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.

 

[Underestimated Nutria]

My issue with this whole situation is that it seems most of the vitriol is misdirected. Greta is an annoying, naive teenage, but as others have stated, she's just being propped up and used by her parents, and other douchebags as a mouthpiece, and shield to deflect any kind of criticism.

I don't hate Greta. I don't really even dislike her. Frankly, I pity her. Her heart is in the right place, and I genuinely believe she thinks she's doing the right thing. The problem is that in addition to her already being dealt a shitty hand with having Aspergers, a shitty upbringing, and being brainwashed for her entire life, she's now also being taken advantage of by her terrible parents, politicians, and celebrities, who have all been parading her around as some sort of infallible wonder child, and is currently a laughing stock due her and her group basically treating anyone who even slightly disagrees with them as evil, uncaring, greedy Captain Planet villains.

At the end of the day, we have to remember that Greta is just a mentally ill teenager who's being used as nothing more than a puppet and defense mechanism by people who have way more power, and control than she does. It's those people that deserve the hatred, and outrage, not the sixteen year old, malnourished, brainwashed aspie with probable FAS. Now if Greta continues this kind of behavior into adulthood, that's another story. But for the time being, we should focus the attention, and mockery on the assholes actually behind all this shit.

tl;dr-Be angry at the ones pulling the strings, and not the hapless, helpless marionette being forced to dance on the stage.

I wonder if the laws applying to child actors should apply to her?

 

[Spicy Tacos]

I wonder if the laws applying to child actors should apply to her?

Child Labor laws should apply in general, but no one is enforcing them for her.

 

[Jason "Qriist" Close]

I wonder if the laws applying to child actors should apply to her?

Given that she has an imdb page and has been trotted around the world to put on a show that's not a bad idea at all.

 

[From The Uncanny Valley]

Given that she has an imdb page and has been trotted around the world to put on a show that's not a bad idea at all.

wait what

 

[Jason "Qriist" Close]

wait what

Greta Thunberg - IMDb

archived 25 Sep 2019 01:01:30 UTC

archive.li

It's HILARIOUS that the archive snapped a flick of a girl with superpowers rofl

 

[Ambidextype]

imagine being so far up your own ass that your strongest argument is insulting a teenager for her looks when you're twice her age
really mature guys lmao

I haven't really made fun or said of anything about her appearance but I got to say it's true Greta Thunberg has this uncanny valley appearance. Speaking of uncanny valley, she reminds me of a character from Fallout 3 and has that know-it-all attitude like those kids you run across in the game.

 

[Underestimated Nutria]

Well considering that the can't prove that it is unhealthy when used as food packaging, only as a chemical consumed in quantities much larger than what would ever be emitted by decomposing plastic I'm pretty confident in saying that it is yet another panic over nothing.

The poison is the dose. Small enough quantities released over a long enough time makes even the most dangerous toxins a nonissue. Add to this that the most prevalent microplastics are benign polyethylene and polypropylene, I ain't getting worked up over it.

Shit, even third place polystyrene is pretty benign because of its durability.

I think you are probably right, but I would not be surprised to find in forty years that some decomposition product whose name has never even been in writing ends up causing penis cancer or something. It's happened enough, historically. Thorotrast, a carcinogenic radiocontrast agent of dubious safety from the beginning, took decades, and thousands of lives, to be taken of the market; and this was of a well known, and well known to be dangerous chemical, not something that can break down in millions of different ways. In any event, I hate plastics and oil wastage simply because one day we will need that oil to make important stuff like medicines and it will be way too expensive.

Incidentally, I am also rather concerned about precocious puberty and the absolutely precipitous decline in sperm quality and quantity, as well as the utterly staggering apparent fragility of young people today, as measured in grip strength, not to speak of course of their hilarious mental fragility. Like ... grip strength is a pretty good proxy for measuring overall strength and to a much lesser extent health, and now the average fifty year old literally does better in it than someone in the Millennial Generation, the latter who are also, I should also mention, losing lateralisation (i.e. unlike their fathers, whose right hands were generally much stronger than their left, their left and right hands have very closely aligned grip strengths).

Edited: I changed "Generation Y" to "Millennial Generation" and corrected typos.

 

[Spicy Tacos]

Greta doesn't have a mental illness according to some people because autism isn't an illness, bigot.

(yes, real people are making this point).

Her mother says in her book that Greta has a mental illness, and that the younger sister does too. It’s so ridiculous that people are denying it now.

I think Greta’s eating disorder, depression, anxiety, and OCD all qualify as mental illness.

I remember seeing information, around a year ago, about her previous issues with self harm and suicidal thoughts, but it seems to have disappeared now.

 

[From The Uncanny Valley]

I haven't really made fun or said of anything about her appearance but I got to say it's true Greta Thunberg has this uncanny valley appearance. Speaking of uncanny valley, she reminds me of a character from Fallout 3 and has that know-it-all attitude like those kids you run across in the game.

I'm like 80% sure I look better than her

 

[heathercho]

Her mother’s says in her book that Greta has a mental illness, and that the younger sister does too. It’s so ridiculous that people are denying it now.

