
Greta Thunberg has done her science homework - ericdanielski
https://faktabaari.fi/greta-thunberg-has-done-her-science-homework/
======
svara
I do not understand the hate she consistently gets specifically in the
anglosphere. Even the reddit thread about her the other day was full of hate.
I honestly don't understand, can someone explain?

Of course she's can't save the world alone, but she's generated a lot of
attention for an important issue that a lot of people are ignoring. What's so
terrible about that?

I really like her. She's got this highly logical, consequential way of
thinking that I've only seen in much older, highly successful people before.
All she's saying essentially boils down to: If A leads to B, and you don't
like B, you can't support A. She's not a figurehead, she's way ahead of the
adults around her.

~~~
BrandonMarc
People hate hypocrisy. Greta may be innocent, but her helpers buy far, far
more plane tickets than us - her target audience.

Scratch most environmentalist attention-seekers, and you'll find hypocrisy.
Look at Prince Harry.

~~~
epistasis
I don't think that's the case at all, the "hypocrisy" is just an excuse for
their opposition to her message.

We all live in this system, and she's not advocating for living outside the
system, she's advocating for changing it.

Nobody is advocating for everybody stopping flying tomorrow. We're advocating
for developing technology so that within a few decades we can be carbon
neutral.

~~~
luckylion
> Nobody is advocating for everybody stopping flying tomorrow.

Have you heard about flight shaming? Some aren't just advocating for it, they
are trying to enforce it.

~~~
epistasis
Flight shaming is great, and we should _all_ feel guilty when we fly, but that
doesn't mean we stop tomorrow.

~~~
luckylion
> but that doesn't mean we stop tomorrow

Sure, sure. So trying to enforce it doesn't mean you'd argue for it? Sorry,
that doesn't compute. It's fine to argue for it, btw. But claiming that
"nobody does that"? Come on, that's nonsense.

------
the_mitsuhiko
It's quite frustrating that even hackernews cannot have a reasonable
conversation the moment Greta Thunberg is involved. Surely it's not so hard to
avoid that at least the initial comments on a submission are ad hominem.

~~~
Analemma_
I've definitely noticed that there's something people find uniquely
infuriating about an intelligent, well-spoken child that makes good points
they disagree with. I think it's because suddenly all the usual excuses to
dismiss arguments-- they're a paid shill, they're a political agent-- sound
ridiculous, and the people don't know how to cope with the fact now that they
have to argue for real and they're losing to a kid. It happened with Malala
and it's definitely happening with Greta Thunberg too.

~~~
archagon
Good insight. See also: David Hogg.

------
grecht
I’m not sure what to think about her. She has caused a much needed discussion
about climate change, but there’s a lot of not so climate friendly marketing
tricks involved. Like when she went to NYC on a boat to avoid taking a plane.
Of course it was a one way trip, so her and her dad, 2 sailors, and 2 other
people, who BTW took a flight to NYC just to organize getting the boat back to
Europe, are flying back.

And that’s what miss from her and her supporters: Reasonableness, and living
in the “real world”.

~~~
TheCabin
The sailing was about more than just saving CO2, it was mainly a symbol
(highlighting that air-traffic is not yet climate friendly and that something
needs to be done about it, since feasible alternatives don't exist). I really
don't get why people are so annoyed about this.

~~~
grecht
Well, she didn’t save CO2 in the end. And the world already knows that flying
isn’t climate friendly.

She demands that people fly less, and people don’t like hypocrisy, so they’re
annoyed.

------
newsreview1
How about we listen, instead of simply disregarding, or going down the
political rabbit hole bc of the age of the messenger?

~~~
BrandonMarc
Discuss climate change without discussing politics? Um ... how?

~~~
saagarjha
You separate it from politics and treat it like the scientifically-backed
issue it is.

~~~
DaiPlusPlus
But action requires politics.

------
carlisle_
Having not heard the speech, this was news to me, and extremely alarming:

> They do, however, include negative emission techniques on a huge planetary
> scale that is yet to be invented, and that many scientists fear will never
> be ready in time and will anyway be impossible to deliver at the scale
> assumed.”

Imagine somebody said "a meteor is going to hit the Earth in 11 years and end
life as we know it unless we made massive changes to our way of life and
invented new technologies to thwart it." I fully believe we as a species could
collectively band together to stop it.

What's so horrible about climate change is it's not that the world ends in 11
years. It's that in 11 years we likely are doomed to watch our own extinction.
On top of that, we're not even beginning to deal with the problem in a way
that gives hope for the future. I can't think of a more existential crisis
inducing reality.

~~~
jacobush
Not _extinction_. Only massive social upheaval, revolutions, war, famine,
diseases and maybe even a pause for civilisation itself until things stabilise
again.

~~~
throwaway744678
Oh, come on. At least make a good faith attempt.

~~~
jacobush
I don't understand. Are you saying climate change could not lead to _Global
Thermonuclear War_ , as we liked to call it? Maybe I just have an active
imagination.

------
kawera
Her short interview with Trevor Noah two days ago is simply brilliant:

[http://www.cc.com/video-clips/ed6ma7/the-daily-show-with-
tre...](http://www.cc.com/video-clips/ed6ma7/the-daily-show-with-trevor-noah-
greta-thunberg---inspiring-others-to-take-a-stand-against-climate-change---
extended-interview?xrs=synd_twitter_091219_tds_59)

------
throwaway744678
This thread is a total shitstorm, and yet thorourghly enjoyable. Nothing like
a good disagreement!

------
tyingq
Off topic, but I'm curious if all the backslash-escaped commas have something
to do with an English article on a Finnish site...DB charset or similar, or
unrelated?

------
gnusty_gnurc
As someone who's on board with climate change advocacy, I find it absolutely
insipid to listen to her monotone, severe, apocalyptic proclamations.

