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.

 

[Glad I couldn't help]

I posted this image before, it's obvious relevant here. Stunning in its near-self-awareness.

Do you think anything productive will result from these protests? I really doubt, it's going to like Occupy Wall Street. Come to think about, this decade began with those protests and ended with these protest, they are prefect bookends of this low dishonest decade.

If climate change will be countered, it will through engineering solutions, not socio-political action.

Spoiler: Tagent

It reminds of another Tweet in their subject's near-self-awareness.

Honest, I suspect the need for transcendental cause and the need to find order out of random chaos explains a lot of lolcow behaviour done beyond immediate material needs.

 

[Underestimated Nutria]

How is that different than any of the natural plastics though?

I have no idea whether huge amounts of plastic in the environment is a serious health hazard or not. The sort of pollution you see coming out of China is so bad that it has to be seen to be believed really, and given that it is so incredibly disgusting and unaesthetic ... I am not really inclined to exercise skepticism. I remember arriving in a Chinese manufacturing city on what seemed like a terribly overcast and lung smothering day; but I was informed by the professor that in fact it was a sunny day, and that otherwise the sky would've been dark. Pictures of such a thing have no effect on one really: but when you see it as a Westerner, regardless of political feeling or how indifferent you are to the environment, you get this really strong sense of wrongness, and instant flashbacks to evil factory scenes in Dickens and an immediate understanding of what Blake was talking about with his "dark satanic mills". I'm a smoker, but I've never had a smoker's cough, or any respiratory signs at all; however, one week there and I could barely breathe, even though I'd stopped smoking for the duration because I knew I couldn't handle China and tobacco poisoning simultaneously.

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.

I used to love organic chemistry. My concern with synthesising what we need from, say, biofuels (alcohols) instead of oil is an economic one. Of course it can be done, but any given reagent will be, what, twenty times more expensive?

 

[ColtWalker1847]

View attachment 948109

I posted this image before, it's obvious relevant here. Stunning in its near-self-awareness.

Do you think anything productive will result from these protests? I really doubt, it's going to like Occupy Wall Street. Come to think about, this decade began with those protests and ended with these protest, they are prefect bookends of this low dishonest decade.

If climate change will be countered, it will through engineering solutions, not socio-political action.

Spoiler: Tagent

It reminds of another Tweet in their subject's near-self-awareness.

View attachment 948115

Honest, I suspect the need for transcendental cause and the need to find order out of random chaos explains a lot of lolcow behaviour done beyond immediate material needs.

To derive meaning in life we must first find a purpose and then pursue goals to fulfill said purpose. It is through that pursuit one finds happiness. The Ancient Greeks figured this shit out and more or less spelled it all out for us so we would not have to relearn it every generation. That some weirdo autistic Swedish teenager put it together doesn't surprise me. That political causes so readily coopt this fundamental step in the growth of self to advance their own goals does. I guess they took a few lessons from the religious nutjobs.

This is why we can't have nice things.

I have no idea whether huge amounts of plastic in the environment is a serious health hazard or not. The sort of pollution you see coming out of China is so bad that it has to be seen to be believed really, and given that it is so incredibly disgusting and unaesthetic ... I am not really inclined to exercise skepticism. I remember arriving in a Chinese manufacturing city on what seemed like a terribly overcast and lung smothering day; but I was informed by the professor that in fact it was a sunny day, and that otherwise the sky would've been dark. Pictures of such a thing have no effect on one really: but when you see it as a Westerner, regardless of political feeling or how indifferent you are to the environment, you get this really strong sense of wrongness, and instant flashbacks to evil factory scenes in Dickens and an immediate understanding of what Blake was talking about with his "dark satanic mills". I'm a smoker, but I've never had a smoker's cough, or any respiratory signs at all; however, one week there and I could barely breathe, even though I'd stopped smoking for the duration because I knew I couldn't handle China and tobacco poisoning simultaneously.

The Chinese are pulling a billion people out of abject poverty. A BILLION. Indians too. They are going to make the same mistakes we did in the west when we did the same thing during the Industrial revolution. Growing pains. You have to have a middle class and a upper middle class before you even begin to give a shit about the environment. See: Starving v. Ball Cancer argument I made earlier.

