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.

 

[AnOminous]

Environmentalism is shit and has been hijacked by authoritarian cunts who push for everything that just happens to give the fucks in government more power and more money while making life harder for me and my family.

I've done more for the environment by picking up trash in a park than this autistic swedish bitch and her sycophants.

One of my favorite environmentalism news stories was about how literally thousands of tons of garbage had to be cleaned up after the Standing Rock protests. The Native Americans and the cops had to clean up immense piles of rotting garbage left behind by the "environmentalists" who treated it like a woke Burning Man and literally shit all over the place.

 

[Noideawhattopick]

There are now 3 new electric car chargers in our town. What a great thing to have.
How could they get the access to the mainline so fast without opening the ground? The answer is genius: about 25meter next to the chargers is a fenced in area by the city. In this area are standing 2 big Diesel Generators. What a great idea.

 

[heathercho]

i'm not naive enough to see the hypocrisy of a bunch of 1st worlders claiming they're saving the earth while also directly benifitng from a system that exploits the environment, but i don't get why so many people in this thread are opposesed to enviormentalism. i like nature. pollution is bad. strip-mining is bad. i don't see how any of these opinions are controversial.

Because this "Environmentalism" you speak of has been co-opted, weaponized and politicized by idiots like AOC and Greta to be something completely removed from giving a shit about the environment.
I don't think anyone in this thread has been specific "Fuck the environment", more "Fuck these people and their bullshit agenda and lies".

 

[Arkancide Pact]

i'm not naive enough to see the hypocrisy of a bunch of 1st worlders claiming they're saving the earth while also directly benifitng from a system that exploits the environment, but i don't get why so many people in this thread are opposesed to enviormentalism. i like nature. pollution is bad. strip-mining is bad. i don't see how any of these opinions are controversial.

Who is saying pollution is good? That's a ridiculous position.

 

[not william stenchever]

Who is saying pollution is good? That's a ridiculous position.

I'll be the first then. Pollution is good. Look at these smokestacks

 

[Alec Benson Leary]

i'm not naive enough to see the hypocrisy of a bunch of 1st worlders claiming they're saving the earth while also directly benifitng from a system that exploits the environment, but i don't get why so many people in this thread are opposesed to enviormentalism. i like nature. pollution is bad. strip-mining is bad. i don't see how any of these opinions are controversial.

As others say it's not about environmentalism, that's just a con so selfish destructive people can maintain power. It's just like progs claiming racism is everywhere so they can look like heroes for bringing back segregation, which will obviously cause more racial divides which ensures they can keep getting hero points for crying about it forever. I'd love a clean earth too but to even approach that we have to get rid of the people in power who want the world always teetering on the edge of destruction because then the scared peasants will keep donating to their charities and patreons forever.

 

[teriyakiburns]

I'll be the first then. Pollution is good. Look at these smokestacks
View attachment 1016977
View attachment 1016978
View attachment 1016979
View attachment 1016980

Fun fact: those are all emitting steam, the most potent greenhouse gas out there.

 

[Haramburger]

Fun fact: those are all emitting steam, the most potent greenhouse gas out there.

I for one strongly oppose the steam smokestacks that are put up when the air in the sewers is warmer than the air at street level(which is almost all the time); it obscures drivers' vision, they're eyesores, it's steaming up the atmosphere and steam is usually hot, so that kills. We don't have steampunk-era technology anymore to properly process all the evil steam into work or energy, so fuck it. STEAM BAD

 

[It's HK-47]

i'm not naive enough to see the hypocrisy of a bunch of 1st worlders claiming they're saving the earth while also directly benifitng from a system that exploits the environment, but i don't get why so many people in this thread are opposesed to enviormentalism. i like nature. pollution is bad. strip-mining is bad. i don't see how any of these opinions are controversial.

It's because they're slacktavists that don't actually give a shit, they just barf out word-salad about the environment on their mass-produced, Chinese sweat-shop phones while they're buying designer clothes and sucking down some unpronounceable, gay coffee from Starbucks. Almost every single one of these people are the embodiment of consumer and capitalist culture, and in the same breath they spin around and try to shit on everyone else--typically people from "fly-over" states-- even though these states produce infinitely less waste than their own.

They didn't like plastic straws so they made biodegradable straws. Packed in plastic. Packed in more plastic than the original straws used in the first place, and unlike the original straws, they can't be re-used. They're not volunteering for neighborhood clean-up programs, they're not volunteering at wildlife sanctuaries, they're not living ascetically to try and minimize their contribution to the problem, they're just buying a container of hippie-flavoured horsepiss with a green leaf on the box so they can take a selfie and go, "I'm helping!"

