Science Greta Thunberg Megathread - Dax Herrera says he wouldn't have a day ago (I somewhat doubt that)

Why is Greta Thunberg so triggering? How can a 16-year-old girl in plaits, who has dedicated herself to the not-exactly sinister, authoritarian plot of trying to save the planet from extinction, inspire such incandescent rage?

Last week, she tweeted that she had arrived into New York after her two week transatlantic voyage: “Finally here. Thank you everyone who came to see me off in Plymouth, and everyone who welcomed me in New York! Now I’m going to rest for a few days, and on Friday I’m going to participate in the strike outside the UN”, before promptly giving a press conference in English. Yes, her second language.

Her remarks were immediately greeted with a barrage of jibes about virtue signalling, and snide remarks about the three crew members who will have to fly out to take the yacht home.

This shouldn’t need to be spelled out, but as some people don’t seem to have grasped it yet, we’ll give it a lash: Thunberg’s trip was an act of protest, not a sacred commandment or an instruction manual for the rest of us. Like all acts of protest, it was designed to be symbolic and provocative. For those who missed the point – and oh, how they missed the point – she retweeted someone else’s “friendly reminder” that: “You don’t need to spend two weeks on a boat to do your part to avert our climate emergency. You just need to do everything you can, with everyone you can, to change everything you can.”

Part of the reason she inspires such rage, of course, is blindingly obvious. Climate change is terrifying. The Amazon is burning. So too is the Savannah. Parts of the Arctic are on fire. Sea levels are rising. There are more vicious storms and wildfires and droughts and floods. Denial is easier than confronting the terrifying truth.

Then there’s the fact that we don’t like being made to feel bad about our life choices. That’s human nature. It’s why we sneer at vegans. It’s why we’re suspicious of sober people at parties. And if anything is likely to make you feel bad about your life choices -- as you jet back home after your third Ryanair European minibreak this season – it’ll be the sight of small-boned child subjecting herself to a fortnight being tossed about on the Atlantic, with only a bucket bearing a “Poo Only Please” sign by way of luxury, in order to make a point about climate change.

But that’s not virtue signalling, which anyone can indulge in. As Meghan Markle, Prince Harry, and their-four-private-jets-in-11-days found recently, virtue practising is a lot harder.

Even for someone who spends a lot of time on Twitter, some of the criticism levelled at Thunberg is astonishing. It is, simultaneously, the most vicious and the most fatuous kind of playground bullying. The Australian conservative climate change denier Andrew Bolt called her “deeply disturbed” and “freakishly influential” (the use of “freakish”, we can assume, was not incidental.) The former UKIP funder, Arron Banks, tweeted “Freaking yacht accidents do happen in August” (as above.) Brendan O’Neill of Spiked called her a “millenarian weirdo” (nope, still not incidental) in a piece that referred nastily to her “monotone voice” and “the look of apocalyptic dread in her eyes”.

But who’s the real freak – the activist whose determination has single-handedly started a powerful global movement for change, or the middle-aged man taunting a child with Asperger syndrome from behind the safety of their computer screens?

And that, of course, is the real reason why Greta Thunberg is so triggering. They can’t admit it even to themselves, so they ridicule her instead. But the truth is that they’re afraid of her. The poor dears are terrified of her as an individual, and of what she stands for – youth, determination, change.

She is part of a generation who won’t be cowed. She isn’t about to be shamed into submission by trolls. That’s not actually a look of apocalyptic dread in her eyes. It’s a look that says “you’re not relevant”.

The reason they taunt her with childish insults is because that’s all they’ve got. They’re out of ideas. They can’t dismantle her arguments, because she has science – and David Attenborough – on her side. They can’t win the debate with the persuasive force of their arguments, because these bargain bin cranks trade in jaded cynicism, not youthful passion. They can harangue her with snide tweets and hot take blogposts, but they won’t get a reaction because, frankly, she has bigger worries on her mind.

That’s not to say that we should accept everything Thunberg says without question. She is an idealist who is young enough to see the world in black and white. We need voices like hers. We should listen to what she has to say, without tuning the more moderate voices of dissent out.

Why is Greta Thunberg so triggering? Because of what she represents. In an age when democracy is under assault, she hints at the emergency of new kind of power, a convergence of youth, popular protest and irrefutable science. And for her loudest detractors, she also represents something else: the sight of their impending obsolescence hurtling towards them.

joconnell@irishtimes.com
https://twitter.com/jenoconnell

https://web.archive.org/web/2019090...certain-men-1.4002264?localLinksEnabled=false
Found this thought-provoking indeed.

 

[Dynastier]

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How cucked does a country have to be to ask children to chastise them and applaud them for it? Foreign children at that. This little whore has no idea what she's talking about, admits she's not an expert, and we're treating her like she's important.

