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.

 

[Antipathy]

They shall fight with pistols at dawn.

I'd rather they fight with proper tools. Greta fights with a broken solar panel, Naomi with a sharpened chunk of coal.

 

[crocodilian]

For climate skeptics, it’s hard to compete with the youthful appeal of global phenomenon Greta Thunberg.

Stopped reading here. Greta Thunberg is the breathing equivalent of Harlem Shake: a forced meme, put out and perpetuated by people who stand to gain something from it's purely-synthetic "popularity." Any resonance she has with common people is due entirely to the public's inability to refrain from jeering at a very obvious clown. You can't even grade her positively on her own merits, as her father secretly writes all of her material.

 

[Vlinny-kun]

I'd rather they fight with proper tools. Greta fights with a broken solar panel, Naomi with a sharpened chunk of coal.

Whoever wins gets to clame their throne as empress of gaia and rule with an iron fist over their domain. The other is locked away in a cursed amulet at the bottom of the pacific for all eternity.

 

[AnOminous]

Great. Now the Republicans are returning fire with their own tardchild mouthing off puppet lines to support shady, monopolistic lobbies with no interest in helping actually solve the looming energy crisis.

Both sides need dueling climate lolis, 9 years old at the most. That's the only way this could get more retarded.

 

[Antipathy]

Both sides need dueling climate lolis, 9 years old at the most. That's the only way this could get more exceptional.

Using some condescending little kid to lecture me about how clean coal is or how I need to eat the bugs is only going to make me more and more violently pro-nuclear, since it pisses off the handlers of these little shits and the corporations they work for.

 

[AnOminous]

Using some condescending little kid to lecture me about how clean coal is or how I need to eat the bugs is only going to make me more and more violently pro-nuclear, since it pisses off the handlers of these little shits and the corporations they work for.

Nuclear appears to piss off both camps while being the rational solution to both sets of problems they claim to be interested in solving.

 

[Antipathy]

Nuclear appears to piss off both camps while being the rational solution to both sets of problems they claim to be interested in solving.

The former is why I support it so openly and passionately, the latter is why I support it at all.

 

[CheezzyMach]

Great. Now the Republicans are returning fire with their own tardchild mouthing off puppet lines to support shady, monopolistic lobbies with no interest in helping actually solve the looming energy crisis.

Nuclear power would solve all this bullshit. It'd create jobs, isolate the US from Saudi Arabia, which would allow the West to fucking drop their Sharia asses into the sand in seconds, and provide incentive for construction jobs, as well as high skill, high paying jobs as nuclear technicians.

It amazing how fucking socialism is becoming mainstream in American politics but people are still afraid of Nuclear because of a Soviet fuckup.

 

[Antipathy]

It amazing how fucking socialism is becoming mainstream in American politics but people are still afraid of Nuclear because of a Soviet fuckup.

I've heard Fukushima and Three Mile Island mentioned as well.
Fukushima went up due to a poorly designed reactor made by a corporation to cut corners getting hit by an earthquake and a tsunami. Even then, the most damning part about that wasn't the radiation released, but the coverup of anything being wrong.

Three Mile Island was due to someone being confused over an arcane piece of '60's era tech being weird, and something bad almost happened.

Chernobyl wasn't just a Soviet fuckup, it was the Soviets fucking up so goddamn hard that honestly, the only way to make it worse would have been to intentionally cause it to go haywire. The level of shitty pants-on-head, window licking, circlejerking stupidity needed to force that reactor to do what it did is insane.

 

[AnOminous]

Chernobyl wasn't just a Soviet fuckup, it was the Soviets fucking up so goddamn hard that honestly, the only way to make it worse would have been to intentionally cause it to go haywire. The level of shitty pants-on-head, window licking, circlejerking stupidity needed to force that reactor to do what it did is insane.

And the Russian Chernobyl design is almost the worst possible design a reactor could have. Nobody would ever build such a thing now, and even the plants of the same type have been retrofitted to avoid a recurrence of at least the specific Chernobyl scenario (although they still suck because Russians suck).

New designs like the pebble-bed reactor are passively safe and even levels of retardation like that at Chernobyl couldn't accidentally cause them to go off.

A major problem with the design of Chernobyl and for that matter TMI were that they required an active system pumping coolant not to go off and if that system failed in a non-obvious way (and personnel ignored warnings because they were either badly designed or malfunctioning), the whole thing could go critical.

Passive safety means even a total failure of the active safety measures doesn't result in such a situation.

 

[Doug_S1]

Stopped reading here. Greta Thunberg is the breathing equivalent of Harlem Shake: a forced meme, put out and perpetuated by people who stand to gain something from it's purely-synthetic "popularity." Any resonance she has with common people is due entirely to the public's inability to refrain from jeering at a very obvious clown. You can't even grade her positively on her own merits, as her father secretly writes all of her material.

View attachment 1159472

You're saying this autistic, fetal-alcohol-syndrome suffering teenager isn't the resolute and independent nu-woman that she's supposed to be? How dare you.

 

[soy_king]

They shall fight with pistols at dawn.

I was gonna say to trust the hotter one but Naomi looks like someone seriously flattened her face

 

[Urist Steelthrone]

I was gonna say to trust the hotter one but Naomi looks like someone seriously flattened her face
View attachment 1159998

She also looks autistic although less than Greta.

 

[#zzz]

Whats with these groups trotting out teens that look like they've been chained to a bed and starved for 10 years?

 

[Super-Chevy454]

I hate Greta to. Not because I'm a exceptional climate change denier, but because she is a fucking POTATO!

The potato will be insulted to be compared to Greta.

 

[Doug_S1]

Whats with these groups trotting out teens that look like they've been chained to a bed and starved for 10 years?

Bring on the climate waifus. Reminds me of how in Medieval times, girls would be put forth to be worshiped as symbols of purity and chastity.

 

[Return of the Freaker]

I was gonna say to trust the hotter one but Naomi looks like someone seriously flattened her face
View attachment 1159998

Downs Syndrome vs Fetal Alcohol Syndrome

FIGHT!!

 

[Iron Hamster]

Ha! Syndrome Fight Club

 

[Francis E. Dec Esc.]

Whats with these groups trotting out teens that look like they've been chained to a bed and starved for 10 years?

Veganism. You can tell them from a mile away because their skin looks ashen and almost transparent.

 

[Judge Holden]

Ok niggas this is getting serious. Between greta, the parkland kids, this new kid on the right and various fundie spawn on the internet, not to mention all the woke 8 year olds that blue checkmarks keep talking about, something is becoming terrifyingly clear

.....we are falling behind in the arms race.

Already there exists a dangerous retard-kid gap between us and other other great internet powers, and unless something is done soon we will be drowned in a sea of sped-baby tears

We must acquire a child whom we can use to regurgitate kiwifarms talking points points, advertise kiwifarms merchandise, and act as a meatshield against any and all criticism of kiwifarms. If possible this child must be inspirationally deformed and crippled. If such a child cannot be procured, we must acquire a non-deformed child, and also a fish knife and a baseball bat