Environmentalism got co-opted hard by the corporations who finally understood how to market themselves to dipshits to convince them that they were all suddenly "socially-aware and environmentally-conscious!" and these brain-dead hacks bought it hook, line, and sinker. That's why they don't talk about the real issues anymore, they just scream about carbon tax and climate change and paint giant, hideous faces on the sides of buildings with hundreds of gallons of aerosol spray paint.

That's why Greenpeace is now full of useless morons and anyone who is actually acting on their beliefs went to the Sea Shepards. Greenpeace takes selfies in front of coral. The Sea Shepards ram whaling ships. You can sit around and argue the methods and the morality of the Sea Shepards all day, but at least they actually do something.

 

[Arkancide Pact]

So how do they accomplish Greta's "carbon free" travel? First, you build a state of the art sailing yacht with 2 giant diesel motors. Sail that across the ocean.
Then you fly the entire crew home.
Then Greta does her bullshit.
Then you fly the crew back.
In the meantime, Al gore takes a private jet to and from the Greta show, as do Johnny Depp and any number of other morally superior celebs.

So one Greta appearance releases more co2 than the average person will in their lifetime.

It's fake and its just an additional way for those elites to exercise control over you.

 

[Freddy Freaker]

So how do they accomplish Greta's "carbon free" travel? First, you build a state of the art sailing yacht with 2 giant diesel motors. Sail that across the ocean.
Then you fly the entire crew home.
Then Greta does her bullshit.
Then you fly the crew back.
In the meantime, Al gore takes a private jet to and from the Greta show, as do Johnny Depp and any number of other morally superior celebs.

So one Greta appearance releases more co2 than the average person will in their lifetime.

It's fake and its just an additional way for those elites to exercise control over you.

Idk maybe you should ask Royal Dutch Shell Oil. I'm sick to death of their "great travel hack" ads on youtube. p.s. marketing boomers I dont think you quite get what a "hack" means

 

[Malagor the dank omen]

That's why Greenpeace is now full of useless morons and anyone who is actually acting on their beliefs went to the Sea Shepards. Greenpeace takes selfies in front of coral. The Sea Shepards ram whaling ships. You can sit around and argue the methods and the morality of the Sea Shepards all day, but at least they actually do something.

This is one of the main reasons i and probably a lot of people don't buy into this fucking bullshit anymore. The main proponents of animal conservation or enviromentalist are a bunch of jerkoffs that just want to show that they do something rathern than doing something. It's a circlejerk of asspatting that goes all around the world. Because doing something would require effort, sacrifice, dedication or a moderate amount of risk. And also, if you actually fight for a better world people will call you an "ecofascist", the most laughable word there is.

 

[moocow]

p.s. marketing boomers I dont think you quite get what a "hack" means

The word "hack" has been viciously brutalized for decades by people who never bothered to learn its real meanings. The old-timers have all but given up trying to correct this great injustice.

 

[Tasty Tatty]

Enviromentalism is messianic thinking masked as hippie trash.

There is a good interview I saw some months ago that gave good clarity on the matter: these people go around saying the're going to save the earth, but the earth does not need to be saved. The earth has endure terrible natural disasters and it's still standing. The meteorite that whipped out all dinosaurs was a cathastrophe that many of us couldn't even imagine... and yet, here we stand. We and many other species: some survived, some others were born.

Humans are very capable of adapt. If we, somehow, destroy wht it's now on the surface, we'll move underground. Or something similar. And many species will adapt too. Some will die, others will be born. It's normal. What these eco-fascists want is to save their own life-styles. If they really understood how nature work, they wouldn't be this radical and would understand everything will carry on and the earth will keep on turning.

I'm not saying we shouldn't be careful with what we have, but I think it's quite arrogant to pretend we're as important as these people imply.

That's why Greenpeace is now full of useless morons and anyone who is actually acting on their beliefs went to the Sea Shepards. Greenpeace takes selfies in front of coral. The Sea Shepards ram whaling ships. You can sit around and argue the methods and the morality of the Sea Shepards all day, but at least they actually do something.

Sorry for the doble post, but I'd like to remind people that Greenpeace ruined the Nazca Lines.

See that line that runs towards the T in "The"? They caused that. You can't enter that area unless you're wearing especial shoes to walk on that surface that is very sensitive. The GP morons decided to protest a summit by going to the Hummingbird and place that banner there, stepping all over the area. The lines and figures (those straight lines were also made by the indigenous of the region, not just the bird) have lasted so much because of the type of soil in there. It keeps every print and you cannot delete it. I don't know how the case it's been handled now, but I remember the state said it would cost millions to even try to repair it and it wasn't guaranteed it would work.