She makes a good point in that what she's doing is nothing. She says don't invite us just to be inspired. Well good point little girl, what are you doing? Saying stuff? Flying around the world? She's not a scientist.

What exactly are we supposed to be doing by the way? Just feel bad about it and try to one up each other on how hysterical we can get about it?

No need to call her a whore though, I'm sure there are insults that fit her better if you're so inclined.

 

[CWCissey]

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I don’t know how long she’s been a vegan, but it’s probably messing with her hormones (especially if she’s ingesting a lot of soy)

Reminds me of another infamous vegan...

 

[DNA_JACKED]

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I don’t know how long she’s been a vegan, but it’s probably messing with her hormones (especially if she’s ingesting a lot of soy)

Her hormones are not the only thing being messed up. She straight up looks like a 10 year old with a chronic illness, not a 16 year old.

Christ her brain must be a complete fucking mess.

 

[Autocrat]

She makes a good point in that what she's doing is nothing. She says don't invite us just to be inspired. Well good point little girl, what are you doing? Saying stuff? Flying around the world? She's not a scientist.

What exactly are we supposed to be doing by the way? Just feel bad about it and try to one up each other on how hysterical we can get about it?

No need to call her a whore though, I'm sure there are insults that fit her better if you're so inclined.

She's a stupid little whore

 

[Super-Chevy454]

Her hormones are not the only thing being messed up. She straight up looks like a 10 year old with a chronic illness, not a 16 year old.

Christ her brain must be a complete fucking mess.

And not only her brain I'm afraid.

 

[Dynastier]

She's a stupid little whore

Well nobody can say I didn't signal how virtuous I was by chastising you.

 

[millais]

In the old days, the Children's Crusades did not get such a favorable reception from the adults of the day. Maybe they had the right idea back then

 

[Zero Day Defense]

Remember Malala?

She's an actual activist in a country that de facto forbade its women to learn and survived an assassination attempt.

A far cry from some visitor from the Void materializing onto our plane and badgering Europeans and Americans about how they have to pick up the slack of developing countries that produce far more emissions than they do presently.

 

[queue-anon]

Indisputable Facts On Climate Change

When it comes to climate change, there are certain indisputable facts. Even if you are a skeptic, you should familiarize yourself with the things we know to be true on this issue.

www.forbes.com

So climate change is a thing, though there is controversy on how we deal with it, as the only creatures on the planet who could possibly do anything to change this course we are on.

I personally think that if we planted two trees for every human on the planet, that might do something to help. But I also could be wrong.

Reforestation is a solution, one that's been proposed. The problem is, it takes energy to plant that many trees, and most of the energy would be fossil fuels, which is a problem if you're trying to reduce carbon emissions. Another problem is that many of the areas that need reforestation the most, such as parts of Africa that are desertifying, don't have enough fresh water to keep the trees alive, which is one of the reasons why parts of Africa are desertifying.

Why do people elevate children as moral arbiters and political experts? I see this happen in fiction as well, where the writer/director will use a child as their mouthpiece talking down to and being right in the face of all the adults.

Children are guileless and have less of a filter. They're more likely to say what they're thinking and to speak plain truths that adults are too scared or too polite to say. I think that's a major reason why adults elevate children's voices. Adults probably also figure that most adults are too nice to berate an innocent kid.

She makes a good point in that what she's doing is nothing. She says don't invite us just to be inspired. Well good point little girl, what are you doing? Saying stuff? Flying around the world? She's not a scientist.

What exactly are we supposed to be doing by the way? Just feel bad about it and try to one up each other on how hysterical we can get about it?

No need to call her a whore though, I'm sure there are insults that fit her better if you're so inclined.

She's "raising awareness", which is completely useless. Everyone is aware. Even people who don't believe climate change is real or a problem are aware of it.

I think there are a lot of reasons why Thunberg and other activists don't offer concrete solutions, but the biggest one is that they know that what it will take to seriously decrease carbon emissions will go over like a lead balloon. They need politicians to hang themselves by making it more expensive to consume fossil fuels, which will make living much more expensive for just about everyone. It also would mean the end of a lot of conveniences first worlders now take for granted.

 

[Stoneheart]

I think there are a lot of reasons why Thunberg and other activists don't offer concrete solutions, but the biggest one is that they know that what it will take to seriously decrease carbon emissions will go over like a lead balloon.

outlaw cars, outlaw dogs, outlaw heating, eat the elderly...

 

[Wesley Willis]

Ice caps melt, densely populated urban areas flood (usually liberal shitholes anyway) and kill everyone. Population decreases. Consumption drops. Nature achieves balance.

 

[Isaac Cox]

She's an actual activist in a country that de facto forbade its women to learn and survived an assassination attempt.

