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.

 

[Malagor the dank omen]

If she manages to get this grift rolling on a permanent basis she could probably manage to live a constant cruise ship life with the occasional stop at some environmental gathering. That sounds like a pretty sweet deal. And she gets to be less of a hypocrite than Al Gore at the same time.

Very plausible. Remember it's a kid fighting for something "good". She could basically bawl at every government on earth (except China and India) and they would fucking pay her to have holidays rather than see journalists shit on the prez for saying "Fuck this gnoblar and everything she stands for because she's a fraud".

 

[Dante Alighieri]

you sure about that?

They're inanimate objects. Appreciation for a tool can't be on the same level as love for a husband or wife, or family, or child.

 

[Stoneheart]

They're inanimate objects. Appreciation for a tool can't be on the same level as love for a husband or wife, or family, or child.

You havent seen my family...

 

[Alec Benson Leary]

If she manages to get this grift rolling on a permanent basis she could probably manage to live a constant cruise ship life with the occasional stop at some environmental gathering. That sounds like a pretty sweet deal. And she gets to be less of a hypocrite than Al Gore at the same time.

Very plausible. Remember it's a kid fighting for something "good". She could basically bawl at every government on earth (except China and India) and they would fucking pay her to have holidays rather than see journalists shit on the prez for saying "Fuck this gnoblar and everything she stands for because she's a fraud".

You could call it a "shakedown cruise".

Thank you ladies and germs, I'll be here all evening...

 

[Stoneheart]

I hope the swedes feel bad now over ending eugenics...

 

[teriyakiburns]

I hope the swedes feel bad now over ending eugenics...

Don't kid yourself, her parents would be right at the heart of the eugenicists. She'd be safe. It's the plebs in skåne and dalarna northwards that would be getting sterilised.

 

[AltisticRight]

lol look at this bit of autism

A 772 word essay in the Ralph thread vs. a twice as long, 1,359 word essay here. You promised!
I liked your take on it though, nice job with the research. That's a very interesting point about Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

However, one point I'd like to check. Is that list of countries you attached still recent enough for us to draw conclusions? It lists the Netherlands Antilles as number 5, but back in 2010,

Dutch Antilles no longer exists

The Dutch Caribbean dependency the Netherlands Antilles ceases to exist with a change of the five islands' constitutional status.

www.bbc.com

(https://archive.li/jA01o)

Good point, you're absolutely right. The list I included is obsolete. Here's a more recent one from 2016:

CO2 emissions per capita by country, 2019 - knoema.com

Palau is the top country by CO2 emissions per capita in the world. As of 2018, CO2 emissions per capita in Palau was 57.95 metric tons. The top 5 countries also includes Qatar, Trinidad and Tobago, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates. Carbon dioxide emissions are those stemming from the burning...

knoema.com

Wikipedia has a so called 2017 version too:

List of countries by carbon dioxide emissions - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Handy map.

I exported the data and I suck at Excel.

Here's some trends. 40 is better than 120... but comparatively, not at all, they are still number one.
Upward trend from India and China. From 1970-2016, emissions per capita for China increased from 1 to 7, and it's steadily at 7 now. India shows an upward trend and they will be hitting bigger numbers in the following decade for sure. USA has a consistent downward trend, meaning it's even less justified to blame the country all the time.

Stacked shows the significance of per capita emissions. The control group USA, India, and China now shows a pretty flat trendline in front of the 5 biggest polluters per capita.

Hoooooboy. I've never stepped in this particular minefield on this site, but it's worth noting that during the 2011 Durban conference the message from the developing world and especially China and India was crystal clear: Fuck you, it's our turn to pollute, go cripple your economy so we can take over. Nothing racial about it, just people who've seen the 'green revolution' as industrial suicide and know what's up. I've been saying ever since then that the path forward is just to prepare for the worst of climate change, the West could cut their emissions to zero and the BRICs will just see it as more emissions to use.

Hell, the preparations for coastal flooding will employ a lot of folks. It's like Zorg's broken glass speech, but you do it before the glass breaks.

