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.

 

[moocow]

Jesus. When I watched the clip I could just smell the 'but moooooooommmmmm the environment is serious business!' oozing out of greta and she wasn't even in the clip

EDIT: Also this happened:

Greta Thunberg Changed Her Name to Sharon on Social Media

Greta Thunberg changed her name to Sharon on social media in response to a game show.

ca.news.yahoo.com

View attachment 1081988

Totally serious news everybody

They really do write a news article every fucking time she changes her Twitter bio in any fashion. It's crazy. Almost feels coordinated somehow. Hmmm...

 

[George Floyd Sneed]

They really do write a news article every fucking time she changes her Twitter bio in any fashion. It's crazy. Almost feels coordinated somehow. Hmmm...

One of the biggest reasons why her sperg tour failed was that everyone knew it was astroturfed to an embarrassing degree. Her billionaire donors keep throwing good money after bad at this point, as it’s now getting close to three months since anyone last paid attention to her.

 

[TerribleIdeas™]

Her childhood was lured into the back of a van that said “free candy and fame.” Nobody has seen it since.

The difference between Desmond is Amazing and Greta Thunberg is that the former dances for paedo-commies, and the latter dances for eco-commies. Change my mind.

I imagine in a few years we'll see her in some drugged crazy naked fight like that YouTube chick did. Probably covered in 5 different guy's jizz to boot

She'll be the Swedish version of MayLi, doing Facial Abuse and "Vegan Anal Insertion" videos.

 

[Webby's Boyfriend]

Timcast posted a new vlog on Bitchute about Greta and compared her to another has-been named David Hogg.

@Timcast

Political Groups Exploit Children Like Greta Thunberg And David Hogg Then Discard Them

www.bitchute.com

One commenter posted that image who gived me some chuckles.

Is she really retarded? I doubt it. She has asperger's, fetal alcohol syndrome and our all's most beloved lunacy, 'tism, but she surely isn't mentally retarded. I'd even say her IQ is above average, I mean, no regular 15 year old back in like before current year even cared about politics.

Can't wait for gretta to turn into Swedish Brianna Wu. Does that include chopping her tits off? You decide!

She doesn't have tits.

 

[Stoneheart]

She doesn't have tits.

Maybe she is just a ten year old boy identyfing as a 17 year old girl.

 

[BIG BILL HELL'S]

She'll be the Swedish version of MayLi, doing Facial Abuse and "Vegan Anal Insertion" videos.

Shoving stuff up my ass to own the cons

 

[JambledUpWords]

Self-Proclaimed ‘Sex God’ Meat Loaf Talks Threesomes, Losing 70 Pounds And Why He Thinks Greta Thunberg Is ‘Brainwashed,’ Greta Thunberg Responds

One of the biggest rock acts of the late 1970s, Meat Loaf is best known for his mega-hit 1977 LP Bat Out of Hell, which spawned such chart-topping singles as "Two Out of Three Ain't Bad" and "Paradise By the Dashboard Light". In an interview with the Daily Mail, the 72-year-old rocker — whose real…

etcanada.com

Someone has decided to speak out. Meat Loaf calls Greta Thunberg “brainwashed”.

 

[kidatari]

I dont know much about her
so, I'm damn surprised she is 17
I thought she was 14 or younger.
I guess she does have some sort of disorder or maybe wasn't raised healthy cause she or he, or whatever, looks damn bizarre

 

[George Floyd Sneed]

I dont know much about her
so, I'm damn surprised she is 17
I thought she was 14 or younger.
I guess she does have some sort of disorder or maybe wasn't raised healthy cause she or he, or whatever, looks damn bizarre

Autism and veganism is a hell of a combination.

 

[Slimy Time]

thats what not eating meat dose to you.

It's almost as if a growing child needs certain nutrients, like fat and the things you find in mi1k and meat.

 

[thismanlies]

Some crank callers discovered how shockingly easy it is to use Greta Thurnberg for your own personal gain.

The call starts innocently enough: Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., warmly greets the voices on the line, whom a staffer identifies as Greta Thunberg and her father, Svante. They share a laugh about Waters's nickname, "Auntie Maxine." The congresswoman praises her young caller for her climate change activism.


"You have made quite a big, big, big, big thunder on this issue. I am really, really very proud of you and the work that you're doing," Waters is heard saying.


The congresswoman and her staff thought they had connected with Thunberg, the 17-year-old Swedish climate activist who was recently named Time magazine's "Person of the Year." In reality, two 30-something Russians, Vladimir "Vovan" Kuznetsov and Alexei "Lexus" Stolyarov, were on the other end of the line. The duo describe themselves as comedians and pranksters, but they are widely suspected of having ties to the Russian government.




Audio from the call with Waters was posted to the pair's YouTube page on Thursday, along with a cartoon animating the approximately 10-minute interaction as part of their comedy video series called "Stars Save the Earth."


It's unclear when exactly the call took place. Waters' office did not respond to questions seeking details about how the call was arranged or whether her office has screening or security protocols for phone calls. Waters waved off the incident on Saturday, telling The Washington Post in an email statement:

"This was just another stupid prank by the same Russian operatives who have targeted many U.S. elected officials, including Rep. Adam B. Schiff, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham, Sen. Mitch McConnell, and late-Senator John McCain, and international heads of state such as Emmanuel Macron. The end."




