Miss Greta Tonight

[Samuraisan]

Anybody going to watch ?

[jim360]

Andy Hughes and others would do well to listen to Greta, rather than talk down to her; sadly, she's better-informed about the dangers of Climate change than they are.

[jim360]

Still, if such people want to explain why she's wrong by citing evidence and providing a reasoned argument, they are more than welcome to do so. Going on about her age, or her hairstyle, is not reasoned argument.

[gness]

Oh very few, Pasta...it's an instinctive spouting mainly from old and oldish men with warped ideas which is why we are in such a mess now.

Take a look and make your own mind up which is what I will be doing...x

[gness]

Don't hold your breath for a reasoned argument on here, Jim.

[fcc]

Can someone please explain what qualifications she has to tell other people how to live.

[gness]

fcc. You only have to look at some of the answers on here...well one in particular... and much of what is happening with Covid to think to yourself .....hmmmm.... qualifications...???

[fcc]

So she has not actually said anything we already did not know.

[tiggerblue10]

Someone on Twitter said that they couldn't wait till she turned 18 so they could tell her what they thought of her without being accused of bullying a child.

In other words, to troll her. That's just nasty and it's not as if she's browbeating anyone unlike someone else I could mention over the other side of the pond who appears to be inciting hatred at the moment. And dare I say it, violence.

[gness]

Well I've been watching the latest news. Perhaps we should just hand over to Greta and other youngsters because we've made a right pig's ear of the world.

[pastafreak]

I'm trying to stay hopeful...to believe there is good in people.
At the moment, that belief is being tested...

[andy-hughes]

Atheist - // Andy; very patronising and dismissive of people younger than you. You might have been jejune in your youth, but not everybody is like that. You might be a bit bitter in your old age? //

My objection to this young lady is not based on the sincerity of her beliefs, or her profile, but simply on the fact that she has not lived long enough to amass a fraction of the experience and knowledge of her subject to be able to speak with anything approaching authority.

That is not patronising her because she is young, it is simply acknowledging a fact of life - knowledge has to be learned, and learning takes time, and she has simply not had enough of it to be seen as any sort of authority about climate change, or frankly, anything else.

[andy-hughes]

gness - // Well I expected the usual...why should we listen to young people comments.
But not from you, Andy. Thought you had more about you. //

I do - which is why I am unwilling to listen to children who don't.

The notion that a teenager is more to be listened to on the basis that she is a teenager is facile, and the notion that she has the knowledge and experience to present a reasoned argument from her own research and experience is not viable.

My view that she is a mouthpiece for her parents remains unchanged.

[ummmm]

Adults who have lived for many years longer know less than her so, yes, you are being patronising about her age.

[andy-hughes]

pixie - // Me too, tbh, Andy....People aren't necessarily wrong, just because they are younger. //

True - but they lack the sense of maturity and reason that gives appropriate weight to their views.

Anything else is repeating without understanding, and anyone at any age can do that.

[Stickybottle]

Thanks to bookbinder for the link.
I’ll catch up on it later.

[andy-hughes]

jim - // Andy Hughes and others would do well to listen to Greta, rather than talk down to her; sadly, she's better-informed about the dangers of Climate change than they are. //

I am not 'talking down to her' - I am talking about her, and I dispute that she is 'better informed about the dangers of climate change' than I am.

I can read you the Theory Of Relativity, but that does not mean that I begin to understand what I have read - and to expect you to assume that I do understand it because I have read it out loud is pointless arrogance

[pixie374]

Andy, there have been child geniuses and stupid adults...
A sensible argument to what she has said seems fair enough. But dismissing someone because of age...
makes no sense.

[jim360]

Age helps, but it is not essential. There are many people who are far better at maths, physics, sciences in general than I am who are younger than me, and I'm not even that old myself.

You flatter yourself, frankly, if you think you understand any of this stuff better than Thunberg. Your repeated mistakes on the topic show that you do not.

In the end, what matters is what a person says, not how old they are. Judge her on what she says, therefore; or, more to the point, judge the statements themselves, rather than who is saying them. Even if you had a point that Thunberg did not herself understand it all that well, the evidence as a whole is in her favour and against her detractors.

[andy-hughes]

jim - // Going on about her age, or her hairstyle, is not reasoned argument. //

Neither is standing on a platform repeating by rote something your parents have told you is true - but it doesn't seem to be stopping Miss Thunberg from doing just that.

My issue is not that she doesn't know what she is talking about - no-one really does or ever did at that age - it's that she is presented as someone who miraculously has brand knew fresh exciting innovative ideas on an age-old problem, and she clearly does not.

I have likened it to Doctor Johnson's view on women preaching, likening it to a dog walking on its hind legs - it is not that it is done badly, rather that one is surprised to see it done at all.

This is exactly the same thing - for different reasons.

It is not what Ms Thunburg says that gets her an audience, it is the facile notion that because she is from a generation that will inherit the earth when the current government generation has moved on, her re-hash of age-old argument is somehow new and relevant in a way it was not previously.

And that is patently not true - and the novelty will wear off with every day that Ms Thunberg moves away from the imagined difference that being a teenager means she is better informed, and speaks to her own generation, who are obviously as ill-informed and simplistically viewing as she is.

[ummmm]

She's autistic. This is her subject.

(I'm not stereotyping autistic people either. I know they aren't all like rainman)