You've got some points, but blaming China's horrible air quality on density alone is wacko. Like coastal California, they have some geographic challenges to clean air, but unlike them they give zero fucks about doing anything about it. Until people get uppity, that is, then they shut down a few plants and execute the managers until people are placated. Both these points get back to the same thing: People like the environment, but when push comes to shove they're not even going to slightly risk becoming jobless hobos to fix it.

What you're saying doesn't make sense in 2019, you've quoted something from 2011, which is far before the smog epidemic in China. China's investment into renewables and the fact that they and the USA tops the list when it comes to green energy disproves the notion of "fuck it let's just pollute, we don't care". Why should they invest in inferior 25% efficiency shitty solar when the traditional methods yield far more? They said it's their time to pollute, and they got the dumb prize of attempting which they deserved.

Visit the worst and most polluted areas such as Hangzhou and Beijing which are densely populated, and then visit places with fuck all people, such as Tibet and Mongolia. If you read carefully which you didn't, I've explicitly stated some of the horrible practices, such as burning waste electronics to extract gold.

Obviously, there's also many other reasons, since China only recently banned people from burning electronic waste to extract gold, which isn't a popular practice in the USA.

This is especially bad in countries such as China and SEA where they burn these electronics to extract the pathetic amount of gold. It's now outlawed in China, I don't know about SEA.

The infrastructure building also inevitably burdens the environment, it's not like there's another option. Improve the living standards so famine and cannibalism doesn't happen again, or become an African shithole where the rich escapes and the poor suffer.

I personally don't give two shits about environmentalism. My carbon footprint is far lower than those leftie cunts whinging from their macbooks and I take extreme care to keep my surroundings clean. I'm not an environmentalist but I will repurpose plastic containers and sort my waste. People who champion themselves as "-ists" are trying to hide their true colours. To abandon civilisation and stop something that cannot be stopped is stupid. Plant more trees and walk that 1km to the local stores rather than drive, that's the better thing to promote. Everyone knows what these dipshits want, they just want a genocide, they'll hide it in stupid arguments about not having kids, which is a fundamental right of sentient beings.

 

[Hackallier]

lol look at this bit of autism
View attachment 999597

Ben garrison drawing with no labels? How is this possible?

 

[TowinKarz]

Everyone knows what these dipshits want, they just want a genocide, they'll hide it in stupid arguments about not having kids, which is a fundamental right of sentient beings.

Not quite, I'd wager.

What they want is power, the power to control everyone else's lives.

To tell you what exactly you can do, where you can live, what job you can have, what stuff you can buy, who you can bed, if you can bed, what kind of bed to buy, what color it must be, where you must put it and what licenses you must have to deviate in the slightest if that is even allowable... to themselves, they are the only "Real" people, the rest of us are just obstacles to their greatness being granted supremacy.

They want to rule over all the "lesser" people, for the money, for the personal power, and for the ego stroking that they will finally be the apex of humanity, an all powerful, all wise, all beloved master elite, like the kings of old, except, you can't topple them, ever. (Because I believe the desire to own more wealth than a man could spend in a lifetime is because they plan to somehow buy off the Reaper and live on top forever)

"It's for the planet" is just the way they cloak their message to hide it's impure motives, and merely the latest disguise they've wrapped around their neo-royal fantasies after the previous one, whatever it was, lost it's bite.

They will always take the perceived biggest failing/threat to modern society and claim they have the solution (in the form of massive societal restructuring, that naturally puts them at the top) and failure to implement it NOW means continued misery is the fault of the plebes, rejecting their masters.

It's all done hoping they can guit-trip the populace of the free world into becoming serfs again.

It used to be "for the workers" in the 60's, and "for the kids" in the 90's, and now, it's "For your Mother Earth"

 

[AnOminous]

China's investment into renewables and the fact that they and the USA tops the list when it comes to green energy disproves the notion of "fuck it let's just pollute, we don't care". Why should they invest in inferior 25% efficiency shitty solar when the traditional methods yield far more?

