Naturejobs Podcast

Atmospheric scientist Katharine Hayhoe realised she was the only climate researcher in West Texas when she joined Texas Tech University in Lubbock, 15 years ago.Within a few months she was being asked to address community groups about climate change, but also a growing number of posts from social media trolls who disagreed with her, many of them misogynistic in tone.The situation has worsened since October 2022, she says. This follows amendments to Twitter’s free speech policies after the platform changed ownership.“It used to be that I would receive that hate via letters or emails, or phone calls, or official complaints to my university. And those certainly still arrive. But now the deluge of hundreds of hateful comments in a single day that the internet facilitates, whether it is on Twitter, or LinkedIn, or Facebook, or even Instagram, the volume is just 100 times more than it would be without the Internet.”Hayhoe and Chris Jackson, a geoscientist who was extensively trolled after becoming the first Black r