Archives for April 2021

Conspiracy theories about COVID-19 are causing real-world problems by discouraging some people from getting vaccinated, wearing masks or following other guidelines. Some bizarre theories about the virus have prompted believers to burn 5G cell towers, shut down vaccination clinics or even ingest poisons touted as cures.

Experts on misinformation and psychology interviewed by The Associated Press offer several tips for individuals wondering how to talk to friends or family who believe conspiracy theories about COVID-19. Here’s what they suggest:

LISTEN, DON’T PREACH: Believers in conspiracy theories aren’t likely to be swayed by people who mock their views. Instead of lecturing, listen and ask questions about how they became interested in the conspiracy theory, where they get their information, and whether they’ve considered other explanations. Whenever possible, have the conversation offline.

STAY CALM: Arguing with someone about conspiracy theories is likely to result only in higher blood pressure. Remember that some people won’t change their mind no matter what you say, and arguing over the proven benefits of mask wearing or vaccines isn’t likely to convince them.

CHANGE THE SUBJECT: Bring up shared experiences and interests to help the person focus on personal connections. If someone dwells on the conspiracy theory, politely say you’d rather talk about something else.

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As for increasing your own defenses against conspiracy theories and misinformation about the virus (or any other topic), experts suggest the following:

EXPAND YOUR MEDIA DIET: Checking a variety of news sources — including some mainstream local, national and international outlets — is the best way of staying informed and avoiding rabbit holes of misinformation and conspiracy theories. Don’t rely solely on social media for your news.

CHECK SOURCES: Look to see who wrote the content, and who is quoted in it. Are they named? Do they have a position, or experience, that lends credibility to their claims? Are other viewpoints expressed in the article? Be wary of claims made by “insiders,” anonymous internet posters or anyone citing hearsay as fact. Also, check the dates: Misinformation peddlers often post old photos or news stories and claim they’re new.

BE WARY OF CONTENT THAT PLAYS ON EMOTIONS: Misinformation and conspiracy theories often exploit anger, fear or other emotions. Be cautious of content that features strongly emotional language, or that seems intended to make you outraged. If you read something that really gets you fired up, wait until your emotions have cooled before reposting or sending to friends.

VERIFY EXTRAORDINARY CLAIMS: If you read something that makes an incredible claim — one that seems too good, too awful or too weird to be true — check to see if it’s being reported elsewhere. If it’s an important story, other outlets will confirm the details. Be cautious of explosive claims if they’re only being made on one website or by one social media user.

GET OFFLINE: The pandemic has been a time of heightened stress and fear for everyone, and there are many legitimate questions about the virus. Experts say healthy habits like exercise, meditation, positive relationships, volunteering and even hobbies can ease some of the dread — and make us more resistant to misinformation and conspiracy theories that exploit our fear or anger.

Copyright © 2021 . All rights reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Daniel Roberts hadn’t had a vaccination since he was 6. No boosters, no tetanus shots. His parents taught him inoculations were dangerous, and when the coronavirus arrived, they called it a hoax. The vaccine, they said, was the real threat.

So when the 29-year-old Tennessee man got his COVID-19 shot at his local Walmart last month, it felt like an achievement. A break with his past.

“Five hundred thousand people have died in this country. That’s not a hoax,” Roberts said, speaking of the conspiracy theories embraced by family and friends. “I don’t know why I didn’t believe all of it myself. I guess I chose to believe the facts.”

As the world struggles to break the grip of COVID-19, psychologists and misinformation experts are studying why the pandemic spawned so many conspiracy theories, which have led people to eschew masks, social distancing and vaccines.

They’re seeing links between beliefs in COVID-19 falsehoods and the reliance on social media as a source of news and information.

And they’re concluding COVID-19 conspiracy theories persist by providing a false sense of empowerment. By offering hidden or secretive explanations, they give the believer a feeling of control in a situation that otherwise seems random or frightening.

The findings have implications not only for pandemic response but for the next “infodemic,” a term used to describe the crisis of COVID-19 misinformation.

“We need to learn from what has happened, to make sure we can prevent it from happening the next time,” said former U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona, who served in George W. Bush’s administration. “Masks become a symbol of your political party. People are saying vaccines are useless. The average person is confused: Who do I believe?”

About 1 in 4 Americans said they believe the pandemic was “definitely” or “probably” created intentionally, according to a Pew Research Center survey from June. Other conspiracy theories focus on economic restrictions and vaccine safety. Increasingly, these baseless claims are prompting real-world problems.

In January, anti-vaccine activists forced a vaccine clinic at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles to close for a day. In Europe, dozens of cell towers burned because of bizarre claims that 5G wireless signals were triggering the infection. Elsewhere, a pharmacist destroyed vaccine doses, medical workers were attacked, and hundreds died after consuming toxins touted as cures — all because of COVID-19 falsehoods.

The most popular conspiracy theories often help people explain complicated, tumultuous events, when the truth may be too troubling to accept, according to Helen Lee Bouygues, founder and president of the Paris-based Reboot Foundation, which researches and promotes critical thinking in the internet age.

