You may have noticed over the past few months that I frequently read the Globe & Mail online newspaper. According to the hundreds of comments received by most articles and columns, many others read it too.
The ability to publicly (and instantly) comment on the posted specials, articles and columns is one of the highlights of most online news sites. Some of the biggest online news sites (The New York Times, CTV, The National Post, The Globe and Mail) consistently receive thousands of comments daily. The Globe & Mail actually touts this ability in some of its advertisements, using cartoon bantering heads to showcase the comment area as an intellectual forum of sorts.
I used to think that there was a positive correlation between the number of comments received and the importance or relevance of an article. Often, this may be the case. However, when reading the increasingly common articles on climate change (and this phenomenon is not unique to climate change) I have come to realize that the commenting space is less of an intellectual forum and more of a politically-charged open house for skeptics.
Prior to the federal election in 2008, Stephane Dion's plan for a national carbon tax received much media attention and more comments online than I had ever seen. While going through many of the articles for some research, it became apparent that the majority of comments were from anti-climate change folks, who preached a business-first chorus and were often full out deniers of human beings' influence on climate changes. Some even denied the existence of climate change, offering up unfounded or inaccurate evidence for their beliefs.
However, at that point there were still some people who tried to have a reasonable discussion, skeptic or not. But since then, the number of comments from people wishing to have an open forum or even promote good climate change policy has significantly declined.
It's not a particularly surprising turn of events, considering the level of conversation taken by the skeptics. Rather than trying to talk with someone, they often (and I only marginally generalize) talk at them and ignore any view other than their own. This could also be said of the non-skeptics, but as the evidence crushing down skeptics' beliefs increases, the non-skeptic tends to warrant much greater credibility. Many probably feel it is a futile effort to try to have a decent discussion on the comment section, so no decent comments are actually left anymore.
The views held by the comment-dominating skeptics were once those of the world's policymakers and more importantly, shared by the general public. But these skeptical views are becoming less and less popular and are often dismissed for a variety of justified reasons. As a result, the extreme end of these views can only be found in the smallest, darkest pockets of popular media. Unfortunately, they're poisoning the wonderfully ideal notion of an online intellectual forum.
If you're looking for a decent laugh, I highly recommend a quick tour through some of the online comments received by the major news media articles on climate change.
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