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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Water-T said:
I really can't blame her. Many kids on the 'tism scale like her don't have many friends (or none at all), and based on what i've seen of her parents, they probably keep her very isolated. So being a child that is suddenly in the spotlight, Greta feels validated now. "People are listening to me! They like me! They're defending me from people who talk bad about me! I get to meet celebrities and travel around the world!". Of course she's going to love that attention.

Sadly, it's going to be short lived and it's very unhealthy for her. The spotlight will fade as it always does, and she's never going to get that validation or dopamine highs again. It's why so many former child stars bottom out.
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Hope she doesn't wait until 27
 
That prize is jinxed:

-Obama wins it for no reason other than "strengthening him". Proceeded to do nothing worthy of it and Trump is busy wiping out his legacy.

-Malala recently was caught lying about how she missed her exams on Sep. 12 due to the current situation in Kashmir and India upsetting her (it was an Eid holiday so all schools wer closed). Now gets shittalked on social media.

I dread what Greta's future holds.
 
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Abortions4All said:
This seems to be a new tactic of the left: put someone up as a representative of a vision which cannot be argued with, because the person at the center of the media frenzy is so fragile.

This happened with "Lily" whatever he was called in the UK as well, and "Aimee" Challenor, a mentally unwell person pushed to political prominence by older handlers.

It's supposed to work two ways: You're supposed to be very impressed at how much inner strength it must take this person to put themselves in the spotlight, instead of questioning anything about whether the spotlight/publicity was the whole point. Of course they wouldn't otherwise want to draw attention to themselves, look at how unwell they are!

The second purpose, of course, is just making them impossible to argue back against. "Oh yes, big man, arguing with a 16 year old girl." "Can't you see she's giving this her all, how dare you try to complain about someone so brave?" If these fail, they'll move on to the "you're making her literally physically ill!"

You can either decide to be an activist, or a fragile mentally unwell person who it's unfair to oppose. If you say you're an activist, I'm going to treat you like one, and that means you need to learn to face opposition. The whole reason it's brave to be an activist is that you face opposition. If it was all celebrations and making a difference, everyone would do it and it wouldn't be brave in the slightest.
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Leftists have been doing this for a while. If you look up their various protests they'll often have children in attendance so that when they start pushing boundaries with the police the police can't do anything unless they're willing to tear gas a bunch of children and have the leftist media plaster the photos everywhere.
 
BlueSpark said:
Leftists have been doing this for a while. If you look up their various protests they'll often have children in attendance so that when they start pushing boundaries with the police the police can't do anything unless they're willing to tear gas a bunch of children and have the leftist media plaster the photos everywhere.
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Sounds like Hezbollah(sp)
 
www.theguardian.com

Greta Thunberg nominated for Nobel peace prize

Climate strike founder put up for award ahead of global strikes planned in more than 105 countries
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com

"
Greta Thunberg, the founder of the Youth Strike for Climate movement, has been nominated for the Nobel peace prize, just before the biggest day yet of global action.

Thunberg began a solo protest in Sweden in August but has since inspired students around the globe. Strikes are expected in 1,659 towns and cities in 105 countries on Friday, involving hundreds of thousands of young people.

“We have proposed Greta Thunberg because if we do nothing to halt climate change it will be the cause of wars, conflict and refugees,” said Norwegian Socialist MP Freddy André Øvstegård. “Greta Thunberg has launched a mass movement which I see as a major contribution to peace.”

“[I am] honoured and very grateful for this nomination,” said Thunberg on Twitter. Tomorrow we #schoolstrike for our future. And we will continue to do so for as long as it takes.” She has already challenged leaders in person at the UN climate summit in late 2018 and at Davos in January. “Change is coming whether they like it or not,” she said.

National politicians and some university professors can nominate candidates for the Nobel peace prize, which will be awarded in December. There are 301 candidates for the 2019 prize: 223 individuals and 78 organisations.

In 2014, the peace prize was awarded to 17-year-old Malala Yousafzai, “for the struggle ... for the right of all children to education”. She survived a Taliban assassination attempt in 2012.

While some politicians have opposed the school strikes, many have supported them, including Germany’s Angela Merkel and Ireland’s Leo Varadkar. The mayors of Paris, Milan, Sydney, Austin, Philadelphia, Portland, Oslo, Barcelona and Montreal added their backing on Thursday."
 
Sweden might be a joke on the international stage at this point, but at least we can blame Nobel peace prize tardism on the Norwegians

*Contrarily to the rest of the Nobel prizes, the peace prize is handed out by Norway
 
Just what we need for a Nobel Peace Prize winner, someone who has no filter and can't keep from expressing over-the-top anger whenever she's given a microphone. I see no way whatsoever that someone like this, who has been celebrated more as her rhetoric becomes more extreme, and who has extreme desires for control as evidenced by the veganism, OCD, eating disorders, could cause any trouble if given a worldwide platform and slavishly devoted fans.
 
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