Because even in China people are increasingly sick, physically and literally, of choking to death on the air, and having cancer skyrocketing from poison in the water, to the point stomach cancer is the leading cancer when it's rare elsewhere. Even Chinese get uppity when they're literally dying along with their children of their government's shitty environmental policies.

 

[AltisticRight]

Because even in China people are increasingly sick, physically and literally, of choking to death on the air, and having cancer skyrocketing from poison in the water, to the point stomach cancer is the leading cancer when it's rare elsewhere. Even Chinese get uppity when they're literally dying along with their children of their government's shitty environmental policies.

Speaking of water poisoning, I had the great idea of drinking tap water when I first visited as a kid, it was fun. I was sick for 2 months.
Not sure about stomach issues... I think it's more about the recent popularity of extremely spicy stuff. Japanese have the same issue with raw fish. Sashimi is lovely and I love it (notaweeb), but it's bad for the stomach.

Yeah I stand by my speculations on stomach cancer.

(Notice how if you match this up to the per capita emissions graph I posted, there's no apparent correlation?)

But obviously, even the Chinese people thank the US embassy for blowing the whistle on their bad environment. All this care about the environment and investments into inferior renewable started after someone at the US embassy made it public by posting readings from a pollution meter. The country is now doing well enough, another famine and subsequently tree bark eating and cannibalism is unlikely, so it's time they quit "it's our turn to pollute" and halt unnecessary emissions. Your turn is over, I guess it's "superpower 2020" India's turn... we can only hope for the best.

 

[Judge Holden]

Problem is with places like china with zero free press, zero free speech, and zero opposition parties to call out shoddy performance or fudged figures from those in charge, what inevitably happens is that a lofty target is set, and the responsibility is kicked down the chain of command to some party functionary who is interested only in getting it done as quickly and cheaply as possible to improve his own standing while lining his own pockets with any funds he thinks he can get away with embezzling, and somebody in accounting/regulation being payed off or threatened to keep quiet about any irregularities.

This problem is exacerbated a thousandfold when its regarding an issue that the party elite are utterly sheltered from and unaffected by, as they will have zero motivation to do anything more than the absolute bare minimum, and nobody around them will hold their feet to the fire to make sure even the minimum is being done properly.

This shit is what turned the USSR into an environmentalists nightmare given how there was never anybody who could hold the party and party members to account for lying and fucking up other than the party itself.

 

[Meat Poultry Veg]

Not quite, I'd wager.

What they want is power, the power to control everyone else's lives.

To tell you what exactly you can do, where you can live, what job you can have, what stuff you can buy, who you can bed, if you can bed, what kind of bed to buy, what color it must be, where you must put it and what licenses you must have to deviate in the slightest if that is even allowable... to themselves, they are the only "Real" people, the rest of us are just obstacles to their greatness being granted supremacy.

They want to rule over all the "lesser" people, for the money, for the personal power, and for the ego stroking that they will finally be the apex of humanity, an all powerful, all wise, all beloved master elite, like the kings of old, except, you can't topple them, ever. (Because I believe the desire to own more wealth than a man could spend in a lifetime is because they plan to somehow buy off the Reaper and live on top forever)

"It's for the planet" is just the way they cloak their message to hide it's impure motives, and merely the latest disguise they've wrapped around their neo-royal fantasies after the previous one, whatever it was, lost it's bite.

They will always take the perceived biggest failing/threat to modern society and claim they have the solution (in the form of massive societal restructuring, that naturally puts them at the top) and failure to implement it NOW means continued misery is the fault of the plebes, rejecting their masters.

It's all done hoping they can guit-trip the populace of the free world into becoming serfs again.

It used to be "for the workers" in the 60's, and "for the kids" in the 90's, and now, it's "For your Mother Earth"

Just gonna put this here. The Georgia Guidestones, BTW.

