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.

 

[Diana Moon Glampers]

Literally no one except doomsday kooks is predicting that the planet will become too hot for any human habitation and that there'll be a dieoff of literally all human beings. People like Greta will be in the parts of the world that, even in the worst case scenarios, will be warmer but not so warm people can't live there.

Visualizing Best-and-Worst-Case Climate Change Scenarios

BBC has created several data visualizations illustrating how much warmer the Earth will be by 2100. Charts show that even under best-case scenarios, in which climate policies severely limit emissions, major cities such as New York and London will experience July temperatures that are roughly four de

www.datainnovation.org

The idea that everyone's going to die by 2100 is pernicious and seems to have only entered the climate change dialogue recently. If Greta wants to make a stand for all the poor kids in developing-world countries that are going to actually face the brunt of this (imagine how shitty life in Qatar or Yemen will be with another 10 degrees of warming, shit), that's fine. But it's disingenuous for rich kids in northern countries to say they're going to die. And it's disingenuous of the adults around them to let them think that without correcting them.

 

[Barnard]

I suppose the doomsaying and scare-mongering stems from the idea that once we trigger global warming and push it past a certain point, the greenhouse effect will become runaway and we eventually end up like Venus, with evaporating oceans leading to 400+ degrees Celsius temperatures and a crushing atmosphere composed of carbon dioxide and not much else.

Of course, the Venusian runaway greenhouse effect (assuming it happened) was triggered by the natural increase of solar luminosity over time, and I'm not sure if any scientists are seriously suggesting the possibility that human activity on Earth can trigger an analogous effect. In fact, there is a 2004 IPCC document that outright says:

Some thresholds that all would consider dangerous have no support in the literature as having a non-negligible chance of occurring. For instance, a “runaway greenhouse effect”—analogous to Venus-- appears to have virtually no chance of being induced by anthropogenic activities.

So there, the Rapture isn't happening any time soon. Maybe in a few hundred million years, on its own. But not ten years from now.

 

[AnOminous]

Literally no one except doomsday kooks is predicting that the planet will become too hot for any human habitation and that there'll be a dieoff of literally all human beings. People like Greta will be in the parts of the world that, even in the worst case scenarios, will be warmer but not so warm people can't live there.

Really depends on where they live. If it's the Netherlands much of it will be underwater. If I lived there I'd be pretty concerned about that since it's barely kept above water as is.

 

[Dr. Geronimo]

Literally no one except doomsday kooks is predicting that the planet will become too hot for any human habitation and that there'll be a dieoff of literally all human beings. People like Greta will be in the parts of the world that, even in the worst case scenarios, will be warmer but not so warm people can't live there.

Visualizing Best-and-Worst-Case Climate Change Scenarios

BBC has created several data visualizations illustrating how much warmer the Earth will be by 2100. Charts show that even under best-case scenarios, in which climate policies severely limit emissions, major cities such as New York and London will experience July temperatures that are roughly four de

www.datainnovation.org

The idea that everyone's going to die by 2100 is pernicious and seems to have only entered the climate change dialogue recently. If Greta wants to make a stand for all the poor kids in developing-world countries that are going to actually face the brunt of this (imagine how shitty life in Qatar or Yemen will be with another 10 degrees of warming, shit), that's fine. But it's disingenuous for rich kids in northern countries to say they're going to die. And it's disingenuous of the adults around them to let them think that without correcting them.

I'm not saying that Earth will look like some cartoon explosion. What I'm trying to get at is that with rising temperatures our way of life is going to get fucked hard by many of the changes. One small example is the fact that due to many forests no longer having temperatures low enough to kill off insects they're getting fucked

Climate change to blame as bark beetles ravage central Europe's forests

Hot, dry summers are fanning an unprecedented outbreak of bark beetles that are ...

www.reuters.com

Ticks are becoming a problem too.

47,000 Ticks on a Moose, and That’s Just Average. Blame Climate Change.

