Twitter was once a great place for science.
Specifically, it was a great place for meteorology and climate science, because it enabled real-time discussion of ongoing events which could very quickly reach the public and the media, as well as other scientists. I first became fully aware of the power of the platform in late July 2018. Amidst an ongoing heatwave in the UK, I was frustrated by the tendency for news reports to simply compare the heatwave with one in 1976 – largely missing the important context of the different background global climate for the two events.
On the evening of 22 July 2018, I posted a very simple tweet, consisting of the NASA GISS global temperature anomaly maps for June 1976 and June 2018 side-by-side. Nothing that seemed particularly innovative to me, as these maps are publicly available.
Within minutes, I noticed the tweet was ‘taking off’. By the middle of the next day, I was receiving a multitude of emails and messages from journalists asking me about the tweet and for additional quotes, in addition to requests for permission to use it in broadcasts and in print. The maps subsequently appeared in the print version of The Daily Mail on 25 July 2018 (not a newspaper exactly famed for its coverage of climate science!). Arsenal footballer, Héctor Bellerín, quote-tweeted the post. Others subsequently used the juxtaposition of 1976 and 2018 to illustrate heatwaves in a changing climate. The tweet peaked at something like 16,000 likes (which was quite a lot, back in 2018); the figure has subsequently declined, presumably due to accounts being deactivated.
My follower count ballooned. Of course, alongside the positivity, there was some negativity. At the time, it probably seemed worse than it does now, thanks to how things have deteriorated online in the following six years. As far as I recall, the comments were largely about the validity of the NASA GISS dataset, or that it wasn’t due to greenhouse gas forcing (something something Medieval Warm Period, something something), or that the conclusions of the tweet depend on the base period. Pretty tame stuff, really.
Another highlight of my time on Twitter came in 2019, when Cher tweeted about an article in The Guardian on my Nature paper showing that vertical wind shear had increased over the North Atlantic, with consequences for turbulence. If I Could Turn Back Time!
In 2022, in the build-up to the UK’s first 40°C, I tweeted a comparison of a Met Office ‘hypothetical’ forecast for the UK in 2050 with the forecast for 19 July, noting how what had looked like a hard-to-fathom forecast was now a reality (the fact that Met Office meteorologist Aidan McGivern was the forecaster in both videos was entirely coincidental, but served to enhance the visual impact). Regrettably, my tweet was interpreted by some as warming happening ‘faster than anticipated’, which wasn’t my intention (whether that is the case is not something you could glean from the tweet alone; Christidis et al. 2020 had already shown that 40°C was possible, if unlikely, in the current climate).
This tweet also ‘took off’, eclipsing the popularity of the 2018 tweet in absolute terms. Mark Ruffalo quote-tweeted it! However, the replies to this tweet – in comparison with 2018 – were often far more negative and laden with conspiracy theories.
This was also the year in which a subset of Twitter users suddenly became terrified of the colour red, accusing weather forecasters and scientists of using extreme colours to invoke fear. These replies often ‘swarmed’ onto otherwise innocuous tweets from weather centres such as BBC Weather or the Met Office, whenever the colour red appeared. In one situation, I quote-tweeted a BBC Weather post which had been ‘swarmed’, simply pointing out the ludicrous response it was getting. Perhaps this was naive on my part, because I was quickly ‘swarmed’ myself, including some more personal attacks. Needless to say, I deleted the tweet.
This was only a taste of what would come as the platform descended into deeply unpleasant chaos. Everything I posted was either swarmed with bot replies or conspiracy theorists, as was the case for many others. Eventually, I turned off replies to my tweets to save my sanity. In hindsight, I’ve realised that Musk’s rebranding of Twitter as “X” in July 2023 was the death of the original platform. Although it’s common for people to still refer to X as Twitter, they are not the same place. X is not Twitter; it just kept the same user base.
It became increasingly apparent that X was now an awful place to be. Indeed, after the introduction of paid-for ‘blue ticks’ and the promotion of these accounts by the algorithm, it became harder to actually reach people without paying a fee. I noticed engagement with my posts often seemed quite poor given I supposedly had 25,000 followers.
At first, I did not initially plan to join an alternative network, but in summer 2023, I joined Bluesky via an invite code. As quiet as it was, it seemed clear that this would be the “new Twitter” – somewhere with essentially the same user interface, no complexities (unlike Mastodon), and no tie to Meta (unlike Threads). Having faith in Bluesky’s eventual success was difficult, especially for those of us who have had great success with Twitter. Even beyond public science communication, I had successfully used Twitter to collaborate with other scientists and have published several papers through discussions which began on Twitter. Many others did too.
I ceased using X consistently in August 2024 following its clear role in spreading misinformation leading to civil unrest in some UK cities. In the last month, the uptick in Bluesky users has been remarkable, and it seems to have now emerged as ‘Twitter 2.0’. There is momentum on Bluesky; generally, the platform is just missing major organisations, which seem stuck on X. Others, including the University of St Andrews, have joined but not continued posting.
Going to Bluesky isn’t a political decision. It’s simply the culmination of years of decay on Twitter/X to a point that it isn’t fun anymore. I shouldn’t have to worry about posting a photo of some Cirrus fibratus radiatus and getting inundated with chemtrail conspiracy nuts (who sadly exist in real life, too – as I once found out on a flight from Oklahoma to LA…). Posting a map of an extreme heatwave and getting inundated with a swarm of those afraid of the colour red accusing me of fear-mongering shouldn’t be the norm. In the past, it wasn’t; this is only something which infected X/Twitter in the last few years.
Finally, it is perhaps under-appreciated outside of science how much being a scientist means ‘being criticised‘. Almost everything scientists do is critiqued by other scientists (hopefully, and usually, in a constructive manner). That’s the basis of science, and that’s what our job consists of. Scientists who use social media to communicate with the public do so out of their own personal desire to help spread knowledge and understanding. But going on a platform like X and being criticised in rather stupid ways – like being accused of adjusting data to fit some sort of narrative, or changing colour maps to scare people, or that we’re all somehow in agreement on everything just to push an agenda (which is so far from the truth… scientists can’t usually agree on anything, which is why the idea of ‘consensus’ is so powerful) – is a step too far. I realised this when I had critical comments from peer review on one of my screens, and X open on the other: the juxtaposition of valid scientific criticism with total conspiracy nonsense. As I’m sure is the case for many scientists, I only have the mental capacity for one.
And so, thank you Twitter, but it’s time to head on to bluer skies. Find me there: https://bsky.app/profile/simonleewx.com.