,000 riders since the pandemic began in 2020.
NCTD saw a 28% increase in ridership compared to the Wednesday prior. On the COASTER, NCTD recorded the highest daily ridership since the start of the pandemic.
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Excellent once again, Doug. Thank you.