Such theories often appear after significant or frightening moments in history: the moon landing, the Sept. 11 attacks, or the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, when many found it difficult to accept that a lone, deranged gunman could kill the president. Vast conspiracies involving the CIA, the mob or others are easier to digest.

“People need big explanations for big problems, for big world events,” said John Cook, a cognitive scientist and conspiracy theory expert at Monash University in Australia. “Random explanations — like bats, or wet markets — are just psychologically unsatisfying.”

This drive is so strong, Cook said, that people often believe contradictory conspiracy theories. Roberts said his parents, for instance, initially thought COVID-19 was linked to cell towers, before deciding the virus was actually a hoax. The only explanations they didn’t entertain, he said, were the ones coming from medical experts.

Distrust of science, institutions and traditional news sources is heavily associated with stronger beliefs in conspiracy theories, as is support for pseudoscience.

Trust in American institutions has been further eroded by false statements from leaders like President Donald Trump, who repeatedly downplayed the threat of the virus, suggested bleach as a treatment, and undermined his administration’s own experts.

An analysis by Cornell University researchers determined Trump to be the greatest driver of false coronavirus claims. Studies also show conservatives are more likely to believe conspiracy theories or share COVID-19 misinformation.

Carmona said he was addressing a group of executives about the coronavirus recently when one man declared that the pandemic was created by the Chinese government and Democrats to hurt Trump’s reelection bid.

“When people start believing their own facts and rejecting anything the other side says, we’re in real trouble,” he said.

A shared distrust in American institutions has helped to unite several groups behind the banner of COVID-19 conspiracy theories. They include far-right groups upset about lockdowns and mask mandates, anti-vaccine activists and adherents of QAnon, who believe Trump is waging a secret war against a powerful cabal of satanic cannibals.

Besides gaining insight into COVID-19 conspiracy theories, researchers are thinking about what works — and what doesn’t — when it comes to talking to friends and family who have embraced baseless claims.

And they are finding possible solutions to the broader problem of online misinformation. They include stronger efforts by social media companies and new regulations.

Facebook, Twitter and other platforms have long faced criticism for allowing misinformation to flourish. They haveacted more aggressively on COVID-19 misinformation, suggesting the platforms could do more to rein in misinformation about other topics, such as climate change, Cook said.

“It shows it is a matter of will and not a matter of technical innovation,” Cook said.

Addressing our species’ attraction to conspiracy theories might be more challenging. Teaching critical thinking and media literacy in schools is essential, experts said, since the internet will only grow as a news source.

In recent years, an idea called inoculation theory has gained prominence. It involves using online games or tutorials to train people to think more critically about information.

One example: Cambridge University researchers created the online game Go Viral!, which teaches players by having them create their own misleading content.

Studies show the games increase resistance to online misinformation, but like many vaccines, the effects are temporary, leading researchers to wonder, as Cook said, “How do you give them the booster shot?”

Someday, these games might be placed as advertisements before online videos, or promoted with prizes, as a way to regularly vaccinate the public against misinformation.

“The true fix is education,” said Bouygues. “COVID has shown us how dangerous misinformation and conspiracy theories can be, and that we have a lot of work to do.”

Copyright © 2021 . All rights reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.

NEW YORK (AP) — Good-paying jobs — many of them.

That′s the seductive idea around which President Joe Biden is proposing a vast transformation of the energy sector, with the promise of making it far more energy-efficient and environmentally friendly. As Biden portrays it, his plan to invest in infrastructure — and accelerate a shift to renewable energy and electric vehicles, to more efficient homes and upgrades to the power grid — would produce jobs at least as good as the ones that might be lost in the process.

His plans call for 100% renewable energy in the power sector by 2035. To people who have devoted careers to the the fossil fuel industries, those plans may look more like a dire threat. To the president, though, out-of-work oil workers could be shifted to other jobs — plugging uncapped oil wells, for example — and thousands more positions would be created to help string power lines and build electric vehicles and their components.

“We think that’s a lot of jobs to fill, and one of the key questions is: How do we build the right skill base that can help fill those jobs?” said Matt Sigelman, CEO of Burning Glass Technologies, a labor market analytics firm.

The outlook for the energy industry’s coming decades, as Biden’s plan would have it, includes good wages and good benefits, reinforced by a revival of labor unions.

“I’m a union guy,” he said at a union training center in Pittsburgh. “I support unions, unions built the middle class, and it’s about time they started to get a piece of the action.”

A speedier transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy would hardly be as simple as longtime wildcatters transforming themselves into solar installers. So many unknowns overhang the shift toward greener energy that no one knows how the industries and its jobs will evolve in the coming years.

For one thing, many experts say the transition to electric vehicles will likely mean fewer factory workers than are now employed in producing internal combustion engines and complex transmissions. EVs have 30% to 40% fewer moving parts than vehicles that run on petroleum.

Yet economists have warned that climate change poses such a grave threat that the United States must accelerate its transition to renewable energy to ensure its economic security.

COULD GREEN-ENERGY JOBS REALLY REPLACE LOST FOSSIL-FUEL JOBS?

