Greta Thunberg

14 A's at O level (she's only 16, after all) is no great achievement for an Aspie kid, unfortunately.
 
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lol, just admit you have nothing positive to say about her and move on. One moment it is "she should be in school" next moment its "Meh, anyone can get those kinda grades nowadays, especially since she has aspergers".

It's like you guys just want to bully her for anything you can get your hands on. She is a young woman doing her best for what she believes in, just like the german young woman also. You should big them up for that, regardless of whether you agree with what they are saying or not.

What are you guys doing in comparison? What are your achievements of a similar ilk?
 
Amp34 said:
CO2 emissions for a country as a whole are broadly irrelevant. The most important factor is CO2 emissions per person. We need to reduce our emissions PER PERSON down, rather than scapegoat the largest countries because they have the largest emissions. That doesn't mean we should completely ignore each countries emissions however, just that it's far less important that the emissions PER PERSON.

The whole point of the question is that it's basically rewording the original question, so not irrelevant at all. And if you answer no, then why are you concerned about Chinas overall emissions? China would have to reduce it's per person emissions to below 4t CO2 per person, (so significantly lower than the UK) to go back to emitting less than the US.

While I'm not saying your aim is this, most people I've come across that talk about China in this way are using it as a scapegoat for their own countries per person emissions. I.e. they don't want to actually do anything themselves, they want others to do it all.

The average European/North American has far more impact on the environment than the average Chinese person.



Agreed. But irrelevant. You seem to still be under the impression that I'm advocating a more sustainable human population instead of pushing to reduce emissions. Wrong. It's not an either or. My argument is that reducing emissions is not going to solve the issue entirely. We need a multi pronged attack.



So you're going down the semantics argument. You're the one that brought up mass killing. I used genocide as a catch all term for that... If you want to go down that route I'm out. This is not about and has never been about mass killing, genocide or any other way of removing billions of humans from the earth. YOU are the only one that brought that up and arguing semantics is not going to change that.



Yes. Yet the vast majority of scientists and advocates are not talking about removing fossil fuels overnight. The argument is about becoming carbon NEUTRAL, not carbon free in a few years.

As I said, you brought up mass killing, which is the argument against overpopulation equivalent to those claiming reducing carbon emissions to zero overnight.



You're still arguing your straw men that I've already pointed out are wrong so no point repeating what I've already said here, other than to point out (AGAIN) that it's in tandem with emissions reductions and a push towards all the other things we are trying to push for as environmentalists. The issue is that is just not going to be enough, not that we shouldn't try and reduce our individual environmental footprints.

As I said in an earlier post, go and read websites from NGO's like Population Matters and see what they are advocating and what they are actually doing. Hopefully it'll make the argument clearer and explain why you're going down the wrong path with your current line of thinking.

The main page quote by Attenborough is a good start:



And here is a page on the sort of things we can do to help to create a more sustainable population. https://populationmatters.org/solutions



And there in lies the problem, standard of living is going to increase anyway (at least, until we irreparably damage the environment). Either we artificially hold back those areas of the world that aren't up to developed countries standards of living or we have to deal with the fact that there are 5 billion people that will be demanding their "fair share" of the resources that are disproportionately being used by those living in developed countries.

Your example of Japan is a good one. It's a prime example of a country that are just trying to ignore the problem. Most other countries are doing the same, but using a different method (immigration). All that's doing is pushing the problem on to the next generation.



I agree. And that's also what we need to be focusing on. Organizations are already coming up with new methods of measuring progress and people are working on all those problems. As above, just ignoring them and assuming we can inflate these problems away (by increasing the number of each generation) is not in any way a sensible answer, yet it seems to be what most believe is the solution.

This is also the point I was trying to make about technology. The solution to the problem generally ends up causing unintended consequences which we then have to try and solve... with more tech, which also creates more unintended consequences etc etc. Technology is not the panacea some people believe it is. It helps, but we can't "technology" our way out of all the problems we currently have, especially the environmental ones.




And again. Your strawman. The aim is to have a more sustainable human pupulation as well as reducing our individual impact on the environment. It's not an either or, they are in tandem. As you rightly point out, the timescale is too long for just a reduced human population to solve everything. Equally, reducing our individual impact means we can have a higher sustainable population. The reality is it's still likely to be no where near the 7.5-9 Billion number we are currently looking at.




I think you're misunderstanding me there. What you wrote is my point. People that live in dense urban areas use less CO2 and generally less resources per person than people that live in remote rural areas.

A large country with a more urban population is going to use less resources per person than a small country with a very sparse population. In a global, industrial world the overall population and overall environmental impact is more a factor than that of individual countries. To paraphrase a quote "CO2 does not respect international borders".




This is the tech as a panacea argument summed up. The problem is can you provide any example of this from the past?

Conversely this thinking is what got us into this mess in the first place. The industrial revolution is a prime example of this, and even further back there are arguments that civilizations across the world believed their technology was the solution, until it all came crashing down.

I agree with your argument regarding sustainability, however where we disagree is whether technology alone will be the solution. Historically while it usually solves the problem it's meant to deal with, it often caused additional problems (e.g. the harnessing of fossil fuels has been one of the greatest tech breakthroughs in history, but it's also caused one of the biggest problems in history). As you say, a different socioeconomic system is needed no matter what solution we advocate.
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I think the most important thing right now is to optimise the global economic system, to reduce the consumptionism/capitalism/profitalism, while redirecting more resources for a normal living to the less developed countries.
We must seek more advanced energy generation technologies, we need more efficient system - for instance - if we can invent an energy system with high enough 'over-unity' coefficient, we will limit a lot of the waste thrown in the environment, a lot of unnecessary garbage thrown in the environment.