But security experts warn that what's being passed off as prank-call mischief is really Russian misinformation meant to undermine the United States.


Kuznetsov and Stolyarov deny they're Kremlin-backed agents with ties to Russian security forces, despite their pattern of frequently targeting people critical of Russia or the fact that, as two supposed pranksters, they're able to reach powerful world leaders directly by phone.


"We work for ourselves, for nobody else," Stolyarov told the Guardian in 2016.


Whether the pair are agents of the Russian government, the kind of ruse they pulled on Waters can accomplish two goals for Russia, according to Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a communications professor at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of the 2018 book, "Cyberwar: How Russian Hackers and Trolls Helped Elect a President."


"The first [goal] is adding info. to a political dialogue in which discrediting one side is useful to Russia," Jamieson told The Post by phone. "The second is being able to make the argument to the rest of the world that U.S. leaders are easily duped. Putin's interests are served when U.S. leaders are made to look foolish in the eyes of the world."


Kuznetsov and Stolyarov started pranking their own rich and famous countrymen around 2014, before moving on to targets like Elton John, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and, more recently, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif. The men pose as prominent figures their targets would be keen to speak with, engage them in conversation and then post the audio to their YouTube channel.


The call to Waters includes a mix of the absurd - the Thunberg impersonator mentions a climate strike in support of "Chon-go-Chango island" - and the overtly political.


Halfway through the call, the impersonators detail a fictional exchange between President Donald Trump and Thunberg that they claim happened when both attended the U.N. climate summit in September. In it, they tell Waters that the president made Thunberg cry when he said, "You'll never achieve your goals like those congressional fools who accuse me," and "I'll tell you the truth: I really wanted to push the Ukraine president to put my competitor on trial. And he will go to trial with you, with [a bunch of] Democrats. . . . I would have a separate cage for all of you."


"Oh my god, he mentioned the Ukrainian president?" Waters is heard asking.


The caller impersonating Thunberg's father offers that they have an audio recording of Trump's remarks to Greta that they can provide to the congresswoman.


Waters is heard assuring the callers that her colleagues are working diligently to gather facts in the impeachment case against Trump. "f the public knew he talked to Greta like that, and that she will never achieve - that will go against him, too," she said.


Waters ends the call by offering to arrange a meeting as quickly as possible, to which the callers agree.


Schiff, Waters' congressional colleague and the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, received a similar call from the two men in April 2017, when one posed as the speaker of Ukraine's parliament, Andriy Parubiy, the Atlantic reported in 2018. On the call, the impersonator told Schiff they had compromising material on Trump, including nude photos of the president.


"We will try to work with the FBI to figure out, along with your staff, how we can obtain copies," Schiff reportedly responded. A spokesman for Schiff later told the magazine that they suspected the call was "bogus" and had alerted security and law enforcement before agreeing to take it and after.


Despite those precautions, Republican opponents like Rep. Devin Nunes of California pointed to the existence of the call as evidence Democrats were being cavalier and incautious in gathering evidence against Trump for the impeachment hearing.


"The point at which this enters the dialogue and can be used for a political attack has real consequences," said Jamieson.


Not all targets have been Democrats, but Jamieson said it matters if the "pranksters" are reaching out to people involved in an ongoing investigation. She also advised watching to see whether reports of the stories are picked up and amplified by Russian government-controlled websites like RT and Sputnik.


"At that point, this is no longer a prank; this is engaging in disinformation," she said.


A lingering question for Jamieson - and perhaps many lawmakers' offices - is whether voice recognition or other technology can advance to the point where it can help verify who is on the other end.

"There's a real vulnerability when you're talking to someone you can't see. You wouldn't want the president of the U.S., or someone who has the capacity to make significant leadership decisions, to be tricked by someone who isn't who they allege they are," Jamieson said.


Trump already fell victim to such a prank in 2018 when U.S. comedian John Melendez, a.k.a. Stuttering John of "The Howard Stern Show," claims to have reached the president on Air Force One by pretending to be Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J.

 

[Silence of the Troons]

A journalist who works for SVT (Swedish public TV) recently quit Twatter because Swedish climate activists got mad at her for describing Greta as "left-wing populist" https://www.expressen.se/nyheter/klimat/svt-profilen-pahoppad-efter-orden-om-thunberg/

SVT profile verbally attacked after describing Thunberg as 'left-wing populist'

SVT correspondent Erika Bjerström, 57, has on several occasions said that Greta Thunberg's environmental struggle has had a mark of left-wing populism.
The statements have attracted massive criticism - and now Bjerström chooses to leave the microblogging Twitter.
“On Twitter, after 37 years as a people-forming environmental journalist, I am accused of being a Nazi, climate denier, bought by the oil companies. Unworthy. Goodbye Twitter "writes Bjerström.