In other words she's a globalist pawn that's willing to send her country into a demographic decline much like the west for feefees and attention. That's why she was such a media darling and shoved everyone's throat.

worldpopulationreview.com/countries/total-fertility-rate/

 

[TheBlackVolga]

Fuck off, Thunberg, you obnoxious twat.

 

[Silence of the Troons]

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I don’t know how long she’s been a vegan, but it’s probably messing with her hormones (especially if she’s ingesting a lot of soy)

To be fair, I think part of it can be attributed to the fact that she's always looked really tiny (although the diet certainly doesn't help). Here's an image of her and her family that was used in an interview with her mother in 2015 (AKA when Greta was twelve years old) https://www.hant.se/malena-ernman-var-12-ariga-dotter-har-fatt-diagnosen-aspergers/

As for the vegan thing, she and her family became vegans after she had stopped being depressed, so she has been a vegan since 2015-2016

 

[Dante Alighieri]

That's 12? Looks more like 9 or 10.

 

[The Final Troondown]

outlaw cars, outlaw dogs, outlaw heating, eat the elderly...

tbf if we used weaponised smallpox and that legionella with a ~90% fatality rate the russkies developed alongside agrarian destruction to cause famines we could probably bring the world population down to half a billion relatively quickly which would enable us to reforest all the new land and continue to live like first worlders practically forever

 

[Otterly]

Climate change is real and man made. It is a problem. It’s also about the worst of the many environmental issues that are real and man made I can think of to pin an entire movement on. For several reasons.

1. It’s not exactly quantifiable. You can’t say with any certainty how much of the warming is man made, nor can you predict with certainty where this is going to end up. The fuzzy nature of this means it’s open to serious assault by deniers.

2. It’s huge. It’s too big a problem for any one person or even one country to solve, yet it’s targeted at individuals as an issue. This is pointless. What that results in is a sense of overwhelm and doom.

3. The above sense is what concerns me, because it turns what is a real and pressing issue from a problem to be solved into a setting for social engineering.

Think about what the green movement used to focus on- save the whales, local effects, campaigning to save your local SSSI, recycle, Erin brockovich stuff. Stuff that was actionable by individuals and communities, stuff that was visible, measurable and people felt they could act positively.

Now think about what the green movement focuses on: a sense of doom that inspires guilt and allows policies to be forced.

What policies? Well... Mass immigration is going to happen because a lot of the global south is going to be physically uninhabitable- the wet bulb point of no survival is already being hit and
Passed in urban areas.

Degradation of quality of life is going to happen.

So yes, I’m an environmentalist - we try to do our bit locally. And climate change is real. But I view the sole focus on it to the detriment of other pressing issues with deep suspicion. And Greta is a pawn. It’s like the troons who trot out kids - you can’t argue with a kid without looking like an asshole. Children are a shield that prevents robust discussion.

 

[Knojkamarangasan_#4]

But none of you are asking the really important questions: like who's uglier? Greta Thunberg or David Hogg? Which kid looks more like a failed genetic experiment to create the perfect shill? Which kid looks more like it crawled out of a test tube containing Growth Medium and Cthulu Jizz? You'd think, if the illuminati were going to push an agenda, they'd have it delivered by someone attractive, like any of the underage models that Jeffrey Epstein had chained up in his Private Puzzle Basement, for example. Not by smug teenagers who look like they were put together by God when He was both drunk and blindfolded...

Greta at least has a tight pussy probably. While David only has some boybutt and cant even bear retarded aryan children.

 

[CheezzyMach]

Lol, the dumb ratings you got. This entire thread is full of climate change deniers who think environmentalism is a (((globalist))) conspiracy theory and not something we should care about so our planet stays healthy and habitable. I never thought “we should regulate corporations so they can’t pollute freely to save a few bucks” and “we should try to cut down on plastic waste” would be a controversial opinion but here we are.

Also, she’s 16 years old, insulting her and shaming her just because you disagree with her isn’t a good look.

The problem is I have never seen these people come up with an actual viable solution. It's all either finger wagging at giant corporations who don't give a shit,pointless bullshit like California's idiotic plastic straw ban or apple pie in the sky stuff that if implemented would completely wreck our economy like the Green New Deal.

I myself have always wondered about the viability of hydro-power given our planet is 70% water.

 

[Dynastier]

Indisputable Facts On Climate Change

When it comes to climate change, there are certain indisputable facts. Even if you are a skeptic, you should familiarize yourself with the things we know to be true on this issue.

www.forbes.com

So climate change is a thing, though there is controversy on how we deal with it, as the only creatures on the planet who could possibly do anything to change this course we are on.

I personally think that if we planted two trees for every human on the planet, that might do something to help. But I also could be wrong.

Those are not indispensable facts. The noaa raw data shows no temp rise since 2005. Not to say they're definitely wrong, but calling it indisputable is propaganda.
The co2 concentration part is true. It seems accepted as a greenhouse gas, but they can't decide the value.