I think Greta’s eating disorder, depression, anxiety, and OCD all qualify as mental illness.

I remember seeing information, around a year ago, about her previous issues with self harm and suicidal thoughts, but it seems to have disappeared now.

I wonder how true the story that Greta "demanded" the family not use airtravel is?
It supposedly cost her mother her career. Seems a bit odd that you'd cuck to a child if you had a potential career and more that Greta was a nightmare and needed a full time carer to be around.

 

[ColtWalker1847]

Thorotrast, a carcinogenic radiocontrast agent of dubious safety from the beginning, took decades, and thousands of lives, to be taken of the market; and this was of a well known, and well known to be dangerous chemical, not something that can break down in millions of different ways.

How is that different than any of the natural plastics though? Lignin is is a bioplastic with aromatic groups. Ditto proteins. How are those substantially better or worse than polystyrene at degrading? Or cellulose and fats and sugars and whatever other natural long chains of carbons and polyethylene and polypropylene? I just don't see the big scary connection. Especially if we are talking slow processes that are immediately diluting themselves into the Pacific Ocean. You could have a large spill of botulism toxin right into the center of it and you wouldn't be able to find traces of it a few miles away. Shit approaches Avogadro's Number pretty quickly out there, y'know.

In any event, I hate plastics and oil pollution simply because one day we will need that oil to make important stuff like medicines and it will be way too expensive.

Carbon is chemistry's Lego block. We can, and do, make what we need from simple carbon feedstocks. We will never run out of that stuff for high value goods like medicine. Shit, we make motor oil out of natural gas now. We can make gas out of coal. We can make coal (well, charcoal) out of wood. Not to mention direct feedstocks like wood gas or pyrolysis oil. We aren't running out of the raw materials to make life-saving medicine. Ever. Just add energy, heat really, plus some random carbon material you have laying around and you got it. I doubt we would ever run into this issue for manufactured goods either because it is so cheap and easy to make these feedstocks. It just isn't cheaper than digging it out of the ground... yet.

The only thing that will run into a scarcity problem in the future is burning this shit for energy. That's the big huge hairy problem facing humanity going forward. How do we drive all of these processes once the fossil fuels become too scarce/expensive/polluting/etc? Hard to be terribly concerned about the sourcing of your cancer meds when you are going to starve to death long before you live long enough to find that lump on your balls.

 

[Freedom Fries]

I recently read (what I recall to be) some MAGA chud's hot take regarding globohomo use of children which I am probably bastardizing but went something like this:

Leftists (or people who like globohomo) like following children because children are really only capable of advocating for what the authority tells them. Being in agreement then is a perfect way to know you're on the side of and show you are following the globohomo authority.

Not sure I agree, but it was an interesting hot take. Thoughts?

 

[Fliddaroonie]

I wonder how true the story that Greta "demanded" the family not use airtravel is?
It supposedly cost her mother her career. Seems a bit odd that you'd cuck to a child if you had a potential career and more that Greta was a nightmare and needed a full time carer to be around.

There was a radio interview with her parents about how Greta pressured the family into veganism. Not sure where but I'll have a rummage about and post an archived link if I find it. I think it may have been on LBC or BBC R4 in the UK. Not the same as air travel, I know, but I can easily imagine her parents just capitulating to avoid any arguments.

The family's upcoming book seems to be based on their lives and discusses mental health problems in the children mentioned in the book.
http://archive.is/s9Tri

The whole thing, their family, how Greta acts, to me seems like she, along with her sister, are both deeply troubled. And ranting about the planet is a way to lose herself in that. I can't see what's special about Greta compared to any other autistic kid, other than Thunberg's obsession is the planet. What she needs is a stable home life, not to be shoved in front of the media and onto the international arena over this.

 

[Marissa Moira]

How can you pressure the family into veganism if you own dogs?

it doesn't work like that, those fuckers expect you to grill them fresh meat or you at least buy canned food that contains real meat.

 

[Fliddaroonie]

How can you pressure the family into veganism if you own dogs?

it doesn't work like that, those fuckers expect you to grill them fresh meat or you at least buy canned food that contains real meat.

I dunno, the hardcore vegans I know have "vegan pets" which all mysteriously croak it after being put on an unnatural diet. One mate of mine had a "vegan dog" which savaged a rabbit while out for a walk, which was equal parts gross and hilarious. Apparently the dog had "never been happier" on a vegan diet and was "getting all it needed".


Funny how their definition of animal enslavement doesn't cover vegans own desire for pets though, right? Either animals are not our property and we should not eat, experiment on or own them, or fuck that noise, have a steak and own a dog.


Ach, maybe the Thunbergs are going down the Abby Cappleman route and they're not pets, they're "assistance dogs"?

 

[Slap47]

imagine being so far up your own ass that your strongest argument is insulting a teenager for her looks when you're twice her age
really mature guys lmao

Fetal alcohol syndrome is funny though.

