Enemies of Reason Poundshop potshots at the media moral maze.

The BBC’s Have Your Say Messageboards are a crock of shit

I can't even bear to look at the BBC's Have Your Say messageboards sometimes. I find them harder to look at than the Hate Mail's - at least there you know you're somewhere that reactionaries, idiots and racist cunts go to spit a bit of foaming hatred and wallow in ignorance. With the BBC - this supposedly liberal-left entity - I'd expect something a bit more reasoned. Yet its messageboards are constantly full of utter shit. What's going on?

Today's topic on the messageboards of hate is climate change. It's a subject about which the scientific community is largely in agreement, though of course there are dissenting voices, which is entirely healthy. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has produced millions of words on climate change, all backed up by peer-reviewed scientific articles.

What do the BBC's Have Your Say nutters think about that then? The most recommended comments are these:

"If you say a lie loud enough and long enough people will eventually believe it to be true" - Joseph Goebbles

That is as true when spoken as it is today

People seem to have lost all their senses and latched on to this new quasi religion of "environmentalism"and how we must repent for our sins at its alter

The climate IS changing, just as it always has done and will do in the future

The Earths climate and eco-systems have never stayed still and are always in a state of flux

The Guv'nor, Wirral

Let's leave aside the terrible grammar and appalling spelling. He's just some bloke off the internet, after all. The climate IS changing, he says. Yes, I think we can all agree on that. He just decides that it's nothing to do with mankind, it's just some process that we've got nothing to do with. Great! Stick another lump of coal on the fire then... and the evidence for this is? Nothing! Brilliant! Just some nutter's opinion on the internet. Have Your Say gold.

Next:

No, a new climate change deal will have no effect on global climate. The causes of climate change are entirely natural. I challenge true believers in MMGW to look up the facts. The human contribution to the greenhouse effect is about 0.28%. Man-made CO2 accounts for a little over 0.1%. It is INSIGNIFICANT. Even if we could completely eliminate human CO2 emissions (impossible) it would have no impact on global climate. MMGW is about politics, not science.

[redgerly], Grand Rapids, United States

Ah now here's someone who has tried to put some science in. The "0.28%" is the first hit on Google. I'm not saying that's what he did. I'm sure he researched it a lot more thoroughly than that. MMGW is about politics - what politics is this? Explain yourself! Oh no, he hasn't. Well never mind, I'll recommend this fucking numpty!

World Population Control, why does nobody talk about this in Bali.
50% reductions in carbon footprints will be just about useless if we increase the world population by 50% in the next 40 years Emmisions and world population go hand in hand and it is about time the short sighted leaders of this world faced up to the fact.

Peter Mccann, Stavanger, Norway

That is a decent enough point. So can we have something stupid please?

So, what is the carbon footprint of this 'well attended jolly' in Bali?

Farcical.

Swiss Hawk, Interlaken, Switzerland

Yeah, that told them! They're all like hypocrites and that, right kids?

No, it won't work, because climate change is and always has been an entirely natural phenomenon, both on Earth and on uninhabited planets. CO2 rises follow temperature rises, NOT the other way round.

King Canute knew he couldn't turn back the tide, but the likes of Al Gore and Ban Ki-moon lack his modesty - they're so arrogant that they think puny mankind can control the might of nature.

Andrew, Buxton, Derbyshire

Uninhabited planets? Whoa there boy! What the hell are you on about? Other planets have the same atmosphere as ours, do they? We can't control nature... hmm well I would say that since the industrial revolution we've had a bloody good go at it.

Hopefully not. This Man-Made Climate Change charade has gone on long enough. Let's adapt - like we always have.

Max Sceptic, Stratford-upon-Avon

From Stratford-upon-Avon, which was flooded this year. Let's hope this prick 'adapts' when he's underwater next summer again.

"Will a new climate change deal work?"

If damaging the economies of the developed world, hampering the ability of third world nations to rise out of poverty and having no effect on climate change is your definition of work, then yes it will.

