People who deny climate change can sometimes be a nasty bunch, as one longtime meteorologist for an Iowa TV station found out. The ferocity of these deluded fools has made Chris Gloninger so nervous in fact, that he’s quitting his job at the station and plans to change careers. He’s received steep viewer backlash because of his “liberal conspiracy theory on the weather” and this has led him to seek treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder.

Gloninger announced Wednesday that he will leave KCCI-TV in Des Moines in July, The Washington Post reports.

This is truly sad, and there is just no level too low for some who think climate change is a hoax. Gloninger has 18 years of experience as a meteorologist and he joined the CBS affiliate in 2021. He told the Post he has been flooded with “harassing” emails calling him an “idiot” for his “liberal conspiracy theory on the weather” which had him “pushing nothing but a Biden hoax, according to the New York Post.

“I was not sleeping,” Gloninger said. “I had bags under my eyes.”

And as WaPo reports, some of the commenters asked for his address; others vowed to give him “an Iowan welcome you will never forget.” Another one of these creeps suggested Gloninger should “go east and drown from the ice cap melting.”

Lovely.

The vitriolic messages shook Gloninger, who began seeing a therapist and seeking treatment for PTSD.

Then some particularly angry messages wound up in his inbox, and he rushed out of the hair salon to home, where his wife was waiting by herself. When he arrived he suggested to her that they call the police, according to WaPo.

Fortunately, Iowa police located a man in the town of Lenox, finding that 63-year-old Danny H. Hancock was the one who sent the threatening messages.

My #climate coverage has garnered negative feedback. But last month I received the first threat, followed by a flow of harassing emails. Police are investigating. It’s mentally exhausting & at times I have NOT been ok. If you’re facing this & need someone to talk to, I’m here. 1/ pic.twitter.com/SGbZfEr1uT

— Chris Gloninger, CCM, CBM (@ChrisGloninger) July 16, 2022

The Iowa Capital Dispatch reports that Hancock was hit with a $150 fine.

Even though the person sending the messages was found and dealt with, Gloninger, who’s worked for TV stations in Rochester, New York, Albany, New York, Milwaukee, and Boston, said focusing on his job was difficult.

At his prior post at NBC 10 in Boston, Gloninger discussed how climate change was affecting the local weather, and he did the same for his job in Des Moines. In both posts he presented information by using material prepared by George Mason University professor Ed Maibach.

Maibach, as part of his Climate Matters initiative, trains weathercasters to talk about climate change, and in a profile by Washingtonian magazine, promotes “data-driven climate reporting.” That information is used by “media partners” across the country to “tell science-based stories about how climate change impacts local communities.”

And for Gloninger, the climate in Boston was friendlier.

“When I was in Boston, [I] was preaching to the choir,” he told Washingtonian.

But this sure wasn’t the case for Des Moines, which was like being “in the lion’s den.”

What’s really tragic here, is that those who deny climate change is happening are so wrong. So very, very wrong. They spend three or four hours on YouTube watching some other delusional fool and then believe they are climate experts.

Even though over 99.9 percent of peer-reviewed scientific papers reveal that anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change is occurring, according to a report from Cornell University. And NASA reports that 97.9 percent of actively publishing climate scientists believe anthropogenic climate change is occurring.

But they are only scientists, so what do they know? That dude on YouTube who also thinks Big Foot isn’t a hoax has a lot more to say about it.

So Gloninger is leaving behind a job he loves, so that he can have peace of mind. But he’s hopeful

“Yeah. I’m going to miss it,” he told WaPo. “I just hope that this is even more fulfilling than the last 18 years, my next chapter.”

In years of writing about climate change I can’t decide who is more delusional: those who continue to support Donald Trump, or those who really believe climate change is a hoax. Both are delusional and both can be, quite possibly dangerous. I hope wherever he winds up that Gloninger finds the solace he needs.