 

[heathercho]

There was a radio interview with her parents about how Greta pressured the family into veganism. Not sure where but I'll have a rummage about and post an archived link if I find it. I think it may have been on LBC or BBC R4 in the UK. Not the same as air travel, I know, but I can easily imagine her parents just capitulating to avoid any arguments.

The family's upcoming book seems to be based on their lives and discusses mental health problems in the children mentioned in the book.
http://archive.li/s9Tri

The whole thing, their family, how Greta acts, to me seems like she, along with her sister, are both deeply troubled. And ranting about the planet is a way to lose herself in that. I can't see what's special about Greta compared to any other autistic kid, other than Thunberg's obsession is the planet. What she needs is a stable home life, not to be shoved in front of the media and onto the international arena over this.

I recently read (what I recall to be) some MAGA chud's hot take regarding globohomo use of children which I am probably bastardizing but went something like this:

Leftists (or people who like globohomo) like following children because children are really only capable of advocating for what the authority tells them. Being in agreement then is a perfect way to know you're on the side of and show you are follow the globohomo authority.

Not sure I agree, but it was an interesting hot take. Thoughts?

For about two years, Thunberg challenged her parents to lower the family's carbon footprint by becoming vegan and giving up flying, which in part meant her mother had to give up her international career as an opera singer.

Letting an aspie call the shots is... well, would you let a skitzo call the shots? It demonstrates what the parents felt, but didn't want to make a call on perhaps.

Considering their family relation to eugenicist and "grandfather of climate change" Svante Arrhenius, I find it odd that what he made his life on, they too, have made their life on. I know Swedes are more inclined to be into this kind of thing, but the connection is something that can't be ignored. She's been set up perfectly for it.

People can be pro environment and anti-Greta. But the progressive left/globalists demand you to be pro environment, pro-Greta. Greta in this instance is just a figurehead for the agenda/ideology that the UN et al have been pushing for ages - Agenda 21, 2030 etc all wrapped up into a neat 16 year old girl shaped present.

They demand you be pro-renewables, anti-nuclear, pro- social justice, anti-nationalism, pro-communism. For them there is no in between.
You argue - based on science - that climate change, whilst "real" and "man made" isn't exactly as they're representing, then you're a climate change "denier". There's no medium, you're either for or against.

What they want isn't about the environment. It's not about people living in some peaceful utopia. It's about forcing the creation of a one world government. If all humans are forced to unite against an enemy, then they will agree that maybe we need a centralised body to handle that. You know, to govern it. As a whole world. Together. Like a one world government.

If it were about the environment, they would be pro-nuclear, useful idiots like Elon would be focusing his autism on things like Nuclear Fusion. He's not. He's proposing bullshit like mining the moon. Mining Mars.
If you look behind most of these climate change personality's curtains, they're not for innovation, they're for stripping everyone else of things, to make sure they still have what they want.

They won't talk about how the incoming Solar Minimum period was a big concern before - people were worried it'd bring on a mini ice age. They won't talk about what impact that will have in conjunction with the climate change we obviously have. They won't talk about how the magnetic poles are moving and what impact that has on weather.

They just want to focus on unifying the world against a common threat in order to establish the need for centralised control. Using a stupid aspie kid for that is perfect in current year. If you disagree with a young FEMALE you're a terrible person.

If this doesn't work, they'll just switch to some bullshit UFO fake disclosure stuff they've been setting up for a while. Nothing like a good crisis to unite the world, after all.

 

[Tasty Tatty]

I wonder how true the story that Greta "demanded" the family not use airtravel is?
It supposedly cost her mother her career. Seems a bit odd that you'd cuck to a child if you had a potential career and more that Greta was a nightmare and needed a full time carer to be around.

Autistic or not, if you force your family through all that, you're a spoiled monster and you deserve a slap and be sent to your room. And make it double for the parents for the bad parenting.

That, of course, if any of that is true. I'm sure it's all made up so they can convince people that the child has some sort of divine power that made her family make all of these changes.

 

[ColtWalker1847]

How can you pressure the family into veganism if you own dogs?

it doesn't work like that, those fuckers expect you to grill them fresh meat or you at least buy canned food that contains real meat.

I think there is a way to make dogs vegan. They aren't obligate carnivores. They are scavenging carnivores that can into taurine. This means crazy people will sometimes torture them by making them eat unhealthy diets even though they are good boys.

It's cats that must have meat. The little darling murder-machines will get it even if it means taking it by force. Which is why cats are better.

 

[Jason "Qriist" Close]

I think there is a way to make dogs vegan. They aren't obligate carnivores. They are scavenging carnivores that can into taurine. This means crazy people will sometimes torture them by making them eat unhealthy diets even though they are good boys.

It's cats that must have meat. The little darling murder-machines will get it even if it means taking it by force. Which is why cats are better.

Most animals are opportunistic carnivores.

This Poor Chicken Got Eaten by a Cow | Smart News | Smithsonian

archived 25 Sep 2019 03:55:04 UTC

archive.li

Oh Vox. You say so many things that are firmly incorrect.

Trump’s attacks on Greta Thunberg expose sexist, ableist stigma - Vox

archived 25 Sep 2019 03:58:44 UTC

archive.li