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

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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
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https://web.archive.org/web/2019090...certain-men-1.4002264?localLinksEnabled=false
Found this thought-provoking indeed.
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Congress does little useful anyway. So redoubling their efforts means nothing. This little twat needs to go back where she came from. Climate change is a natural process. Earth goes through warmer and colder periods. Nothing wrong about taking care of the environment but not at the risk of some stupid shit like the "Green New Deal".
 
Hux said:
And that first and last chance was in 1632

Gustavus Adolphus, where are you now?
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LION COME FORTH.

No but seriously what the actual fuck happened to the Swedes? From Caroleans to cucks on the line.
 
I’ll give Crying Swedish Child her due, she’s consistently told the adults she’s lectured to that she knows they’re latching onto her as a political tool, and reminds them that they need to back up their lavishing praise with action on the environment.
 
The media's obsession with finding the next 'Prodigal Child' is relentless. It never fails to irk me when they try to push an agenda through kids; using your darling daughter for points just makes me discard everything they say.

In two years she'll be just another ugly blue-hair philosophy major, until then she's the darling Woke Child.
 
LatinasAreTheFuture said:
Why is nuclear so bad in their minds? Do they really think
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I'm pretty sure they're not thinking, actually. Primarily they're reacting on emotion. They've been conditioned to fear nuclear power, and the fact that they can name three major nuclear disasters is the thought terminating cliche of the nuclear debate. Never mind that per watt nuclear is one of the most efficient and safest sources we have access to.
 
I wish leftist organisations had balls to actually criticise the real source than the low hanging fruits like muslim countries for misogynistic culture and hollywood celebrities for too much fuel consumption for their private planes but nope it's always the easy targets which makes me dismiss all their talking points and see them what they are, pathetic bootlickers. They can't probably even stand by their principles if they get challenged. I know Greta Thunberg's the face of all these organisation but we all know she's just a disposable pawn at best who only could repeat the talking points taught by her parents.
 
They're afraid of nuclear power because of the China Syndrome movie. Really. That's what caused a lot of the anti-nuke stuff to start, long before Fukishima, before Three Mile, before even Chernobyl. That movie made idiots think it was real, and a nuclear meltdown would burn through the center of the earth and out the other side.
 
Definitely seeing a burka in her future, especially since antifa fags seem to be praising her for wearing one of their shirts.
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niconiconecro said:
Definitely seeing a burka in her future, especially since antifa fags seem to be praising her for wearing one of their shirts. View attachment 942509
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The next time an antifag insists that they're fighting on behalf of the proletariat they love to pretend they represent, just remember that they're fawning over literal child of the bourgeois elite and laugh at them
 
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