Greta Thunberg named Time magazine's person of the year

According to the article;

But Gretta ... poor Gretta, anger filled, shaking her verbal fist at all those horrible horrible monsters that came before her ..... destroying her world with all of our horrible polluting ways. Maybe she doesn't realize how she got here .... & where (most of) the electricity came from (around the world), that ran the hospital she was born in .... or for that matter, the jet she flew in, to get to the public locations where she shakes her fist at all of us, that came Generations before her, or her parents. Ain't armchair quarterbacking grand .....
But it's likely that it's NOT poor Gretta's fault that she's so full of fear, rage, anger & whatnot. Kids generally get much of their ways - from those that raise & teach them (presuming they're not missing, ir poorly invested). Some have filled this poor kids mind with trepidation, anger, & blame - & so .... she follows suit. Many of the generations before her, and the generation before the one that raised her, taught society that if stupid people are doing stupid things roll up your sleeves and do something about it rather than blame.
As for for Greta'a understanding of climate change, maybe she didn't realize that much of the world we live on, was once covered in ice, & that the climate has been changing over the eons, & .... if we all blow ourselves to kingdom come, it'll continue to change ... with or without us. Speaking of blowing ourselves to Kingdom Come ..... now THERE'S a cause that poor Greta may want to roll up her sleeves & try to actually deal with, rather than blame blame blame. Good luck Greta.

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i think an imposter has stolen hill's account.

first the tesla bashing, then the gm praise, now this...

 

Imposter? maybe not


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Good book. The whole thing a first person narrative, by Chief Broom (on the right).

 

Just checked out the Audiobook.
I'll let you know.

As far as Greta...
meh.
I'm not going to opine on a 16 year old child's worthiness for the gig for obvious reasons.
Time, the media, or her parents or guardians may not be overtly exploiting her...depending on where you snap the chalk line, but I'm thinking that when you're 16, you get to be a kid for a little while longer.

Fun Fact:
I looked it up.
The legal voting age for Nicaragua, Scotland, Isle of Man, Guernsey, Ethiopia, Ecuador, Cuba, Brazil, and Austria is 16 years. However, this age has been criticized by most people due to the fact that many youths of this age have not yet gotten into the world of full time employment, paying real taxes, or for many...even finishing school.

She IS influential, but there's a line out there somewhere, and some day Greta's super powers will fade, and she'll be an adult.
She'll be able to smoke, vote, do the military thing, or memorialize a temporary feeling with body art.
Until then....
I'll let her 'kid' for a little while longer before I start wondering and opining on how she's going to 'activist.'

I'm surprised it wasn't somebody like Eric Ciaramella, or the usual group of PEOPLE like the Hong Kong protesters.
(Note to self: Check Meredith Corp's ties with the ChiComms)

 

i wonder what 16yr old Gretta would say had she read these 35 articles written over the past ½century - catastrophic predictions that weren't predicting quite out far enough for those of us still alive to understand the predictions were as bad as they were. But like the psalmist says, there's nothing new Under the Sun. We're still predicting.
Wrong Again: 50 Years of Failed Eco-pocalyptic Predictions | Competitive Enterprise Institute


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Hill, I agree with where you are coming from. I appreciate her fire and desire for change, but what she will eventually realize is that the majority of the world knows what to do to make things better. I just hope this doesn't grow beyond her ability to let things go. We all have seen how owning too much responsibility can hurt the human spirit. Wish her the best.

 

It is certainly the case that previous over-prediction of disasters is what people turn to when a new disaster is predicted. But is is not evidence that current predictions are 'over'.

My position, frequently stated around here, is that +T acceleration in next few decades is over-predicted. Also that risks associated with interlinked problems of food, water and energy supply, and economic growth are under-predicted.

Interlinked problems are more difficult to discuss and prepare for.

I'd certainly agree that 'acid rain killing all trees' was over-predicted. Probably that ozone holes were; possibly that xenobiotic insecticides were. But in each case, drama led to major beneficial changes in human actions. Very hard to test whether beneficial changes would have occurred equally had dramas been dialed down.

 

time just sent me a free 3 month subscription. talk about falling on hard ... times

 

Among environmental issues, unleaded gasoline and catalytic converters seems to have been different. I do not remember it being represented in 'sky is falling' or 'we will all die' terms. Instead there was broad consensus about how city air got bad and how to fix it. Catalysts came along at the right time.

There were certainly bumps in the road. Clair Patterson's revelations on environmental lead were opposed by industry for as long as possible. Computer interfaces for air and fuel control into engines were bad (almost silly) for a decade or so.

But overall it was a thing that seemed to get changed without a lot of street theater.

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Club of Rome 'we all gonna starve' was wrong. Perhaps not so wrong as it has been portrayed. Wrong mostly for misunderstanding The Green Revolution and how rapidly chemical fertilizer production would be scaled up.

This one is coming around again but within broader context mentioned above. It's not a good plan to focus on one aspect of a multi-faceted problem. But I guess I can see the (different) appeals of that to polar opposite think groups.

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A charitable interpretation of TIme's Person of Year is as a symbol for young people already alive who are unimpressed by 'OK boomers' wisdom in future planning. Previous symbolic winners seem to have mostly been groups not individuals.

 

I see plenty of careful cherry picking here, not consensus findings.

I commented on the false claim of consensus on a "coming Ice Age" more than a decade ago:
https://priuschat.com/threads/do-you-subscribe-to-james-lovelocks-conclusion-that-its-too-late-to-stop-the-effects-of-gw.72000/page-3#post-1000854

As previously mentioned, there have been plenty of interventions that helped partially deflate various scary predictions. See a new thread started just this past weekend:
Climate models | PriusChat