 

[Freddy Freaker]

The word "hack" has been viciously brutalized for decades by people who never bothered to learn its real meanings. The old-timers have all but given up trying to correct this great injustice.

Even then it doesnt make sense. With the newer uses of "hack", a "travel hack" should be something that makes traveling easier/better/more enjoyable. I mean, shell bills their marketing series as an "adventure" but lower CO2 emissions isn't necessarily a travel hack unless the traveler likes to virtue signal

 

[AnOminous]

That's why they don't talk about the real issues anymore, they just scream about carbon tax and climate change and paint giant, hideous faces on the sides of buildings with hundreds of gallons of aerosol spray paint.

And conveniently, anything actually difficult to do requires someone else's effort, your effort, the effort of those evil mayonnaise ghouls they fly over in carbon belching airplanes. Their own duties begin and end with the purchase of some consumable product they can take a selfie with while gaping like a hooked fish before throwing it away in a landfill.

 

[Jet Fuel Johnny]

Sorry for the doble post, but I'd like to remind people that Greenpeace ruined the Nazca Lines. View attachment 1017099

See that line that runs towards the T in "The"? They caused that. You can't enter that area unless you're wearing especial shoes to walk on that surface that is very sensitive. The GP morons decided to protest a summit by going to the Hummingbird and place that banner there, stepping all over the area. The lines and figures (those straight lines were also made by the indigenous of the region, not just the bird) have lasted so much because of the type of soil in there. It keeps every print and you cannot delete it. I don't know how the case it's been handled now, but I remember the state said it would cost millions to even try to repair it and it wasn't guaranteed it would work.

That shit infuriates me every time I think about it. It's an eternal reminder that after every eco-protest you've got to go in and clean up mountains of trash and try to recover plants and animals.

 

[CWCissey]

Sorry for the doble post, but I'd like to remind people that Greenpeace ruined the Nazca Lines.

Don't forget about when Extinction Rebellion ruined the Alton Barnes horse just after it was re-chalked by local schoolchildren.

Children devastated after chalk horse defaced

The Extinction Rebellion logo was laid on the horse at Alton Barnes which was recently restored by children.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[Silence of the Troons]

Is there finally something we can thank Greta for? https://twitter.com/seanbgoneill/status/1197476874198405121

She recently received the international children's peace prize (€100 000) and Luisa-Marie Neubauer picked it up for her. https://www.france24.com/en/20191120-greta-thunberg-awarded-international-children-s-peace-prize

Greta Thunberg awarded international children's peace prize
Swedish teen activist Greta Thunberg was awarded an international children's peace prize on Wednesday, for her work in the struggle against climate change which has resonated with schoolchildren across the world.

Cameroonian peace activist Divina Maloum, aged 15, also received the International Children's Peace Prize, awarded by the Dutch KidsRight organisation, which has been handing out the prize since 2005.

Thunberg could not accept her award in person at the ceremony in The Hague because she is crossing the Atlantic by boat on her way to an international climate conference in Madrid.

However she sent a message saying she was "incredibly grateful and honoured for this prize".

The 16-year-old climate campaigner left the United States in mid-November, hitching a ride to Europe aboard a catamaran to attend a UN climate summit in Madrid in early December.

Thunberg rose to international prominence last year when she founded the "school strikes for the climate" movement. Tens of thousands of children around the world have now got involved.

"The climate crisis is the peace issue of our time," said German climate activist Luisa-Marie Neubauer who picked up Thunberg's prize on her behalf.

"We took on the streets for action and the truth is, today after one year of striking, the life of every child on this planet is threatened," she added, criticising the inaction of world leaders on the issue.

Divina Maloum was awarded her prize for her "peaceful struggle" against the Boko Haram jihadist group.

"In Cameroon and Africa, when talking about peace-building, children are forgotten by the decision makers," she said in her acceptance speech.

"I invite my fellow children around the world to rise their voice."

The prizes were handed out by Indian children's rights activist and 2014 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Kailash Satyarthi.

The children's peace prize is linked to a 100,000 euro grant which is invested in projects linked to the winners' causes.

Previous winners of the award include Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani schoolgirl who campaigned for girls' right to education.

 

[Alec Benson Leary]

Is there finally something we can thank Greta for? https://twitter.com/seanbgoneill/status/1197476874198405121
View attachment 1018587
She recently received the international children's peace prize (€100 000) and Luisa-Marie Neubauer picked it up for her. https://www.france24.com/en/20191120-greta-thunberg-awarded-international-children-s-peace-prize

I doubt that's a good thing, because I never would have remembered Coldplay again if they didn't have Greta's tantrum as an excuse to get in the soapbox and let everyone know how environmentally conscious they are.