I used to love organic chemistry. My concern with synthesising what we need from, say, biofuels (alcohols) instead of oil is an economic one. Of course it can be done, but any given reagent will be, what, twenty times more expensive?

And? The cost of reagents isn't the biggest driver in costs. It's distribution. It's packaging. It's R&D. It's sales and advertising. It's whatever the fuck. Plus, few would be able to afford that medicine (and EvilPharmaCo wouldn't make a profit) if the cost of the thing they make it from spiked to the point where they couldn't make plastics economically with it. Our entire economy would collapse and we would have MUCH bigger problems. This cascade of problems begins long before we even bother to consider your costs of reagents on highly profitable medicines with lots of fat to be trimmed and prices to be raised argument. They will weather the storm.

The issue is very basic and fundamental. Energy. Stop getting distracted by the raw material argument. There is plenty and it is cheap enough. What goes wrong first is the ENERGY to drive it and it being cheap. Or at the very least it stays reasonably priced. It's when those wheels come off shit breaks down and nobody will care about your cure for cancer or whatever because they couldn't afford it anyways. Us poor sods will be lucky to have enough energy for light at night after a day of manual labor on our subsistence farms to teach our kids how to read.

 

[Crystal Golem]

View attachment 947392

Jesus Christ Ed looks positively normal next to this goon squad.

So I'm putting my bet in. Once she outlives her use her handlers she decides to take her mumble and trip to Russia and the boat just disappears. This is too manufactured and to many powerful people are all in to just fizzle out. You think all those politicians liked or wanted to talk to this sped? They are going all the way with this one.

 

[Particle Bored]

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.

“In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill…. But in designating them as the enemy, we fall into the trap of mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy, then, is humanity itself.”

– Club of Rome, The First Global Revolution, 1991

 

[Billy "the Bot" Bobson]

The Chinese are pulling a billion people out of abject poverty. A BILLION. Indians too. They are going to make the same mistakes we did in the west when we did the same thing during the Industrial revolution. Growing pains. You have to have a middle class and a upper middle class before you even begin to give a shit about the environment. See: Starving v. Ball Cancer argument I made earlier.


And? The cost of reagents isn't the biggest driver in costs. It's distribution. It's packaging. It's R&D. It's sales and advertising. It's whatever the fuck. Plus, few would be able to afford that medicine (and EvilPharmaCo wouldn't make a profit) if the cost of the thing they make it from spiked to the point where they couldn't make plastics economically with it. Our entire economy would collapse and we would have MUCH bigger problems. This cascade of problems begins long before we even bother to consider your costs of reagents on highly profitable medicines with lots of fat to be trimmed and prices to be raised argument. They will weather the storm.

The issue is very basic and fundamental. Energy. Stop getting distracted by the raw material argument. There is plenty and it is cheap enough. What goes wrong first is the ENERGY to drive it and it being cheap. Or at the very least it stays reasonably priced. It's when those wheels come off shit breaks down and nobody will care about your cure for cancer or whatever because they couldn't afford it anyways. Us poor sods will be lucky to have enough energy for light at night after a day of manual labor on our subsistence farms to teach our kids how to read.

China is not going through growing pains, they've been passed the buck. If there was a better, more effecient method we would have taken it. But because the most effecient system is what we see in China, it continues to exist. Now that the Chinese are outgrowing, they're starting to pass the buck.

No country needs to do manufacturing work dirty under the excuse of "growing pains". It's often overlooked that the factories in the 19th century were better paying and way more technologically advanced than most other jobs available. To say anyone has to go through that period of time because it's what the west did is retarded. If you want a better example, look at Japan, Korea, and Germany. They do not have near the same problems as China does. The only reason these factories exist is through laziness, greed, and incompetence. If the Chinese were smart, they would've built tall in the 90's not expand wildly.

 

[AnOminous]

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.

She reminds me of the chick in Orphan that @Transvaalan used to have as an avatar.

 

[The Great Citracett]

 

[Krimjob]

View attachment 948204
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This is literally the main reason why I love the world we live in right now.

 

[AnOminous]

What if she's not the one being manipulated by her parents but instead, she's forced them to go along with this by torturing them with ear shattering autistic screeches if they don't go along with it?

 

[ColtWalker1847]

China is not going through growing pains, they've been passed the buck. If there was a better, more effecient method we would have taken it. But because the most effecient system is what we see in China, it continues to exist. Now that the Chinese are outgrowing, they're starting to pass the buck.

