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.

 

[cecograph]

When Mt. Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines in the early 90s, it blew more CO2 into the atmosphere than the entire industrial revolution from 1900 to 1990 had. So tomorrow if we shut down everything, everywhere, just went entirely pastoral and green and whatnot, three of those eruptions worldwide would nullify any efforts.

I'm trying to search for info on this, but everything that comes up says it's bullshit.

 

[Dingo]

A new Disaster Girl appears.

 

[Crystal Golem]

She looks like if Pippi Longstocking had Carrie Nation's facial expressions.

View attachment 951482

Well I mean she is pretty much the end result of generations of literary cultural marxism where plucky and smug little girls show the silly adults how they're running the world all wrong.

Pretty good for something that started out as a giant cope for a buncha feminist dykes.
Edit: Speak of the devil

 

[Maamtis]

A meme I made to accurately recreate my reaction to Greta's UN speech.

 

[Tour of Italy]

I think I know another reason for Greta’s success and why she’s so polarizing.

Every post of hers has a chorus of social media addicts drooling over her in the comments. And that’s just it; she’s basically a social media influencer. She’s an internet activist who is crossing over into real world impact by the luck of her connections and the strength of her branding.

People who spend all day virtue signaling on twitter see her as validation that what they’re doing can actually make a difference. They see the same pattern of internet self-promotion that they’ve been conditioned to for over the past decade, but in this case it’s being used for something they see as noble. I’d argue that there’s a vast gulf between what your average keyboard warrior does and what this girl is doing, even if it is a result of outside manipulation. That said, even the laziest socially stunted moron can be part of chain that moves the message along and normalizes it to their peers.

The more cynical just see another face in a crowd of do-nothing slackivists with unwarranted popularity. Worse, you could carry that cynicism forward to the point where even if more people are spurred to action, the message has been tuned to oversimply the issue and promote the current solutions that just happen to shift power to the established political order. The end result being a mob of exceptionals who don’t think critically and can be swayed by the next cleverly branded activist superstar, since that’s what they’ve been trained to do on every level of their lives. If this thread is any indication, I’m not sure everyone who favors this cynical second perspective is driven by ideological opposition.

Who’s right in the end? It’s hard to say. People are talking about her now, and talking about the issue, so it’s been effective to a point. But will they be in a year? A month even? Although like it or not, the protests, the heated public conversations, those all have an impact on the social perception of this issue, and even if it’s not her, people will still be talking about the message with the terms noticeably altered by Greta and her handlers. One can at least hope that every scoop of mindless idiots who parrot what they’re told to is bound to have a few motivated, creative individuals willing to think and delve into the issue.

I lean towards cynicism, but there are a lot of moving parts to this whole thing. The problems surrounding the climate are complicated in every conceivable dimension, and humanity still hasn’t really come to grips with how potent the public square of the internet is. It’s all a lot to take in. I started this post over a cringey comment Lindsey Ellis posted on Greta’s social media, with the idea that her appeal to the vapid, social media obsessed crowd is immense since it validates their vanity. I still think there’s truth to that, but I think her opposition operates under a similar effect as well.

Long story short, it’s not all about the climate, or even about Greta; it’s about people’s own insurities playing out across the global network.

 

[TowinKarz]

Long story short, it’s not all about the climate, or even about Greta; it’s about people’s own insurities playing out across the global network.

Yep, this whole thing is one big ideological circle-jerk that boils down to "My views can't be stupid/wrong, if they were, THAT person wouldn't sit down to listen to us!" While being unaware the "listening" or "starting a conversation" they are so proud of is just a buck that gets passed around, from parent, to kid, to activists to politician and back around to parent again, solving nothing but convincing the parties involved they are important and right without having to ever solve any physical thing.

Circular ass patting

 

[The best and greatest]

Gimme sources on that one. While I’m down for “everything is connected” ideology, everything I’ve ever read says the Abyssal Plains are dead asf. And then there’s still the Moon (people want to colonize it, but I think it’d be more effective as a trash dump).

If you're willing to go all the way to the moon to dump your waste, why dump anything when you can just chuck it out into space/the sun?

 

[Crystal Golem]

Yep, this whole thing is one big ideological circle-jerk that boils down to "My views can't be stupid/wrong, if they were, THAT person wouldn't sit down to listen to us!" While being unaware the "listening" or "starting a conversation" they are so proud of is just a buck that gets passed around, from parent, to kid, to activists to politician and back around to parent again, solving nothing but convincing the parties involved they are important and right without having to every solve any physical thing.

Circular ass patting

Kinda like another shitty low-info cancer the MSM. They do the same thing when they start stories off like "its now being reported that X". when all they are really saying is "my loser buddy at some low down publication put out some bullshit story so now we can say that people are reporting that X happened".

