Took me 5 hours to fact check a 2 sentence claim about sea levels from a viral climate post

3 comments

3 Comments

Man, that is painfully relatable (and honestly, it happens way more than people admit). My go-to now is to just screenshot the claim and paste it into a quick search, then scan the first two or three results for something from NOAA or a university study. Saved me hours compared to reading the whole original source. At some point you learn that a lot of these viral posts are built on one cherry-picked stat that falls apart if you just look at the full context.

dylan46325d ago

Throw a screenshot of a NOAA map into a group chat and watch three people immediately argue that it's fake because "Big Weather" wants to sell umbrellas or something. Had a coworker last month swear on her life that a meme showing a snowstorm in July was real just because the font looked official. It's honestly wild how one quick search can save you from being the guy who shows up to work ready to evacuate for a storm that's currently sitting harmless over the Atlantic.

troyknight25d ago

Man, exactly. I had a buddy fall for one of those "hurricane tracker" posts last year that was just a screenshot from a random blog, and he was ready to board up his windows. I told him to just look up the actual NOAA advisory and he found out the storm was nowhere near the coast. He spends way more time fact-checking now after that scare.

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