No country needs to do manufacturing work dirty under the excuse of "growing pains". It's often overlooked that the factories in the 19th century were better paying and way more technologically advanced than most other jobs available. To say anyone has to go through that period of time because it's what the west did is exceptional. If you want a better example, look at Japan, Korea, and Germany. They do not have near the same problems as China does. The only reason these factories exist is through laziness, greed, and incompetence. If the Chinese were smart, they would've built tall in the 90's not expand wildly.

Japan and it's former colony Korea and especially Germany did the industrial revolution in real time and advanced more-or-less how we did. If you don't think they made major mistakes with pollution in the mid 1800's to mid 1900's, hoo-boy, do I have some bad news to share with you.

China is the one who is 100 years late and didn't have a middle class until like a week ago (how are those riots in Hong Kong going, btw?). They have a lot of catching up to do socially. The Chinese people until very recently were peasant dirt farmers. It takes a while for them to grow the stones to say "hey, don't shit all over me. i don't appreciate it." to their feudal overlords. It took the US public, what, 1688 to 1776 to come out with it? That was the head start they got before the robber-barons rolled in during the industrial revolution. I think they are doing pretty good considering the circumstances, just give it time. King George couldn't run over people with tanks and they have to find a work around.

 

[Denmark Mafia]

Climate activist Greta Thunberg wins 'alternative Nobel Prize'

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Swedish teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg was named on Wednesday as one of four winners of the 2019 Right Livelihood Award, known as Sweden’s alternative Nobel Prize.

Thunberg won the award “for inspiring and amplifying political demands for urgent climate action reflecting scientific facts,” the Right Livelihood Foundation said in a statement.


Thunberg, 16, denounced world leaders on Monday for failing to tackle climate change in a speech at the start of a climate summit at the United Nations in New York.

She started solitary weekly protests outside Swedish parliament a year ago. Inspired by her, millions of young people poured onto streets around the world last Friday to demand governments attending the summit take emergency action.


Thunberg shares the award with Brazilian indigenous leader Davi Kopenawa of the Yanomami people, Chinese women’s rights lawyer Guo Jianmei and Western Sahara human rights defender Aminatou Haidar.

“With the 2019 Right Livelihood Award, we honour four practical visionaries whose leadership has empowered millions of people to defend their inalienable rights and to strive for a liveable future for all on planet Earth,” the foundation said in the statement.

The four laureates will received a cash award of 1 million Swedish crowns ($103,000) each.

 

[Buster O'Keefe]

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.

I always thought veganism was opposed to the very idea of keeping pets.

 

[neverendingmidi]

I always thought veganism was opposed to the very idea of keeping pets.

Depends on if they're a "I'm so much more ecologically conscious as I eat fruits, vegetables, and grains shipped in from around the world" type or a "Interacting with animals in any way is murder, smash beehives and free the oppressed class!" type.

There's some overlap, but it's not a perfect circle.

 

[Super-Chevy454]

Not surprising to see then Snopes come to rescue Greta. http://archive.fo/ruLn9

 

[The Great Citracett]

It's sad when even pro-Greta cartoonists can't draw her in a flattering way:

 

[neverendingmidi]

Even pro-Greta cartoonists can't draw her flatteringly:
View attachment 948309

Is that supposed to be the earth? This person doesn't even know what a globe looks like.

 

[Crescent Fresh]

Not surprising to see then Snopes come to rescue Greta. http://archive.fo/ruLn9

“Wearing a T-shirt that says ‘Antifascist All-Stars’ doesn’t mean you support Antifa, but anyone wearing a MAGA hat is automatically racist.”

 

[thx1138]

Climate activist Greta Thunberg wins 'alternative Nobel Prize'

This is like when Rick Scott down in Florida claimed that the UCF Knights were "co-National Champions" with Alabama in 2018.

i.e.,pants-on-head re.tarded and entirely without merit

 

[Hummingbird]

She has (confessed by both her and her parents) Aspergers, OCD and selective mutism. Others here also believe that she might have fetal alcohol syndrome due to how odd her face is. Regardless of the last one, when you combine those three disorders with Sweden, she will never break/question the conditioning.

I knew there was something off just by looking at her. Kind of like a less extreme version of Desmond is Amazing or AOC.