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.

 

[The Gag Knuckle]

Fuckin' lollerskates at all the basement physicians demonstrating their House MD credentials. Can't she just be a goofy kid who looks weird?

 

[TFT-A9]

Fuckin' lollerskates at all the basement physicians demonstrating their House MD credentials. Can't she just be a goofy kid who looks weird?

0.01 kroner has been deposited in your account

 

[Particle Bored]

[

“She can see carbon dioxide with the naked eye. She sees how it flows out of chimneys and turns the atmosphere into a rubbish tip.” is the exact quote. Like I said it sounds awkward like attempts at flowery striking images. It's incorrect because it's not actually CO2 that is visible in pollution from chimneys, although the gas will be there alongside what actually is visible.

Good nitpicking though. I should have said non-literal instead of metaphorical.

She's still got more IQ and climate science knowledge than all deniers collectively. Just say "yeah oil's great and fuck the trees and air time to become China."

"Climate change is a scam to implement societal control and bleed the populace for carbon taxes. Why are Al Gore and Obama buying beachfront property if the situation is so dire? Is it my SUV causing the ice caps on Mars to melt too?"

"WHy dO yOu LOvE poLLuTiON, yoU bIg oil sHilL?!?1? (also please chow down on these glyphosate-infused GMOs, patented and owned by big pharma megacorps, the same ones that created Agent Orange. Yay science! Yay environmentalism!)"

 

[TitanWest]

2. - Pushing the green agenda which the left of late has been caught admitting is not about the environment, but about using that as a pretext to forcibly regulate the crap out of us and turn us all into socialists for the Planet's sake.

That's interesting. I always suspected that since things like carbon taxes don't reduce CO2 emissions. Who admitted it?

 

[CamelCursive]

"She's triggering to men!"

Well, yeah. Grown men don't kowtow to teenagers. That's fucking stupid.

 

[Particle Bored]

That's interesting. I always suspected that since things like carbon taxes don't reduce CO2 emissions. Who admitted it?

I think this is one of the most recent and direct:
https://www.nationalreview.com/news...e-green-new-deal-is-not-about-climate-change/

“The interesting thing about the Green New Deal, is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all,” Chakrabarti said to Inslee’s climate director, Sam Ricketts, according to a Washington Post reporter who attended the meeting for a profile published Wednesday.

“Do you guys think of it as a climate thing?” Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing,” he added.

 

[Brundlefly]

The issue is that not her views or those of FFF are attacked but most 'critique' I've read is argumentum ad hominem. If you can't beat the arguments of a 16 year old girl but have to rely on personal attacks or degenerate sexual fantasies, well, I guess you are a fucking exceptional individual and, in addition, a fucking pedo.

This is the case on 4chan a lot lately. Pedophiles are posting obsessively about her now. Even on forums where you wouldn't expect, although that's nothing new.

 

[Feline Darkmage]

Also I'm disappointed that our self professed leftie moderator decides to hand out pissy neg ratings rather than elaborate further on how he thinks I'm fear mongering by calling green politics what it is

How dare I go do other things like sleep. Leftists who talk about climate stuff don't exactly hide our economic views. Muh Cryptocommies has always been a witch hunt tactic to frighten the public out of working on problems with anyone vaguely to the left of Reagan & Bush.

EDIT: Can we also add that Greta Thunberg is against nuclear power for no good reason and won't even talk to nuclear physicists about it. Even though it is the answer to global warming. Rather we had a future powered by Solar And Wind! and indulgences for the rich.

lol okay now we're getting somewhere. I love anti-Nuclear spergs, that's some good actual fearmongering and pseudoscience right there.

Are you sure you're not autistic as well, because there's an awful lot of handwaving coming off your posts.

Never denied being autismo, my pal.

Neither of which are problems in western countries. Pollution could and should be worked on I guess, but that's still irrelevant when you have India, China, and Africa cranking out babies and toxic sludge.

Its a constant fight, we always need to work on these issues at home, we currently live with an administration in the US that denies Anthropological Climate Change and is bringing to fruition the scam of "Clean Coal." just because it doesn't want to start phasing out fossil fuels even though we should probably get on that track ASAP.