Even with favorable policies, it can take generations to create jobs in individual industries. During his presidency, for example, Barack Obama encouraged tax incentives for the development of solar and wind energy. That effort did achieve some progress. Yet solar and wind remain to this day small sectors of the overall energy industry.

“If you’re thinking about incentives and disincentives, it’s easy to kill something; it’s hard to create something,” said Rob Sentz, chief innovation officer at Emsi, a data analytics firm.

The renewable energy industry employed about 410,000 people in 2019, including those in the solar, wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, biomass and biofuels industries, according to Burning Glass. By comparison, employment for oil and gas alone in 2020 was 516,000 counting extraction, pipelines, refining and other elements of the industry. An additional 485,000 people were working at gas stations, though gas station jobs are technically classified as retail, according to Burning Glass.

“It’s a pipe dream to imagine that we’re going to achieve full decarbonization in a short period of time,” Sigelman said. “Jobs in the carbon economy will continue in great numbers for some time to come.”

That said, Sigelman estimates that the renewable energy industry could grow up to 22% over the next five years to a total of 465,000 jobs.

WHAT ABOUT PAY?

It depends on the type of job — and whom you ask. Many in the oil and gas industry say they fear that their wages would shrink if they transitioned to a job in renewable energy. But many economists say incomes might be comparable, whether a worker is laboring in an oil field or a wind farm.

The median annual pay of solar installers was about $44,650 in 2020, according to Emsi. For wind turbine service technicians it was about $52,100.

In the oil industry, derrick operators, rotary drill operators, service unit operators and excavating and loading machine operators earned median annual pay ranging from $44,700 to $55,000, Emsi says. The median for roustabouts and extraction work helpers was $37,000 to $39,000.

Oil and gas field service technicians earn a median of about $39,000 a year, Sigelman said. Those workers could, in theory, transition into such areas as electrical technician work, which pays roughly $25,000 more a year, or construction foreman jobs, whose median is about $27,000 more per year.

SOME JOBS SPAN THE DIVIDE

One point often missed in any debate over green energy vs. fossil fuel jobs is that the line between the two can blur. To install wind turbines, for example, you need truckers, electricians and mechanics.

“It’s the same people doing the work,” Sentz said. “You call it green, but it’s still a trucker.”

Likewise, jobs involved in installing or repairing power and transmission lines are critical to both the renewable energy and fossil fuel industries. The renewables growth that Biden envisions will need a massive buildout of transmission and power lines to deliver electricity from the solar farms and wind farms on sunny plains to energy-gulping coasts. Whether for fossil fuel or renewable projects, electrical workers who string the lines are already in demand.

The number of advertisements for job postings in the electric power distribution industry grew 35% in the past two years, Emsi says, and the number for jobs in power and communication line construction rose 63%.

“They’re having a hard time finding the people they need for the jobs they’re doing,” Sentz said.

Power line installers, in demand everywhere, earn around $72,000 a year, higher than some others in the energy sector, according to Emsi.

“Every county in the country needs them,” Sentz said.

An electrician who spent 20 years working on transmission lines for coal-fired power plants will be in high-demand when building infrastructure for renewable energy projects, and those tend to be union jobs, said Bob Keefe, executive director of E2, a nonpartisan group that advocates for policies that serve the economy and the environment.

“Stringing power lines is stringing power lines,” Keefe said. “We’re just doing it better and more efficiently and hooking them up to the right places that need it to move some of the renewable energy that we’re producing now where it needs to be.”

ARE OLD JOBS DISAPPEARING FASTER THAN NEW ONES ARE APPEARING?

It’s hard to say. The oil, gas and chemical industries lost 107,000 jobs from March to August last year, according to a Deloitte study. That occurred after the pandemic crushed demand for jet fuel and gasoline as tens of millions of people stayed home.

Coal mining jobs have been declining for years, from a high of 92,000 workers in 2011 to 52,804 in 2019, according to the Energy Information Administration.

Biden wants to spend $16 billion to put hundreds of thousands of those people back to work capping unplugged oil wells and mines. Any such spending, though, would need congressional approval, so the number of jobs that might be created remains unclear.

Offshore wind projects in the United States generated about 7,500 jobs in 2020. And projects developed off U.S. coasts are expected to produce 85,000 jobs over the next decade, though those jobs aren’t necessarily filled within the United States, according to Rystad Energy, a consulting firm. Many construction and maintenance jobs are handled outside the U.S. despite the project sites off American shores.

Meanwhile, demand grew for solar sales representatives by 70%, based on the number of job postings, and for solar installers by 56% from 2019 through 2020, according to Burning Glass. It’s unclear, though, whether the number of workers employed in such jobs increased or declined because the pandemic delayed many solar installation projects.

No one disputes, though, that it will take time for a majority of workers in the fossil fuel industries to be able to find work in renewables.

“It’s going to be incumbent on companies to help their existing workers adapt,” Sigelman said.

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AP Business Writers Christopher Rugaber in Washington and Tom Krisher in Detroit contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2021 . All rights reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.