 

[HTTP Error 404]

If minecraft has taught me anything, you never destroy anything. You might need it later.

To wit, all that nuclear waste? Apparently can be fed into Gen4 reactors as fuel?

 

[Manwithn0n0men]

If minecraft has taught me anything, you never destroy anything. You might need it later.

To wit, all that nuclear waste? Apparently can be fed into Gen4 reactors as fuel?

Yes but then Enviromentalists couldnt control inferior people

 

[metroid_fetish]

Is this Onision's husband's new girlfriend?

 

[Gender Affirming Surgery]

Kinda like another shitty low-info cancer the MSM. They do the same thing when they start stories off like "its now being reported that X". when all they are really saying is "my loser buddy at some low down publication put out some bullshit story so now we can say that people are reporting that X happened".

Eh, just “away” is good enough for me—but it’s been pointed out that the cost of using space as a dumping ground is too high. I’m not willing to smash numbers to prove it one way or the other, so I’m conceding the point out of laziness.

The Abyssal Plains apparently have an ecology (everything does, really), and @heathercho’s point about currents was a big “duh.” I dunno, I was drunkposting. I want nuclear power, and the drawback is these tanks of hot water sitting on the lot waiting for a disaster. I’m trying to think of where the hell else it can go, and I’m willing to have a Renegade option where something else suffers a bit (desert?) so we can get over this dragass energy hump that’s holding us back. We gotta get off this planet sometime.

 

[Crystal Golem]

I dunno, I was drunkposting.

You still are. Wrong quote bro.

Here's some interesting parts from the article I posted earlier.

"Sweden has sent the world a real-life Pippi Longstocking."

"Pippi was one of my daughter’s favorite characters, so I took great delight this past week when the 21st-century, real-life version of Pippi became a favorite of mine — practically overnight. "

"Enter the Swedish heroine, Pippi Longstocking, the real life version of whom is a 16-year-old girl named Greta Thunberg. "

"I am not quite certain what that all means except I do understand that every credible scientist agrees it is not good for children and other living things on this planet. "

"Listening to Greta was like watching Pippi handle adults who were “pompous and condescending.” It was fun. "

Some really telling quotes there. I think it might be worth it to track any more comparisons like this the author seemed to be laying it on rather thick. If anyone sees any more articles or tweets like this deffo pm me a link at least if not post them here.

 

[Manwithn0n0men]

Some really telling quotes there. I think it might be worth it to track any more comparisons like this the author seemed to be laying it on rather thick. If anyone sees any more articles or tweets like this deffo pm me a link at least if not post them here.

That is the opposite point of those books

 

[Crystal Golem]

That is the opposite point of those books

I always read pippi longstocking as a brat living a sad life without any parental love or care but im the kind of monster that thinks children need boundaries.

 

[Manwithn0n0men]

I always read pippi longstocking as a brat living a sad life without any parental love or care but im the kind of monster that thinks children need boundaries.

that was the point

 

[Crystal Golem]

that was the point

The way it's interpreted especially in the more modern adaptations tneds to show pippi as a strong womyn who don't need no man or parent and glosses over the whole absent parent thing.

 

[Amber the Hedgehog]

I always read pippi longstocking as a brat living a sad life without any parental love or care but im the kind of monster that thinks children need boundaries.

The way it's interpreted especially in the more modern adaptations tneds to show pippi as a strong womyn who don't need no man or parent and glosses over the whole absent parent thing.

Most Astrid Lindgen book were kinda like that. You tecnically could read them a kid or kids doing funny stuff or going to awesome adventure but if bothered pay any attention many of the situations were really sad and the heroes were quite broken people. I would say her most consistently happiest character was Emil and he had a lot problems especially with his dad. Mostly he was just well meaning if thoughless kid from loving family that got in trouble and had deal with consequences and relationships issues that resulted. These books were my favorites.

A lot about Pippi books were about how bad she was fitting in and doing normal things. It’s pretty clear that while she was strong, kind and resourceful little girl, she was still a little girl without much guidance. Her eccentricities were largely just about trying to survive and handle problems on her own. It’s still very much a power and freedom fantasy, a kid who is physically strongest, has huge amounts of money, no authority telling what to do and super cool pets. Books just doesn’t cover up completely what that would also entail like being alone and most people seeing you as wierd or even mean.

 

[Axiomatically Pro-Choice]

I am a Greta-Accelerationist. when the wacky environmentalists get a hold of her, the right wing is gonna swop in to 'own the libs' thinking they are so fucking smurt. This might turn over some climate deniers and we can finally have a discussion on what to do.

 

[Manwithn0n0men]

I am a Greta-Accelerationist. when the wacky environmentalists get a hold of her, the right wing is gonna swop in to 'own the libs' thinking they are so fucking smurt. This might turn over some climate deniers and we can finally have a discussion on what to do.

Nothing is what we should do