It was in an analysis of Greta Thunberg's speech during the COP25 climate summit in Madrid that SVT climate correspondent Erika Bjerström first provided the 17-year-old with a populist stamp.
“Greta talks about the people against the governing. She sounds increasingly like a leftist populist, ”Bjerström wrote on Twitter.
Bjerström also wrote a text analysis of the speech on SVT's website.
"In a debate article before the Madrid meeting, on the site 'Project Syndicate', she writes, among other things, that the climate crisis must be blamed on colonial, racist and patriarchal forces," Bjerström wrote there.

Bjerström received criticism
The choice to label Thunberg's message as "left-wing populist" attracted plenty of criticism. Andreas Gustavsson, editor-in-chief of the left-hand newspaper Dagens ETC, said that Bjerström fell into a "conspiratorial trope".
“Public service gives right-wing populists interpretative power to decide who left-wing populists are. Stunning. Ill-advised, "he wrote.
More fierce criticism was directed at Bjerström on the social media - and it gained new momentum when Bjerström again linked Thunberg's rhetoric and left-wing populism in the Annual Report of the Report.
- She started by referring strictly to the research, but by the end of the year she became increasingly political and used an increasingly classic leftist rhetoric. And as she dismisses all politicians, the entire business community and their efforts and the work that is still going on here and there to reduce emissions, her message is hopeless, Bjerström said then.

"Accused of being a Nazi"
According to Bjerström, the tone has become so hard to feel exposed to hate - and now she chooses to leave the Twitter platform.
“At SVT, we do an in-depth analysis of one of the world's most powerful opinion makers, Greta Thunberg, of her rhetorical movement. On Twitter, after 37 years as a people-forming environmental journalist, I am accused of being a Nazi, climate denier, bought by the oil companies. Unworthy. Goodbye Twitter, ”Bjerström writes.

The Express has been in contact with Bjerström, who does not want to post a longer interview on the matter.
"My only comment is that now I want to focus on my new assignment as SVT's first climate correspondent," she writes in an SMS to Expressen.
Instead, Bjerström refers to SVT's foreign chief, Pia Bernhardson. The Express is looking for her for a comment.

Defended by Jan Eliasson
The same Andreas Gustavsson who criticized Bjerström in the ETC admits on Twitter that he has also reacted to the tone in the posts addressed to her.
“I have seen the hopefuls, many who have crossed all borders. But at the same time it is obvious that SVT and its employees can be criticized. It does not change, ”he writes.
Jan Eliasson, former Foreign Minister, has sent supportive words to Bjerström.
“Have thought about these paths myself when hatred, mockery and threats flowed on Twitter, often anonymously. Have then chosen to ignore or, in serious cases, block. It is important that these persons or interests do not chase away professional journalists such as Erika Bjerström. This is exactly what they want to achieve, ”he writes.

Greta's answer
In connection with Bjerström's analysis of Thunberg's speech in Madrid, the environmental activist herself went on Instagram and replied to the SVT profile.
"I'm sometimes called ”political". But I've never supported any political party, politician or ideology. I communicate the science and the risks of failing to act on it.
And the fact that the politics needed don't exist today, neither to the right, left nor center.
If anyone thinks that what I and the science are saying is advocating for a political view - then that says more about that person than about me.
That being said - some are certainly failing more than others." Thunberg writes.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

A journalist who works for SVT (Swedish public TV) recently quit Twatter because Swedish climate activists got mad at her for describing Greta as "left-wing populist" https://www.expressen.se/nyheter/klimat/svt-profilen-pahoppad-efter-orden-om-thunberg/

TBF, it might be because you are forbidden from calling left wing personnel populists, even if almost all of them fall within the category.

 

[thismanlies]

A journalist who works for SVT (Swedish public TV) recently quit Twatter because Swedish climate activists got mad at her for describing Greta as "left-wing populist" https://www.expressen.se/nyheter/klimat/svt-profilen-pahoppad-efter-orden-om-thunberg/

"Populist" is a term used to describe smelly poor people who think they're entitled to have a say in society. So of course the left hates it.

 

[GeorgiaGuidestones]

Some crank callers discovered how shockingly easy it is to use Greta Thurnberg for your own personal gain.

Mad Maxine was so thirsty for more dirt on Orange Man that she believed every word of Greta’s claims in that call. Her office refuses to comment.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

"Populist" is a term used to describe smelly poor people who think they're entitled to have a say in society. So of course the left hates it.

When I was a lad they always used populist in a positive way. It was only when populism moved from being a primarily Left-wing thing to a primarily Right-wing thing that they turned on it.

 

[Tasty Tatty]

There was a mention of Greta tonight during Gervais' opening monologue: "(to the many guests) Most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg."

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

When I was a lad they always used populist in a positive way. It was only when populism moved from being a primarily Left-wing thing to a primarily Right-wing thing that they turned on it.

But it is a term that is correct for both parties. The left still have an evil elite boogiman (1%) and try to appeal to ordinary groups through wide reaching social changes.

 

[peanus weenus]

Please mark a date 30 years from now on when Greta comes out against her current business handler in #metoo way.

 

[CWCissey]

Please mark a date 30 years from now on when Greta comes out against her current business handler in #metoo way.

You think Greta will still be alive in 30 years?

I barely give her 10.