Climate change is giving ticks a leg up on their hosts. “It’s about as grody a picture as you can imagine on a dead animal,” a researcher said.

www.nytimes.com

This is just the tip of the melting iceberg, in time we're going to have problems with food production, climate refugees, and with our general standard of living going to shit.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/05/190531152047.html

I'm not saying we're going to have an apocalypse, I'm just saying that if we actually gave a shit, a lot of these problems can be at least minimized if we just started giving a bit of a shit. Yeah people who say it's all over are idiots, but I'd rather not have hordes of street shitters invade where I live because their home now has an average temperature of 125F

 

[Palpatine]

To me a catastrophic global greenhouse effect sounds way more far fetched than super artificial general intelligence caused human extinction. Why do we do all the crap in the name of global warming cult but not tax ai companies and put money in ai safety research?

 

[The Penultimate Warrior]

now these kids are trying to at least keep the planet livable.

How are they doing that, beyond demanding every else do something now? I don't see any giving up their phones, refusing to go on holiday or stopping buying clothes shipped halfway around the world.

 

[Sheryl Nome]

To me a catastrophic global greenhouse effect sounds way more far fetched than super artificial general intelligence caused human extinction. Why do we do all the crap in the name of global warming cult but not tax ai companies and put money in ai safety research?

Because global warming is actually happening, we have a measurable increase in global temperatures, we know CO2 is a greenhouse gas. the 'AI apocalypse' is fiction.
the so called 'Climate Cult' is unfortunately mostly useless because they don't think practically. Any plan that doesn't include a carbon tax isn't a real plan, and anyone that is against nuclear is also useless.

 

[Dr. Geronimo]

How are they doing that, beyond demanding every else do something now? I don't see any giving up their phones, refusing to go on holiday or stopping buying clothes shipped halfway around the world.

I can't speak for them, but now that you've made me think about what I do, and I think I'm actually not that bad.

That said, I don't think anybody is saying we all have to live like hermits. Mostly I've heard that keep your phone for at least 2 years, buy electric cars, and personally most of my clothes are made in Mexico.

Because global warming is actually happening, we have a measurable increase in global temperatures, we know CO2 is a greenhouse gas. the 'AI apocalypse' is fiction.
the so called 'Climate Cult' is unfortunately mostly useless because they don't think practically. Any plan that doesn't include a carbon tax isn't a real plan, and anyone that is against nuclear is also useless.

I completely agree with you on nuclear power, but people are just unwilling to re-educate themselves about how much safer nuclear is and all they do is screech "CHERNOBYL!!! THREE MILE ISLAND!!." Also doesn't help that America is real shit at dealing with its nuclear waste.

 

[Tasty Tatty]

mark shepard (@markshe15059164) | Twitter

The latest Tweets from mark shepard (@markshe15059164). Husband & father of 4, hgv driver and incident officer @ oulton park. Manchester, England

twitter.com

He deleted the tweet because his wife asked him to out of sensitivity to the family, but here's a cap:

View attachment 950071

Chelsea 1
Greta 1
Kiwifarms 0

 

[not william stenchever]

CO2 is plant food so I am surprised that a vegan would be against more plant food.

For fucking real though, the interplay between photosynthesis and cellular respiration is one of the core components of the entire biosphere. It blows my mind that people can call CO2 a pollutant when it is vitally necessary for the continuation of most life on Earth.

 

[Stoneheart]

Really depends on where they live. If it's the Netherlands much of it will be underwater. If I lived there I'd be pretty concerned about that since it's barely kept above water as is.

they know how to handle land below sealevel. thats how they created their country...

 

[AnOminous]

they know how to handle land below sealevel. thats how they created their country...

There's only so much dykes can do.

Also below sea level and underwater are two different things and .nl is heading for the second.

 

[thx1138]

I'm no climate scientist but a couple things: back when I was a teenager, the big scares were global freezing, worldwide mass starvation due to overpopulation, and the nuclear winter that would result from a nuclear war. Well, now it's global warming (what happened to -30F in Atlanta for 7 months out of the year, guys?), we didn't starve to death (food production has skyrocketed since 1970), and even Carl Sagan admitted that the data on "nuclear winter" was deliberately falsified to scare world leaders into disarmament (which is hilarious because the Soviets absolutely didn't give a fuck, they only went to disarmament talks because the west, by which I mean the US, kept coming up with better, more advanced, more accurate weapons).

