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.

 

[ColtWalker1847]

LMAO all the comments in here remind me of the Bolshevik revolution.
"Grrrr RICH OIL COMPANIES DESTROY THE PLANET".
Yet no mention of China.

Oil that society demanded. If they don't like it they can grab a hoe and plant that field of organic free-trade soy by hand. I give them an hour before they start begging for a tractor powered by I dunno, a really long extension cord or something. But it doesn't work that way.

There is a massive amount of people who just don't understand how shit works. It doesn't matter if we love or hate energy companies, we fucking need that energy. You fuck with it and things go downhill real fast (see: the many energy bubbles throughout history). And no amount of wishing on a star for alternatives is going to make them magically appear. Nor will Carbon Taxes fix it, that's just a scheme to enact an energy-based VAT and funnel it's revenue into the pockets of their friends. The utility, portability, and scalability just isn't there for replacing gas and oil in a meaningful way and won't be for a veeeeeeeeeery long time.

The exception is replacing coal power. They stand a chance at getting something meaningful done there in the next two decades but that requires going full Energie Atomique Française and the modern ecowarriors would never go for it.

 

[Noideawhattopick]

For someone who is so pro-environment Greta sure is against swedish nuclear power. If we shut down our emission free nuclear reactors we will be forced to buy electricity from german coal plants instead. Why would the superhero genius kid who will save us all do that to the people of her own country?

hold on there, we germanistanies get our future electric Power from Russia or France. No Power for you from us.

 

[Sīn the Moon Daddy]

The exception is replacing coal power. They stand a chance at getting something meaningful done there in the next two decades but that requires going full Energie Atomique Française and the modern ecowarriors would never go for it.

That fact alone is enough to throw suspicion on the entire endeavor. Why do these alleged activists spend so much time shooting down workable solutions only to replace them with pie in the sky fantasy?

 

[KittyGremlin]

Sounds like someone who will end up here more permanently in a year or two. The way she talks as if she represents young people as a whole is cringy and idiotic even for a 16 year old. If she said to my little brother that he shouldn't be able to get a rolling coal diesel pickup truck of his dreams when he grows up this gal is in for rude awakening and probably a nerf dart in the face.

 

[Positron]

Did Greta articulate how empty promises of leading politicians "stole her childhood"? Did she list the things that she could have done had atmospheric CO₂ stayed at pre-industrial levels, but cannot do now?

I reckon that if IKEA did not happen and everyone had to build his own furniture (same goes for H&M and their shitty sweatshop clothes) the world would have been a teenie-weenie bit less polluted, but then Sweden would be denied of its economic bloom, and Greta and her parents would have lived very fulfilling lives as subsidence farmers, instead of being the international jet-setter they are now.

 

[Rancid Flid]

 

[Krimjob]

Sweden is sorry for this. Please have some nice 17-year-old boys that are actually 40 free of charge.

 

[Silence of the Troons]

Thanks for creating the mega thread, nut rager.

To bring some appreciation to the thread, here's a fun little fact about the German translation of Malena Ernman's book Scenes from the heart

ιηкσηѕєкνєηѕнєη on Twitter

“Tydligen är Greta Thunberg mycket mer inblandad i den tyska översättningen av Malena Ernmans bok. Greta var ju totalt okänd när Malena släppte sin bok iofs men det sammanföll med lanseringen av skolstrejken av en slump.”

twitter.com

Apparently, Greta Thunberg is much more involved in the German translation of Malena Ernman's book. Greta was completely unknown when Malena released her book TBF, but by pure chance, the release [of the Swedish version] coincided with the launch of the school strike.

It's not about money! It's about children!

 

[ColtWalker1847]

That fact alone is enough to throw suspicion on the entire endeavor. Why do these alleged activists spend so much time shooting down workable solutions only to replace them with pie in the sky fantasy?

Because they don't want a workable solution. They want their solution. The one that curtails consumption, reduces production, cripples trade, and makes most economic aspects of modern society untenable. All in favor of energy impoverished feudal serfdom where all of us peasants are incredibly limited in what and how we consume because of heavy restrictions on energy production. All ran and controlled by them, our betters, the eco-gatekeepers.

