The Greenpeace antinuclear blog “Nuclear Reaction” has disabled comments. Why on Earth would they do that?
Personally, I have left numerous comments on their pseudo-scientific website. I’ve also used the Nuclear Fissionary Page on Facebook to direct our readers to the Greenpeace site to make sure their antinuclear rants don’t go unanswered.
Well, it would appear that Greenpeace no longer has the stomach for debate.
While visiting the site the other day I noticed that my comments were gone. Every blogger knows that deleting comments is unethical, so I thought that GP had just decided to silence me. But then I noticed that there were no other comments either. What’s more, there was no box where readers could add to the ‘dialogue’ of the nuclear debate. The comments were just gone.
Greenpeace is no longer interested in the opinions of its readership. Could this have something to do with recent growth in pronuclear sentiment on the internet? Could it possibly have something to do with the fact that now 62% of Americans, including the president GP thought would support them, are now in favor of nuclear energy? Were they sick and tired of getting only pronuclear comments?
Whatever the reason, Greenpeace removing comments from their blog can serve only to discredit an organization that already suffers from a reputation of ignoring science and preying on fears. Lucky for everyone, this will inevitably hurt the GP website and those wishing to discuss the issue can get the right information from the Nukes of the Net instead of the activists.
So let’s all let Greenpeace know that we’re not impressed with their attempt to silence their critics. Send an email to
supporter.services.int@greenpeace.org
and tell them what you think. Or you can copy and paste the message we’re sending below:
Dear Greenpeace
Unless your issue is a technical reason, I am disappointed in your decision to disable comments on your antinuclear blog, Nuclear Reaction. Unless otherwise clearly stated on your blog, this is seen as an attempt to silence your critics and serves only to discredit your organization. If you value the views of your readers then you will enable comments so the discussion can move forward.
Thank you,
Nuclear Fissionary has no such fear of our readers’ opinions. As a matter of fact, we value and encourage them. Comments on a post tell us that we’ve struck a chord with the readers (be it good or bad). We will always welcome the input of our readers; even our antinuclear readers. After all, we have so much fun proving them wrong. Maybe that’s what Greenpeace is so afraid of.
Image Credit
Innocent’s silence courtesy of Flickr user circo de invierno under the CC license.
Looking forward...
19 Comments
My e-mail has been sent. I’m curious to see if there will be a response.
Mine is en route.
I sent mine in as well.
Mail sent – Greenpeace and science are not even remotely connected are they?
They are more along the Evil Knivel (motor cycle stunt rider) lines.
When has Greenpeace ever been interested in the opinions of its readership?
Greenpeace is an organization that lives off of stupid publicity stunts designed to garner income from donations. Its blog is simply a “value added” product with the purpose of keeping those dollars flowing between stunts. Why should they jeopardize their revenue flow by allowing some inconvenient comments to be posted on their site that invalidate their ridiculous nonsense?
Greenpeace distorts the truth in the same way as the climate skeptics they hate, and they’ve been doing it for a longer time. They are as responsible for today’s disfunctional political climate as the Tea Baggers. The Greenpeace idea is that they are right, therefore their lies are justified. Everyone else is wrong, and their lies are evil.
Every site on the “blogroll” listed on Nuclear Reaction allows comments.
That’s correct David, regarding the comments. I went through several of their other blogs yesterday in order to see if the comments were active and working, which as you say, they were. I then took it one step further on their Nuclear Reaction blog by viewing their source code. It was there that I noticed a
.comments-closeddiv class which indicates they have the ability to disable comments as they see fit.Considering the evidence it is highly unlikely that there is some technical issue occurring that is exclusive only to the Nuclear Reaction blog. What makes matters worse is that there was no explanation or reason provided behind what we can only assume is a knee-jerk decision until otherwise informed.
Greenpeace has never allowed comments to appear that don’t agree with their brain-dead viewpoint. Contrast that with the open and robust discussion on pro-nuke websites. The more people learn about the potential of nuclear power, the more they like it. Greenpeace thrives on ignorance, lies, and the half-truths it feeds its gullible followers.
Hi, Jack
Thank you for showing Greenpeace for what it is!
I moderate comments on my blog Yes Vermont Yankee. Antis have posted plenty of comments, but I have never yet had to turn down a comment for being rude or uncivil. It could happen though. If I did that, I wouldn’t consider that “deleting” a comment, just not-posting it because it doesn’t add to the discussion. I make it clear in a box above the comment box that rude comments will not be posted.
As I said, though, in three months, with plenty of anti-s weighing in, I have never prevented a comment from being posted. So far, so good!
When talking to anti-s, their tactic is to change the subject as soon as you get them to a place where they have no rational answer. Or they begin saying that you are killing the next generation and so forth. In other words, they move to accusations.
Best,
Meredith
If you go to Facebook, there’s a Group with over 1000 members, Save Vermont Yankee. Any member of the Group can post on its Wall. There’s also a Fan page, on the opposite side of things Shut Down Vermont Yankee Today, with 250 fans. As far as I can tell, posting discussions is disabled on that page. At least, there are no discussions.
I just want back to the Greenpeace blog, comments are still disabled for Nuclear Reaction, still enabled for all of their other blogs, and there is still not post announcing the reason for the cessation of comments.
Unsurprisingly, I have still not received a response to my e-mail.
I received an e-mail from Greenpeace last night regarding the disabled comments. It reads as follows:
Yep, I received the same e-mail.
There is now a post stating what some people have already received by email, and comments are back online..
Gotta wonder if they consider differing opinions a spam attack though.
Reminds me of an interesting article in New Humanist a couple of months back, check it out if you fancy a read
http://newhumanist.org.uk/1949/power-struggle
While it would apear that they have reinstated comments, they are still deleting them. I’ve left several in the past few days and none of them showed up on the site.
Why do you think that they were switching to a “new commenting system”? They wanted to make it easier for them to delete your “spam.”
Same old Greenpeace.
Same old angry conceited conservative moderate.
Durn, that is correct. I am an angry conceited conservative moderate. Although in my experience the descriptor moderate precedes political affiliation.
You don’t need to be a conservative to be pronuclear, you just need to be a reasonable person who bothers looking at the numbers. We have plenty of liberal nukes here.
Perhaps Durn meant “angry conceited conservative moderation,” which appears to be Greenpeace’s new comment policy. That is, don’t let anything through unless it agrees with your personal biases; otherwise, reject with extreme prejudice.
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