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Wednesday 19 August 2020

Greta Gets Gammons Going

The Guardian’s environment editor Damian Carrington has a reminder for us today: we may be looking at the Coronavirus pandemic, but climate change is still a thing, still real, and has not gone away. Moreover, two years after her first school strike, activist Greta Thunberg is still there too, reminding us that our inaction is not buying time, but losing it.

Evening all

Ms Thunberg has told “Looking back [over two years], a lot has happened. Many millions have taken to the streets … But over these last two years, the world has also emitted over 80bn tonnes of CO2. We have seen continuous natural disasters taking place across the globe. Many lives and livelihoods have been lost, and this is only the very beginning”. The response to her reminder? The usual - blind, incoherent rage from the usual suspects.


This had already seen Sky News Australia (more Fox News than Sky in the UK) claiming “Greta Thunberg 'losing relevance' in the wake of global pandemic”, a mantra which was enthusiastically taken up by the climate change denialists at the Global Warming Policy Foundation and the equally batshit Climate Realists. Now, it’s getting worse.


Like Austin Williams sneering “Just when you thought that the decimation of industry, global recession & mass unemployment were as bad as it gets, along come environmentalists to close even more things down”. And the one-person tide of human filth that is David Vance laughably claiming “She misses the publicity”.


Some are already trying to drive their own denialist publicity, like the “Friends of Science” (they aren’t) pleading that Ms Thunberg debate Naomi Seibt (a denialist). Right on cue comes a Brexiteer to assert “Saint Greta will never agree to a debate”. Brexit and climate change denial do seem to attract a very similar audience.


Elsewhere, the Gammon is outraged. Like Jon Saxon, frothing “This child knows nothing but to trust blindly what she is told. She couldn't reason her way out of a paper bag … She's an ignorant puppet, used by the cult”. Neil Warden is on the same page. “Climate change is another cash cow. Greta Thunberg is a pawn”. Yeah, right.


Another of the whiners believes “The sock puppet's PR team must be SO p1ssed off we've had REAL problems to worry about recently, in place of their illusory ones”. Then has come the reminder to all of them: “It's so depressingly predictable. Greta Thunberg says something about climate change, papers publish it, then grown men tweet abuse about a 17 year old girl who has achieved more in her teens than most of them have managed with their whole lives”. They also demonstrate their crashing ignorance.

REALITY

Greta Thunberg does not do what anyone else tells her to. That dishonest claim may be part of the climate change denial belief system, but has no basis in fact.

Ms Thunberg is right. Being abusive will not stop her being right. Deal with it.


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6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Try the following conversation exercise with any Gammony friends who live in a typical UK city.

Gammon: "Blah blah global warming a hoax waffle waffle."
You: "Hey mate, remember when you were a kid in primary school and December came?"
Gammon: "Yeah."
You: "Remember when the teachers used to shout at you for sliding in the icy playground and the head would give everyone a stern lecture on why throwing snowballs at each other is bad?"
Gammon: "Haha, you might pick up a stone in the snow and take someone's eye out."
You: "Yeah, when was the last time you saw snow like that in December recently?"
Gammon: "Ummm. 2010, maybe?"
You: "Funny how winters have got warmer, isn't it?"

Anonymous said...

The Greta hate train is clearly some weird organised campaign by the usual right-wing crowd. A while ago was bored and reading through Greta-related comments in the Daily Mail. Now as the demographic of the Mail includes about a million women and a lot of them are grandmas you'd expect to see at least one comment along the lines of 'She's a clever girl doing her thing and not getting into drugs or being arrested. Speaks better English than my Kevin as well. What a credit to her country.'

Nope. Not one. Every comment was either being horrid about the girl's looks, screaming about her being a child, saying her parents are controlling her, calling her stupid or posting utter denialist nonsense ("Volcanoes emit more CO2 in an hour than Mankind has done in all of history" crap).

Meanwhile there was some Republican mother who paraded her kid as 'Mini AOC' mocking the real AOC on issues such as immigration. Mini AOC is a lot younger than Greta and the Daily Mail commenters found her 'act' hilarious and amazing and congratulated her mum for churning out such a fine youngster.

So either Daily Mail grandmas are all psychopaths or the comments we see in the Mail/Express are about as genuine and grass roots as those five star Amazon reviews for £5 wireless earbuds.

This is going to be a bitch to explain in 22nd Century history classes. 'Why didn't they do anything professor?', 'Well they only had a century's warning kids. Not really much time, and besides people really liked cruise ships and plastic bottles.'



Jonathan said...

In 100 years time, kids will be asking their History teachers, why were so many fooled by Mr Thirsty and his Luddite friends within the Gammon world?

Anonymous said...

Gammons look look up to eminent scientist and polymath professor David Ike as their source of knowledge!
Am sure some in the tabloid industry do too!

Unknown said...

Let's hope for a future world with kids and teaching and history then!

Sam said...

Love it.