Seabed images misrepresented to spread Hurricane Milton conspiracy theories
- Published on October 16, 2024 at 21:27
- 5 min read
- By Manon JACOB, AFP USA
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"What did I just see under the water in FL," says an October 8, 2024 post from Stew Peters, a far-right radio host who has previously spread numerous false and misleading claims on a wide array of topics.
The video, which shows someone zooming in on Google Maps satellite imagery near Florida, has circulated across social media in multiple languages, including Spanish, debunked by AFP, here. The video concludes with an underwater scene showing divers working on assorted structures on the ocean floor.
Deadly hurricanes Helene and Milton slammed the United States in September and October, triggering a torrent of conspiracy theories from politicians and social media users about weather control and election interference -- many of which AFP has debunked. Scientists say geoengineering could not have triggered such massive storms.
Claims of an underwater weather control station are also baseless.
Peters's post stems from a TikTok clip published March 25 and viewed more than 17 million times.
Using a keyword search on Google Street View, AFP found the area shown in the video is located near the Florida Keys (archived here), where marine scientists operate several coral nurseries.
"According to our experts, this is a coral nursery," John Leslie, a spokesman for the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Office of Communications for Satellites, told AFP on October 15.
Such nurseries rehabilitate small parts of damaged corals to encourage reef regrowth. After some time in the nursery, the new, healthy colonies are transplanted back to degraded areas of the reef, NOAA's Office of Response and Restoration says on its website (archived here).
(AFP / LUIS ACOSTA)
No technology
NOAA says on its website that while some hurricane modification research was conducted between the 1960s and 1980s, it was later abandoned after proving ineffective (archived here).
Christopher Rozoff, a project scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (archived here), previously told AFP that while methods such as "cloud seeding" (archived here) can help increase rain and snow by introducing ice particles to certain clouds, they cannot affect major storms.
"We're talking about minuscule changes, like very small changes from turning a cloud into a little bit of extra precipitation," he said October 7.
(AFP / Cléa PÉCULIER, Sophie RAMIS)
Jayantha Obeysekera, director of the Sea Level Solutions Center at Florida International University (archived here), agreed.
"There is not much you can do in terms of weather manipulation or geoengineering," he said October 7. "We just need to focus on mitigation and help reduce warming globally."
Climate impact
Scientists have warned that supercharged storms are the result of warmer ocean temperatures. Such storms, also amplified by warmer air, can potentially impact inland areas in addition to coastal regions that have historically been in the path of destruction.
The World Weather Attribution (WWA) group said in an October 11 statement (archived here) that "without climate change Milton would have made landfall as a Category 2 instead of a Category 3 storm."
Atmospheric warming is responsible for stronger winds and rainfalls, according to the scientific research agency.
Milton's explosive growth from Category 1 to Category 5 in a matter of hours "was driven and sustained by the very high sea surface temperatures in the Gulf," the group said.
Read more of AFP's climate misinformation coverage here.
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