 

[AltisticRight]

Problem is with places like china with zero free press, zero free speech, and zero opposition parties to call out shoddy performance or fudged figures from those in charge, what inevitably happens is that a lofty target is set, and the responsibility is kicked down the chain of command to some party functionary who is interested only in getting it done as quickly and cheaply as possible to improve his own standing while lining his own pockets with any funds he thinks he can get away with embezzling, and somebody in accounting/regulation being payed off or threatened to keep quiet about any irregularities.

This problem is exacerbated a thousandfold when its regarding an issue that the party elite are utterly sheltered from and unaffected by, as they will have zero motivation to do anything more than the absolute bare minimum, and nobody around them will hold their feet to the fire to make sure even the minimum is being done properly.

This shit is what turned the USSR into an environmentalists nightmare given how there was never anybody who could hold the party and party members to account for lying and fucking up other than the party itself.

As cheaply? You sure about that? None of China's state-sanctioned megaprojects ever saw failure that's significant enough to warrant a news article. The ones who want to do it cheaply and quickly are those developers, often greedy, all of the shitty construction practices come from these bastards.

But yeah, the lack of opposition, diversity in thought and potential failure due to shitty dictators is a problem with a one-party system. Even the CCP has two wings of thought, but their internal fighting isn't public. China attempts to address the issues with "shitty dictator" via some kind of elitism policy, kids are selected at youth to join the CCP youth league, and if they do well, they become party members. That way, only the top percentile gets into the party, or those with party connections. I actually quite like this kind of setting. Some Joe Blow or spik whinging about white privilege shouldn't have any place in politics.

The issue with democracies is getting the job done. It's so expensive and takes forever due to the bi-party structure. Australia NBN was projected to finish in like 2017 or something, and it's still going on. There has to be a perfect balance between the two. Perhaps when there's a national project, have a vote and if it passes, neither party is allowed to obstruct it under extraordinary circumstances? Whatever happened to the "loyal opposition"?

I'm not sure, taking forever to finish something and wasting so much tax payer resources is just as bad as gay speech laws and the lack of a press. In Aboland, it's just a dead cycle... the labor party comes in, blows the budget, fucks up everything, and brings shitskins in, then the people get sick of the labor party to which the Liberals come in, sell public services to greedy monopolies, reverse every fuck up of labor, budget cuts everywhere as an attempt to decrease debt, and maybe attempt to improve our lives.

 

[heathercho]

Just gonna put this here. The Georgia Guidestones, BTW.

View attachment 1001892

Don't be silly goy. That's just a crazy conspiracy theory that we're currently enacting right before you eyes, surely you're not a tinfoil hat wearing crackpot now are you?

 

[Manwithn0n0men]

It also explains why most self-proclaimed socialists in the west are by and large a bunch of well-off urbanite/suburbanite honkies that claim till they're blue in the face that they and only they are the proletariat while they treat the actual proletariat in the urban and rural areas with the assertion that they don't even exist at best to complete and open contempt at worst

Socialists today care more about making people that have a better hand at life than theirs suffer than making life better for those less fortunate than them

For socialism to work you need to transform humanity

To transform humanity you need an absolute totalitarian regime

 

[AltisticRight]

https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2019/11/07/mural-san-francisco-greta-thungberg/

Nothing more empowering and insightful than using tons of paint that's harmful to the environment to make a Chinese-Tiananmen-styled portrait.

 

[mindlessobserver]

lol look at this bit of autism
View attachment 999597

Right wing mother nature is hawt.

 

[vertexwindi]

https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2019/11/07/mural-san-francisco-greta-thungberg/

Nothing more empowering and insightful than using tons of paint that's harmful to the environment to make a Chinese-Tiananmen-styled portrait.

View attachment 1003071

As if the worship of some autistic child wasn't creepy enough. Hurray.

 

[It's HK-47]

https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2019/11/07/mural-san-francisco-greta-thungberg/

Nothing more empowering and insightful than using tons of paint that's harmful to the environment to make a Chinese-Tiananmen-styled portrait.

View attachment 1003071

Oh my fucking God they're not even using brushes or rollers, they're using aerosol spray paint. Yeah that's real fucking good for the environment isn't it, a 4-story mural that needs 600 gallons of spray paint to complete.