Coal Comment Chicanery

On Monday March 2nd, I was one of thousands of activists marching in slow solidarity down a snowy street in Washington DC to the coal-fired power plant that heats the Capitol dome. As we surrounded the carbon-belching plant, color coded contingents broke off and positioned themselves in front of every single entrance to the plant. We stood our ground for four hours before peacefully dispersing with no arrests.

It was the single biggest display of united Americans against dirty energy in the history of our democracy. This is what democracy looks like.

When I got home thirty-six hours later, I immediately went to my computer to look up coverage of the action on YouTube. After searching for "capitol coal action," the first footage that came up had about 1000 views, far more than any other video that had been posted to that point. The post is good quality footage of the action, and very well produced. Check it out, it's a good recap of the day. But scroll down to the comments and you'll notice something strange.

In a span of about an hour, twenty comments were posted, every single one of them denying or mocking the global warming debate and the action itself. There are a lot of flags that emerge from such a concentrated spurt of skepticism in response to the most viewed coverage of the action. Why did so many negative comments appear in such a brief span, only to stop in about an hour? Why were so many global warming deniers so responsive to a video that had only 1,000 views?

Finally, has this phenomenon been documented before? The answer to the this question, at least, is clear.

After Al Gore made a very public speech on CNN about global warming in late January, DeSmogBlog eloquently noted that the article was almost immediately lambasted on CNN's website by over 150 "hysterical, bitchy, vitriolic sneers or classic denier talking points."

What to make of this apparently coordinated campaign to debunk global warming via Internet "comment bombs?" Breathe easy, rational earthlings. If dirty energy feels like they have to wage a war of ideas on the Internet, it's safe to say that logic has already claimed victory.