How a series of unrelated photos morphed into a climate conspiracy theory. It all starts with an innocuous photo taken on January 16, 2018. The Marathon Petroleum Refinery in Canton, Ohio, conducts a flare in response to a mechanical issue. A local resident captures a blurry picture of the flare, which includes a lens flare pointing upward, and posts it on Facebook. SpaceX posts an Instagram photo of their Falcon 9 rocket launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. A windstorm in Santiago, Chile, causes an electrical transformer to explode. A resident captures the event on video, which includes a lens flare from the bright explosion, and posts the video on TikTok. A brush fire in Maui, Hawai‘i, spreads out of control, destroying the town of Lahaina. The fires caused over $5.5 billion in damages and killed more than 100 people. Soon after the fires ignite, social media posts on Instagram, TikTok, and X start to resurface these old photos of the refinery flare, the electrical explosion, and the rocket launch, attributing them as evidence of some kind of energy weapon used to ignite the Maui fire. These posts were viewed and reshared millions of times, and often wou... Read more