Workable solutions that allow things to continue mostly as they are throw a monkey wrench into the works. They want people in restrictive teeny-tiny energy boxes. Hence why their on-paper fantasy energy plans are always really heavy on "conservation" (read: stop doing shit we are doing now) and light on "making shit work as it did before".

 

[Wesley Willis]

I really feel like paying higher taxes so the money can be redirected to another foreign occupation or bailout program.

 

[Malodorous Merkin]

Greta sounded on the verge of a mental breakdown in that speech. One of her fists was clenched tightly as well, which might mean high anxiety. She doesn’t know how to handle this attention. I’m mad she’s being used as a pawn by authorities, because having this much exposure + autism is a bad mix. She isn’t fully developed yet and is not as mentally sound as she should be to withstand this pressure from others. For her own well-being, the adults surrounding her should do the right thing and stop parading her to the media. Of course, those adults only care about the agenda and not the person they are exploiting.

 

[Parson Weebs]

It could be "bone" as in, "remove the bones". Ugh.

To be honest, I think the autistic lass is being manipulated a bit. Hopefully and probably not for hideously base reasons. I regret posting this.

 

[Rancid Flid]

The Tragedy Of Greta Thunberg

Sixteen-year-old Swedish climate change activist Greta Thunberg lives in the healthiest, wealthiest, and safest era that humans have ever known.

thefederalist.com

The Tragedy Of Greta Thunberg
Our Lady of Sorrows

By David Harsanyi
SEPTEMBER 23, 2019

Sixteen-year-old Swedish climate change activist Greta Thunberg lives in the healthiest, wealthiest, safest, and most peaceful era humans have ever known. She is one of the luckiest people to have ever lived.
In a just world, Thunberg would be at the United Nations thanking capitalist countries for bequeathing her this remarkable inheritance. Instead, she, like millions of other indoctrinated kids her age, act as if they live in a uniquely broken world on the precipice of disaster. This is a tragedy.

“You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words,” Thunberg lectured the world. And maybe she’s right. We’ve failed her by raising a generation of pagans who’ve filled the vacuum left by the absence of faith, not with rationality, but with a cultish worship of Mother Earth and the state. Although, to be fair, the Bible-thumping evangelical’s moral certitude is nothing but a rickety edifice compared to the moral conviction of a Greta Thunberg.
It’s not, of course, her fault. Adults have spent a year creating a 16-year-old because her soundbites comport with their belief system. It was “something about her raw honesty around a message of blunt-force fear [that] turned this girl from invisible to global,” says CNN in a news report about a child with a narrow, age-appropriate, grasp of the world.
It should be noted that “blunt-force fear” is indeed the correct way to describe the concerted misinformation that Thunberg has likely been subjected to since nursery school. There probably isn’t a public school in America that hasn’t plied the panic-stricken talk of environmental disaster in their auditoriums over and over again. New York City and other school systems offer millions of kids an excused absence so they could participate in political climate marches this week, as if it were a religious or patriotic holiday.
We’ve finally convinced a generation of Americans to be Malthusians. According to Scott Rasmussen’s polling, nearly 30 percent of voters now claim to believe that it’s “at least somewhat likely” that the earth will become uninhabitable and humanity will be wiped out over the next 10-15 years. Half of voters under 35 believe it is likely we are on the edge of extinction. Is there any wonder why our youngest generation has a foreboding sense of doom?

It’s the fault of ideologues who obsess over every weather event as if it were Armageddon, ignoring the massive moral upside of carbon-fueled modernity. It’s the fault of the politicians, too cowardly to tell voters that their utopian visions of a world run on solar panels and windmills is fairy tale.
It’s the fault of media that constantly ignores overwhelming evidence that, on balance, climate change isn’t undermining human flourishing. By nearly every quantifiable measure, in fact, we are better off because of fossil fuels — though there is no way to measure the human spirit, I’m afraid.
Thunberg might do well to sail her stern gaze and billowing anger to India or China and wag her finger at the billions of people who no longer want to live in poverty and destitution. Because if climate change is irreversible in the next 10-12 years, as cultists claim, it can be blamed in large part on the historic growth we’ve seen in developing nations.
China’s emissions from aviation and maritime trade alone are twice that of the United States, and more than the entire emissions of most nations in the world. But, sure, let’s ban straws as an act of contrition.