I remember hearing in the 90s, how by the mid 00s, 2010 I think was the top of it, there'd be no ice packs at the north pole, there'd be no snow on glaciers. Then recently the "data" was that the glaciers in the US were shrinking. But no, quite the opposite, they weren't. Aren't. Then there's the whole climategate scandal: basically modifying data to support "scientific consensus" and deleting or ignoring data going back to as far as 1945 that shows anything otherwise.

IMO until Florida is underwater and we're living in Soylent Green, I'm not buying this shit from the news, the so-called "scientific community" and I'm especially not buying it from a screeching tard. Seriously, someone hold her down and record the screams.

 

[Recoil]

I still think shit like this is doing more damage than good. Nothing turns people off like having something shoved down their throats. In an age where the media seems intent on embarrassing itself and getting caught in a lie every week, you can bet that more crying wolf is gonna be a net loss.
Honestly, it feels like the left is running out of sacred cows and so they're slaughtering one after another on celebrity flavored altars in the hopes of regaining relevance. They're just fucking themselves. And all of us.

 

[Diana Moon Glampers]

There's only so much dykes can do.

Yeah, if there's one thing the transgender travesty has taught us.

 

[Doctor Jizzmopper]

I'm no climate scientist but a couple things: back when I was a teenager, the big scares were global freezing, worldwide mass starvation due to overpopulation, and the nuclear winter that would result from a nuclear war. Well, now it's global warming (what happened to -30F in Atlanta for 7 months out of the year, guys?), we didn't starve to death (food production has skyrocketed since 1970), and even Carl Sagan admitted that the data on "nuclear winter" was deliberately falsified to scare world leaders into disarmament (which is hilarious because the Soviets absolutely didn't give a fuck, they only went to disarmament talks because the west, by which I mean the US, kept coming up with better, more advanced, more accurate weapons).

I remember hearing in the 90s, how by the mid 00s, 2010 I think was the top of it, there'd be no ice packs at the north pole, there'd be no snow on glaciers. Then recently the "data" was that the glaciers in the US were shrinking. But no, quite the opposite, they weren't. Aren't. Then there's the whole climategate scandal: basically modifying data to support "scientific consensus" and deleting or ignoring data going back to as far as 1945 that shows anything otherwise.

IMO until Florida is underwater and we're living in Soylent Green, I'm not buying this shit from the news, the so-called "scientific community" and I'm especially not buying it from a screeching tard. Seriously, someone hold her down and record the screams.

Remember all the movies of the week we had when there was only 3 channels?

The Day After (Attack Segment)

Devastating Effects Of A Nuclear Attack On Kansas City.

youtu.be

I remember one movie that took place in like 1998 in which the US was so hot it was underwater due to global warming. It's been too shrill for too long.

 

[thx1138]

The Day After isn't bad for showing the various effects of nuclear war (Threads is even better), but yeah, doom and gloom seemed to permeate all speculative fiction on TV and movies. I think Star Wars was probably the first sci-fi flick of the 70s that didn't have a dystopian theme to it.

 

[The Penultimate Warrior]

The Day After isn't bad for showing the various effects of nuclear war (Threads is even better), but yeah, doom and gloom seemed to permeate all speculative fiction on TV and movies. I think Star Wars was probably the first sci-fi flick of the 70s that didn't have a dystopian theme to it.

Threads is possibly the most depressing film ever made - I've seen it once, and never want to see it again.

 

[Jet Fuel Johnny]

The cold war was a matter of IF our leaders were finally gonna do it.

That's not the way it was back then. It wasn't "If" it was "When" and we all knew that we wouldn't really know when until the air-raid sirens went off.

So we quit giving a fuck.

Which is why we don't give a fuck about Swedish Potato Sped.

 

[Hummingbird]

I thought this was a good video on how Greta and children as a whole are being used by the climate alarmists.

This is the sequel.