All her solutions are sub par bandaids that has been shilled by the elite for the last half a century so we can all start paying climate sin taxes to feel good. Meanwhile nothing is proposed to solve a future where Africa will number in the billions while still being the same people that dump plastic straight into the ocean.

I wouldn't shift all the blame elsewhere, this is a world-wide thing in cause and consequences. What exactly do you think are the exact things being proposed by (((the elites)))? Because I actually agree that neoliberals never go far enough, because they are fucking lazy and don't want to alienate all the corporate donors.

"Climate change is a scam to implement societal control and bleed the populace for carbon taxes. Why are Al Gore and Obama buying beachfront property if the situation is so dire? Is it my SUV causing the ice caps on Mars to melt too?"

"WHy dO yOu LOvE poLLuTiON, yoU bIg oil sHilL?!?1? (also please chow down on these glyphosate-infused GMOs, patented and owned by big pharma megacorps, the same ones that created Agent Orange. Yay science! Yay environmentalism!)"

Politicians being hypocrites is nothing new. I'm not interested in going to bat for Obama but people who live on Martha's Vineyard have made posts about how the sea level rise will fuck over the island. http://www.vineyardconservation.org/a/the-hard-facts-about-sea-level-rise

Meanwhile, Gore's property is Ocean VIEW not Ocean FRONT. There's a difference. It was quite a bit above sea level, about 500 feet above it currently. So a five foot rise would not fuck that property over.

GMOs in and of themselves aren't bad but I find it hilarious you immediately jump to "wow you must trust Monsanto, libtard."

I think this is one of the most recent and direct:
https://www.nationalreview.com/news...e-green-new-deal-is-not-about-climate-change/

National Shill is being disingenuous. Which is sad because it actually used to be respectable.

The climate issues we face are caused and fed into by the current economic system the two things are directly related and inseparable. Anyone who doesn't propose a solution that also involves economic overhauls and critique of capitalism's role is weak.

 

[Sperghetti]

Guess I'm late to be addressing the OP here, but...

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?

Because her whole schtick is blatant emotional manipulation. She’s supposed to both tug at your heartstrings (Look at this poor autistic girl who’s scared for the future!) and invoke that whole “truth spoken by an innocent, unblemished child” idea.

The problem with emotional manipulation is that people either totally eat that shit up, or they see it coming from a mile away and are repulsed by it. People aren’t getting “triggered” by her, they just find the situation repugnant because they don't like it when people try to guilt or manipulate them. They are completely turned off by it. Which is something that people who are swayed by pathos don't understand.

 

[Avocado Kin]

What’s up with her doing Illuminati symbolism

And here she’s wearing cheetah print pants which is some kind of MK Ultra thing or something, I can’t remember

 

[Freedom Fries]

Its a constant fight, we always need to work on these issues at home, we currently live with an administration in the US that denies Anthropological Climate Change and is bringing to fruition the scam of "Clean Coal." just because it doesn't want to start phasing out fossil fuels even though we should probably get on that track ASAP.

Global warming alarmism is a scam. If the worst case projections come true (which they haven't ever to date) and temperature goes up 5 or so degrees over the next two hundred years or so, people in the US will be able to live just fine.

Real problems are polluting/using up clean water sources by mining, farming(, energy?), and industrial runoff, trashing and building over natural beauty that will take forever to regrow, (smog and other air pollution kinda because this one is a quicker fix,) various invasive plant and animal species invasions (like the pine bark beetle and Asian carp), extremely poor/unsustainable commercial fishing practices like throwing out by-catch, and garbage heaps of non-biodegradable shit everywhere. I also don't really like how we dam up so many flood planes, but that does make more sense to me.

Funny how working to rectify that stuff doesn't require you to make drastic changes in your life, let the BLM manage your property, or swear allegiance to greedy oligarchic technocrats masquerading as the cult of Gaia. It also doesn't require you to kill whitey or abort all your kids.

 

[pwnest injun]

Clean Coal, or processing complex hydrocarbon fuels into hydrogen syngas and depositing the CO2 into deep saline aquifers, is the only way to actually deal with fossil fuels besides trying to outlaw their harvesting and sale. Good luck with that though!

 

[vertexwindi]

Global warming alarmism is a scam. If the worst case projections come true (which they haven't ever to date) and temperature goes up 5 or so degrees over the next two hundred years or so, people in the US will be able to live just fine.