Burning fossil fuels is the least efficient energy source possible.
 
Threepwood said:
lol, just admit you have nothing positive to say about her and move on. One moment it is "she should be in school" next moment its "Meh, anyone can get those kinda grades nowadays, especially since she has aspergers".

It's like you guys just want to bully her for anything you can get your hands on. She is a young woman doing her best for what she believes in, just like the german young woman also. You should big them up for that, regardless of whether you agree with what they are saying or not.

What are you guys doing in comparison? What are your achievements of a similar ilk?
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It's weird and hilarious! 81 pages of grown men seemingly been triggered by a young girl. Even if I had an issue with her, there are so many more things in this world that require my ire. I was probably scratching my bum, playing football and video games at her age. The fake memes and stories about her are even worse.
 
You remember the famous Einstein 'Mass–Energy Equivalence' E = Mass times Speed of Light^2 ?
Well, everything around us is energy.


Also, can you imagine on what kind of garbage stockpile we are sitting on?
Some people buy new smartphones 3 or 4! times a year ! Because they break them so easily.

If only 5% of the population does this, around 400 Million ! people demand for a new smartphone each year! Actually several new smartphones!
 
doodah said:
It's weird and hilarious! 81 pages of grown men seemingly been triggered by a young girl. Even if I had an issue with her, there are so many more things in this world that require my ire. I was probably scratching my bum, playing football and video games at her age. The fake memes and stories about her are even worse.
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Eh, get a new record, yours seem to be broken.
 
doodah said:
It's weird and hilarious! 81 pages of grown men seemingly been triggered by a young girl. Even if I had an issue with her, there are so many more things in this world that require my ire. I was probably scratching my bum, playing football and video games at her age. The fake memes and stories about her are even worse.
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The way I see it, posts like these are from people that are so ignorant of the world they live in.
 
The attribution of "hate" to those who merely disagree with Ms Thunbergs' posture is a straw man argument based on the false dichotomy:

'If you dont like what she says, you must (or do) hate her.'

The claim is simply fallacious nonsense. By consequence, it is an ad hominem (blame the man / play the man instead of the ball) - in this case - blame the critics, rather than addressing the substance of their argument. Ie. It's a dodge / cop out masquerading as a reasonable counterargument. It has a certain charm as a result...comprising 3 fallacies in one 'position'.

However, there is some evidence that even 'old dogs' can learn new tricks by being taught simple deductive reasoning:

https://www.hindawi.com/journals/np/2018/1401579
 
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'Merely disagreeing' is one thing, belittling is another. Is saying something like "14 A's at O level (she's only 16, after all) is no great achievement for an Aspie kid" meerly disagreeing? or actually trying to find fault and put her down? I'd be well chuffed for any child (she was younger when she got them than 16 too) who achieved that, aspergers or not.
 
Threepwood said:
'Merely disagreeing' is one thing, belittling is another. Is saying something like "14 A's at O level (she's only 16, after all) is no great achievement for an Aspie kid" meerly disagreeing? or actually trying to find fault and put her down? I'd be well chuffed for any child (she was younger when she got them than 16 too) who achieved that, aspergers or not.
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I was speaking from experience and as parent of a now adult child with Aspergers I raised single-handedly. My comment was apt, given the overestimated academic abilities and worth of statements made by a comparably undereducated and uninformed teenager.

Eg. My own daughter at 15 was doing A level Engineering studies, and A level Philosophy and Reasoning. Even a 15yo can quickly learn to spot "constraints" and trade-offs required to solve real world problems, and logical limitations and caveats to their own (and others') impassioned, initial proposals. The point being other ordinary kids by the same age look at the claims of the celebrated media teen and rightly scoff. And more importantly, they already know enough as a result to not be so damn foolish themselves. Whether they have Aspergers or not.
 
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^^ may I ask what your daughters gcse results were?

I imagine greta would also have been doing A level equivalent at the same age too, if not for this year out doing what she is doing now instead.

Do other kids her age scoff at her? I've not heard much scoffing, they seem to either not really care about her and the issues etc, or they do care about the issues and talk about it with folk. There seems to be a lot of adults actually scoffing at her and belittling her at every attempt though.

The recent twitter exchange between Jeremy Clarkson and his daughter was rather funny, imo, as an aside.
 
More than 24 A's at A level. 7 Senior subjects (1 more than the 'suicide six' - as teenagers call it).
 
^^ What were her GCSE results?


(the Internet is saying that aspergers tends to give average to above average scores, when compared to the normal average, I guess that is boosted by the ones who do show most excellent scores, I guess that means that it's not a gaurantee that aspergers children are all gifted geniuses, but a higher % when compared to other kids are?)
 
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It was some years ago, I don't recall more than 25 clearly. It may only have been 25. She liked to keep her score (report cards) to herself. I did pay $50 per A however, to both kids. Aspie got a gold cert only given to kids with at least 24 at A level by the govt (along with about 980 other kids). And yep, I've experienced hundreds of Thunberg-like (aspie) tantrums - or as we (in our household) call them "mood locks".
 
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