Aussie Pride, Cronulla, Australia

Damaging the third world - how? I think that was the whole reason there was a debate about population v emissions. But maybe I'm wrong...

The whole thing is a scam.

King Kong

Yes, 82 people recommended that. 82 people thought that someone calling himself 'King Kong' dismissing the entirety of Bali, the IPCC and climate change as a 'scam' was worthy of a recommendation. More people recommended that comment than this one below:

The human contribution to the greenhouse effect is about 0.28%. Man-made CO2 accounts for a little over 0.1%. It is INSIGNIFICANT.
[redgerly]

I'm doing a degree in geoscience, im no expert yet, but, all that shows is that MMGW deniers have a complete lack of understanding of climate change and the greenhouse effect. Its not surprising its very complicated and cannot be explained or dismissed useing soundbites. But people aren't being asked to make an accademic decision, just a lifestyle one.

And this one.

"The human contribution to the greenhouse effect is about 0.28%. Man-made CO2 accounts for a little over 0.1%."--Redgerly

Completely false. Atmospheric CO2 increases are correlated with human CO2 emissions, and have increased from 315 ppm in 1958 to 390 ppm in 2006--an increase of 24%, almost all of which is attributable to CO2 emissions. Ice cores indicate consistent levels around 280 for thousands of years before the industrial revolution. Get your facts straight!

John Wendt

Welcome to Web 2.0. It says something about the contempt with which journalism is held that people prefer to get their information from reactionary twerps on messageboards than journalists who've checked their facts.

The BBC's Have Your Say is consistently full of reactionary rubbish. The Menenzes shooting boards - disabled now by the BBC, though I may try to find them in an archive somewhere - were an utter disgrace, with reader after reader saying that he had run away from police and vaulted the barriers at the tube station - things which no-one, not even the police, says now. Yet these were the 'most recommended' comments. What the hell does that say about the integrity of HYS? People can lie on there, and that's all right, because it's interactivity in action? Do the BBC just turn a blind eye to the lies, or to the hijacking of discussions by the usual bunch of extremist 'send them back' idiots, because this is Web 2.0 and we can't do anything about it?

The problem with these messageboards is that they're there for opinions - when people start weighing in with 'facts', these can be just made up, or only part of the story. You're allowed to say pretty much anything you want, with complete bullshit to back it up, and no-one's any the wiser.

And anyone can have their say, from the numpty to the slightly less numpty. Imagine a letters page in a newspaper that said 'feed him to the pigs' or called for Asians born in Britain to be 'deported' or 'sent back'. It's impossible. Newspapers, for all their faults, give a shit about printing these things on a page, and even the right-wing press shies away from putting such vitriol into ink. Yet when it's a website... away you go, sunshine! Say anything you want on our pages!

But the thing is... it's on a BBC website, a Daily Mail page. You're putting your name to it. You might put your clever little legal disclaimers on there, but you're responsible for publishing these things. If you print lie after lie after lie, racist rubbish and reactionary shit, and you do it time after time, these people will start to congregate around you like flies on shit. What are you going to do about that? Nothing. They keep on coming. They don't represent the readership of the BBC, I'm pretty sure of that, but they flood the comments pages with their views. Must people with a brain have to keep reading this shit to counter all their arguments?

There's something quite apt about the climate change opinions on HYS. Many of those on the BBC, the most popular, state that there's nothing we can do, it's just nature, we can't touch it, let's just wash our hands of it. That tends to be the opinion that new media people have towards the hijacking of their discussions by far-right groups and liars. What can we do? It's Web 2.0 and if you try to say anything against it then you're condemned as a Luddite and a denier of progress. 'Just because they don't agree with you...' they say. Well, no. Just because they're frequently racist liars. And interactivity is not about letting those that shout the loudest have the biggest say. Yet that's what happens. Let the idiots and fools have their say! Squeeze out the space for reasoned opinions backed up by facts... open the floodgates to ignorant twats with an agenda. Crush any debate. Let 'King Kong' join the panel on climate change, he's certainly got the right idea!

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