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.

 

[Lemmingwise]

A lot of the leftists & the media in the UK will say that the teenage girls who travelled to Syria to become ISIS jihadi brides were too young to know what they were doing but they think a mentally ill, teenage girl is somehow an expert on the complicated subject of climate change ?

There is an obvious value in having young girls spout your ideology, as in their innocence, it's hard to criticize/attack them. It's the political version of using underage kids to murder in a mafia, because they can't get long prison sentences. Of course, when a 14 year-old girl says some right wing jokes, she gets removed from youtube.

 

[Matthew216]

Who's Greta Thunberg?

 

[Rancid Flid]

There is an obvious value in having young girls spout your ideology, as in their innocence, it's hard to criticize/attack them. It's the political version of using underage kids to murder in a mafia, because they can't get long prison sentences. Of course, when a 14 year-old girl says some right wing jokes, she gets removed from youtube.

You just reminded me about the 8 year old AOC impersonator who received death threats from the tolerant left, got doxed & had to delete all her social media accounts.

 

[Pokemonquistador2]

But none of you are asking the really important questions: like who's uglier? Greta Thunberg or David Hogg? Which kid looks more like a failed genetic experiment to create the perfect shill? Which kid looks more like it crawled out of a test tube containing Growth Medium and Cthulu Jizz? You'd think, if the illuminati were going to push an agenda, they'd have it delivered by someone attractive, like any of the underage models that Jeffrey Epstein had chained up in his Private Puzzle Basement, for example. Not by smug teenagers who look like they were put together by God when He was both drunk and blindfolded...

 

[Coleslaw]

Nuclear energy is the way forward. Not even kidding.

 

[Tookie]

We should use nuclear to tide us over for 20 years until we can strip mine the Moon for Helium-3. Problem solved.

 

[Lone MacReady]

Greta, have you ever seen the diablo in the pale moonlight?

Meanwhile, China/India's pollution rates alone cancel out any potential environment-saving middle class whites could do... and the attempt would only destroy the rest of our industry, send it overseas, and we'll have no influence in the future when China becomes the global power as they continue to colonize Wakanda for resources and the UN can't say shit because Asians aren't white and don't have forced guilt.

 

[Pixy]

Nuclear energy is the way forward. Not even kidding.

We've allowed activists to dominate the argument on nuclear energy, which is why society is so apprehensive towards it. Fukushima keeps getting brought up whenever the safety of modern reactors is discussed, which is somewhat irrelevant since it was hit by a tsunami and subsequent flooding - it didn't spontaneously start leaking nuclear waste out of nowhere.

Claiming that it's 'one step closer to nuclear weapons proliferation' is valid, but that's only because plutonium reactors have intentionally become popular for that very reason. Thorium reactors are theoretically safer when operating (they're still under construction as of 2019), and produce less waste (that's also less radioactive and has a shorter half-life) than Uranium. Best of all, it's much more difficult to manufacture nuclear weapons with thorium, hence why plutonium reactors are so popular.

Unfortunately, the current major adopters of Thorium nuclear energy are... China and India. The quality and safety of their reactors will likely be rather dubious. Portable nuclear reactors are proposed by journos, but they're extremely unlikely to catch on due to the R&D cost of scaling down nuclear reactors alone. The few companies that are proponents of portable nuclear don't have reactors, yet.

UN can't say shit because Asians aren't white and don't have forced guilt.

Not unless South Korea has their way. They've got a bone to pick with both the Japs and the Chinese due to their colonial adventures in Korea.

 

[Krimjob]

Yeah, I want to listen to a deadbeat that skips school to roleplay a climate messiah.

 

[Isaac Cox]

Another quaint progressive figurehead pops out of nowhere and is artificially inflated by the mainstream to push the agenda further. Remember Malala? Clock boy? It's unsettling and she's obviously been groomed/threatened/bribed into doing this.

Should have stayed home and got a traditional Swedish grooming instead.

 

[The Pink Panther]

lol who cares

 

[Barnard]

whats your personal thoughts of Greta Null?

Who's Greta Null? The brave school-skipping girl who wants to save KiwiFarms from man-made global sperging?

 

[Clop]

It's surreal how she's definitely right that we're supposed to be listening to scientists on this shit, but nobody's yet hammered to this little thottette's head that she's being used as a mouthpiece to make those scientist go away, because she's just used to say whatever non-scientists think of environmentalism.

I have high optimism for kids used like this that when they're older they start to question what they've been fed and she might turn out okay, but it's fucking Sweden, and Sweden's chances to stop taking 'tard pills has been passed year after year.

Nuclear energy is the way forward. Not even kidding.

Water is wet. Not even kidding.

 

[HeyYou]

The Green New Deal is an ambitious 14-page resolution that calls for a “10-year national mobilization” that would eliminate the nation’s emissions in one decade. Scientists say limiting warming to 1.5C would require cutting manmade carbon levels by 45% by 2030 and reaching net zero around 2050.

Ambitious is a word you could use to describe it. Failed is another one.

 

[CheezzyMach]

lol who cares

Reminds me of the treehuggers from the 90s that ultimately accomplished nothing.

 

[QI 541]

She's not wrong but somehow I doubt the generation that's addicted to social media and incessantly whining about men spreading their legs on the train or bathrooms is willing to make the sacrifices needed either.

 

[Super-Chevy454]

Disaster girl, all grown up.

That photo isn't worth to turn it into a meme.

 

[JoshPlz]

I know you are trying but just not hard enough. Sorry.

Like her mother wasn't trying hard enough to not drink alcohol while pregnant with her?

 

[Pixy]

Another quaint progressive figurehead pops out of nowhere and is artificially inflated by the mainstream to push the agenda further. Remember Malala? Clock boy? It's unsettling and she's obviously been groomed/threatened/bribed into doing this.

Should have stayed home and got a traditional Swedish grooming instead.

I wouldn't say Malala was anywhere close to what Thunberg and Clock Kid's stories were, but she did strengthen the support for invading Afghanistan amongst civilians in the West, given the oppressive and backwards nature of the Taliban regime (they didn't distinguish that it was a the Pakistani Taliban). She started gaining attention in the MSM after the assassination attempt.

In regards to Thunberg, she became a media darling after other students started joining her in protest against her own government. It gradually snowballed into idealistic lefty students in the West organising their own 'Climate Strikes', like the one going on this Friday. Like the rest of those students and so-called "climate warriors", none of them have any real idea of HOW their lofty, pie-in-the-sky "0% Carbon Emissions" goal will be reasonably achieved by 2025/2030.

 

[Wallace]

There is an obvious value in having young girls spout your ideology, as in their innocence, it's hard to criticize/attack them. It's the political version of using underage kids to murder in a mafia, because they can't get long prison sentences.

The term for this is pedophrasty: an argument involving children to prop up a rationalization and make the opponent look like an asshole, as people are defenseless and suspend all skepticism in front of suffering children, and nobody has the heart to question the authenticity or source of the reporting.

But yeah, this will amount to a nothingburger. Politicians will applaud and call her Stunning and Brave, then they'll go right back to writing laws for the industries that pay them.

And I still maintain that the Green New Deal, as originally conceived, is completely insane and will result in a massive welfare state at best.