Isn't this kind of alarmist screeching old hat at this point anyways? I wasn't alive at the time but I heard they spewed the same "WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE IN 5 YEARS UNLESS WE DO SOMETHING NOW" nonsense in the 80s or some such.

 

[turboNIG-3k]

What’s up with her doing Illuminati symbolism View attachment 930481View attachment 930482
And here she’s wearing cheetah print pants which is some kind of MK Ultra thing or something, I can’t remember View attachment 930488

That's one weird looking 12-year old boy, tell you hwat.
That melodramatic art piece in the background really ties the whole thing together, though. Reminds me of the gallows, rope and all, that a bunch of teenagers assembled during one of those Friday climate protests. As in, they were standing on it with ropes around their neck; if that's not emotional blackmailing, then what is?

 

[Gravityqueen4life]

i wish i could have gotten World famous for skiping school, talk about meme climet change. speaking of school, i wonder what her ex-classmates think of this. would love to hear thier opinion of Greta.

 

[Big Nasty]

i wish i could have gotten World famous for skiping school talk about meme climet change. speaking of school, i wonder what her ex-classmates think of this. would love to hear thier opinion of Greta.

She's in sped school.

 

[PonelessBizza]

What’s up with her doing Illuminati symbolism View attachment 930481View attachment 930482
And here she’s wearing cheetah print pants which is some kind of MK Ultra thing or something, I can’t remember View attachment 930488

Why do I get the feeling she could actually be younger than 16?

 

[Gravityqueen4life]

She's in sped school.

i guess you would not get much information form potatoes.

 

[TowinKarz]

Isn't this kind of alarmist screeching old hat at this point anyways? I wasn't alive at the time but I heard they spewed the same "WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE IN 5 YEARS UNLESS WE DO SOMETHING NOW" nonsense in the 80s or some such.

And the 70s too, except the culprit back then was the next Ice Age which is right around the corner in the next 5 years according to computer models, and you can't doubt the impartial computer, can you? (Oh, and it would be a GOOD thing, otherwise, overpopulation will kill us in 5 years when we run out of room and resources and will have to eat each other, unless the Soviets get twitchy and nuke us so they can take our food, and if not them, then Red China certainly will)

Really, overpopulation was the real bugbear of the day, just read some of the works by Paul "the Human Klaxon" Ehrlich sometime, a lefty college type he wrote one of those provocative treatises (backed by I FUCKING LOVE SCIENCE SO MUCH MY FEELINGS ARE EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE!) that said the only question was how many thousands would starve vs die in food riots in the US by 1990...... that article that went around about how the Greens of the 70's were wrong with their dire warnings? He's on it like ten times.

Everything the climate crisis folks yammer about today was done before, and nobody called them when they just repackaged it as warming instead of cooling. Look close and you can see the sharpie marks on their signs where they scribbled the old word out and wrote a new one in outside the margin....

The problem with emotional manipulation is that people either totally eat that shit up, or they see it coming from a mile away and are repulsed by it. People aren’t getting “triggered” by her, they just find the situation repugnant because they don't like it when people try to guilt or manipulate them. They are completely turned off by it. Which is something that people who are swayed by pathos don't understand.

99% of the mess that creates the current political divide is the fact that those who emotionally invest to that degree assume the only reason you/we don't is you're evil Hitlerspawns. So when you simply ask a question like where the sixty trillion dollars required to implement even one of the climate-saving ideas would come from, you immediately get a bike lock to the head in return and your social media profile is vandalized with claims you're a rapist.

Because if you don't care about THE PLANET then there's NOTHING you care about! Obviously....

They utterly cannot fathom logical arguments and can only try for complete purification of motive by running off the "meanies" who ASK QUESTIONS.

 

[George Floyd Sneed]

Isn't this kind of alarmist screeching old hat at this point anyways? I wasn't alive at the time but I heard they spewed the same "WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE IN 5 YEARS UNLESS WE DO SOMETHING NOW" nonsense in the 80s or some such.

Ackchually since the 70s. Pretty much since watermelon politics became pushed by certain interest groups. The same “rules for thee, not for me” class that get some of them netted in financial or sex scandals.