Climate Change Deniers Chase Out Iowa Weather Man With Death Threats, As Is Normal And Healthy And Fine

Chris Gloninger says he has PTSD from all the violent threats.

 Oh, there's nothing halfway about the Iowa way to treat you, if they treat you, which they may not do at all. 

A meteorologist has quit his job in Iowa , citing PTSD after being inundated with violent threats over his coverage of climate change.

In 2021, Chris Gloninger moved to Iowa for a job as the chief meteorologist at Des Moines news station KCCI. Previously, the New York native worked at NBC10 Boston, where he reported on weather events and hosted a weekly show on climate change and apparently did not receive any death threats at all — either because people in coastal areas understand that they are the ones who are going to have to deal with sea levels rising or because he never said anything complimentary about the Yankees.

While he was accustomed to receiving some complaints here and there from people who don't believe in climate change, a few months into his tenure at KCCI, he started receiving a series frightening emails, including at least one demanding to know what his address was. Police identified the sender as 63-year-old Danny H. Hancock of Lenox, Iowa, and ultimately fined him $150 for the threats.

Via Iowa Capital Dispatch:  

Hancock wrote to Gloninger, “Getting sick and tired of your liberal conspiracy theory on the weather, climate changes every day, always has, always will, your pushing nothing but a Biden hoax, go back to where you came from.”

A few days later, Hancock wrote to Gloninger: “You are worthless Biden puppet, a liar, a conspiracy theorist, and an idiot!!! You give Iowa a bad name, GO HOME B—-.”

A few hours after that message was sent, Hancock sent another email in which he referenced Brett Kavanaugh, an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court: “What’s your address, we conservative Iowans would like to give you an Iowan welcome you will never forget, kinda like the l—— gave JUDGE KAVANAUGH!!!!!!!” [...]

On July 15, Hancock wrote again, this time referencing Anthony Fauci, the immunologist and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who has helped lead the fight against COVID-19, and told Gloninger to “go east and drown from the ice cap melting you dumbf—!!!!!!!”

This is a very normal thing to do to one's local meteorologist.

It's not clear if Hancock's threats continued after that, but $150 doesn't really seem like enough to discourage someone who is that intent on spreading the word that climate change is an evil plot concocted by Joe Biden to ... do something? It's not entirely clear from his emails, and frankly it's always been a little unclear why the Right is so deeply disturbed by the concept of climate change to begin with. It seems like it should be something deeper than "We don't want corporations to be inconvenienced by regulations meant to keep them from destroying the planet!" if death threats are on the table, but it probably isn't.

Gloninger shared some of the emails online last year, describing how mentally exhausting it had been to deal with.

— (@)  

"Eighteen years. Seven stations. Five states. I am bidding farewell to TV to embark on a new journey dedicated to helping solve the climate crisis," Gloninger said in a statement to the Des Moines Register. "After a death threat stemming from my climate coverage last year and resulting PTSD, in addition to family health issues, I've decided to begin this journey now."

Perhaps KCCI could replace him with Jeremy Kappell, the Rochester, New York, meteorologist who was fired from his job at NBC affiliate WHEC for saying a racial slur on air and has since become far more interested in The Storm than in storms — by which I mean he is now a QAnon person. (Gloniger, coincidentally, also worked at WHEC for a time.)

Alas, if this is the Iowa way to greet a meteorologist, they may end up with no meteorologists at all, and Iowans will just have to spend their lives guessing at whether or not to bring an umbrella or a sweater.

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