~~~
seppin
> severe, apocalyptic proclamations

do you mean projections made by climate scientists that have, so far, been far
too conservative in nature?

~~~
gnusty_gnurc
As I said elsewhere: the IPCC report says we'll see somewhere around 5% global
GDP reduction in 2100, in a world that's vastly wealthier than today. In my
opinion, she uses dramatic, condemnatory rhetoric far beyond the conclusions
of scientists.

~~~
seppin
I don't know why you are bringing up GDP numbers when the UN's conservative
estimate for climate refugees is 1 billion people, but fine lets go there. The
political problems we are seeing today, the threats to democracy and
instability are due to a slow down in growth (most places still growing). If
you were to stop that growth, or even contract the world economy, the effect
on our societies, political systems, etc. would be catastrophic.

In short, everyone's economy is built on perpetual growth. If that growth
stops or reverse, everything falls down. And you don't need to get to 2100
before civil society breaks down.

So either you think none of the above will happen (and do explain why) or you
do and you still don't think it warrants immediate and drastic action. Which
also requires an explanation.

~~~
gnusty_gnurc
> In the no policy baseline temperature rises by 3.66°C by 2100, resulting in
> global GDP loss of 2.6% (5-95% percentile range 0.5–8.2%), as compared with
> 0.3% (0.1–0.5%) by 2100 in the 1.5°C scenario and 0.5% (0.1–1.0%) in the 2°C
> scenario.

[https://report.ipcc.ch/sr15/pdf/sr15_chapter3.pdf](https://report.ipcc.ch/sr15/pdf/sr15_chapter3.pdf)

~~~
seppin
Yes what does any of that have to do with what I said?

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ctdonath
Greta is a child being used for propaganda. This is wrong.

~~~
atoav
So the child that out of _her own will_ started to strike for climate
awareness is _beeing used_?

I didn’t follow every nook and crany of her story, but I didn’t see her
promoting anything that a rational objective observer should also conclude.

What I did see, were a big amount of butthurt middle aged men who couldn’t
handle what a girl telling them the truth does to their own self image. And
instead of using this as a chance to groe as a person they start to
rationalize their behaviour in ways which are uncompatible with the reality.

~~~
marpstar
> out of her own will

citation needed. the fact that this girl has been launched into stardom
practically overnight is a sign that she's not "in charge".

~~~
seppin
> the fact that this girl has been launched into stardom practically overnight
> is a sign that she's not "in charge"

Why?

------
BrandonMarc
It's a shame Greta Thunberg's advisors, assistants, helpers, etc all fly
around getting supplies & setting up meetings. Instead of, you know, the more
carbon-efficient method of traveling the ocean via maritime ships.

Great Thunberg's coterie of helpers have a larger carbon footprint than the
majority of us.

But hey ... at least it's not as bad as Prince Harry, who said every action
matters (when telling the plebeians to stop their commercial air travel
habit), and then took 4 private flights over the next two weeks.

Gotta love Gulfstream environmentalists.

~~~
andrepd
She sailed across the Atlantic in an 18m carbon-neutral boat, but that still
isn't enough for some people. Sheesh.

~~~
mamon
And to prepare her trip 5 professional sailors needed to take trans-atlantic
flights to US, in order to bring her boat back to Europe (boat belongs to
Monaco monarchs) - so her "carbon-neutral" trip actually generates 5 times
more CO2 than if she simply bought a plane ticket.

------
orbifold
It‘s funny whole parts of the establishment have spent so much time fighting
against „mansplaining“, white men as authority figures, for cultural
relativism, and critical post-something, that they must be really relieved to
finally have found someone championing a cause that actual experts (not al
gore) have talked about a long time.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
Do we really need to diminish her message into identity politics? When I see
she's doing that I think "I'm glad she's doing that, though I don't think it's
going to convince those not otherwise convinced", not "Thank goodness, with
her I finally have a leftist bingo".

~~~
orbifold
I don’t care either way. I just hate that everything boils down to elaborate
story telling. She had to travel by boat to the UN. All of this is highly
theatrical. The facts have been known for a long time, just talking about it
won’t change anything. Whatever she has to say is not new, interesting or
particularly intelligent. It can’t be. She has to rely on experts and then
packages their statements in digestible, made for TV, Twitter and Instagram
form.

~~~
andrepd
I honestly don't understand the point of this reasoning, and I'm forced to
conclude (because it transpires in every word you say) that you are somehow
massively jealous of the attention that is being given to her.

So what? I don't get it, is she supposed to produce original research else she
can't speak at all?? Well no shit she is not saying anything not already
published in peer-reviewed papers. She is _selling_ it to an audience that did
not care but may begin to care because of all the publicity, and crucially, to
an audience that _needs to be on this side_ for any meaningful change to get
done. Not new? Not particularly intelligent? But what, is she speaking at a
climatology symposium? No, she is speaking to a general audience, she is
speaking to be heard in the news and by word-of-mouth.

Really, what do you actually want of her?

~~~
orbifold
I wouldn't say I'm jealous, just highly annoyed to whom the public is paying
attention to. It's the same environmental activism theatrics that Greenpeace
and WWF have been doing for all of their existence.

As a counterpoint take John Baez for example: He decided started beginning in
2010 to try to organise engineers, physicists and mathematicians around the
global ecological crisis
[https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2010/08/27/this-
weeks-f...](https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2010/08/27/this-weeks-finds-
week-301/). Was he interviewed or reported on by CNN? Of course not. How often
has David MacKay ([https://withouthotair.com](https://withouthotair.com)) been
given the chance to speak to the public?