Boomers, of course, have failed on plenty of fronts, but the idea that an entire generation of Americans should have chosen poverty over prosperity to placate the vacuous complaints of privileged future teenagers is absurd. No generation would do it. Until recently, no advanced nation has embraced Luddism. Although these days, Democrats who advocate for bans on fossil fuels and carbon-mitigating technologies such as fracking and nuclear energy are working on it.
Climate activists could learn something from Thunberg’s honesty, though. She argues that “money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth” have to come to an end. The emission cuts that environmentalists insist are needed to save the earth would mean economic devastation and the end of hundreds of years of economic growth. This is a tradeoff progressives pretend doesn’t exist.
And Thunberg’s dream for the future means technocratic regimes will have to displace capitalistic societies. We can see this future in the radical environmentalist plans of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s New Green Deal, one supported by leading Democratic Party candidates. It’s authoritarianism. There is no other way to describe a regulatory regime that dictates exactly what Americans can consume, sell, drive, eat, and work on.
One imagines that most Americans, through their actions, will continue to reject these regressive ideas. One reason they should is so that Greta Thunberg’s generation won’t have to suffer needlessly.
David Harsanyi is a Senior Editor at The Federalist. He is the author of First Freedom: A Ride Through America's Enduring History with the Gun, From the Revolution to Today. Follow him on Twitter.

Alllright

 

[The Pink Panther]

I missed out on the video... wew lad, this is beyond autism.
2qYnRRZuqjCp1aeI.mp4

Dramatic whining, Pause, REPEAT

 

[Ahriman]

How dare you guys be upset about this political sockpuppet. This is further proof that rightoid incels are easily triggered.

What's the value of child pawns if you can just call out the propaganda?

Have sex.

That's pretty much what happened in r/wokekids, check this out.

 

[Barnard]

Ordinarily I would have nothing to say because I respect the religious beliefs of other people. However, this clearly violates the principle of separation of church and state. Religious figures have no business interfering in the affairs of secular leaders.

 

[Yotsubaaa]

The Tragedy Of Greta Thunberg

I didn't ever hear the Tragedy of Greta Thunberg. It's not a story the climate activists would tell me. (Sorry, couldn't resist.)

For real though, I feel so bad for this kid. It was heartrending watching her in that latest speech. She starts to tear up right as everyone in the room patronizingly laughs off her "we'll be watching you" opener (and why not? That line would be a joke coming from an adult, let alone a child). From there she struggles to stay composed enough to regurgitate this meaningless script she's been handed. She has to fulfill her duty as the climate activism mouthpiece after all, right? And if she succumbs to the pressure and fucks it up, she's done: there's no coming back from that.

Why are her parents okay with her becoming such a spectacle?

 

[George Floyd Sneed]

Trump couldn’t have handled it any better. He treated her like the 16 year old she actually is. She isn’t worth taking seriously and expending any emotion on her was only going to make him look bad.

 

[Foghot]

[...]
Why are her parents okay with her becoming such a spectacle?

Hey it turns out pimping out your sped kid to green energy lobbies actually gives you free traveling tickets and gourmet meals free of charge.

 

[Silence of the Troons]

Why are her parents okay with her becoming such a spectacle?

Because they too are a spectacle. Her mother, Malena Ernman, is a well-known opera singer in Sweden and also a political activist who cares a lot about the climate, so it makes sense why she may want to profit off of her "special" daughter. Her father, Svante Thunberg, is more of a C-list celebrity (although he's the son of a legendary actor, Olof Thunberg) and would probably love to become more famous, so it makes sense why he would be okay with it (that and he probably shares his wife's opinions on most topics).