Climate change - how arsed are you?

[Stickman]

Last nigh the Beeb had a couple of decent programmes on in the Panorama investigation into "Dodgy Dave" and then about the 10 year anniversary of the Mark Duggan riots

 

But then they went and spoilt it all by having this twat on blabbering away about environmental issues rather than things he's an expert on such as breaking lockdown rules or smashing his wife's nose in

 

 

[Arniepie]

Papers full of ..only johnson can save the planet.

Jesus wept.

[Gnasher]

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-investigations/revealed-climate-change-denier-makes-big-donation-boris-johnson-and-jeremy-hunt/

 

and if you listen to this week's daily mail Margaret Thatcher was the original Greta Thunberg.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

9 minutes ago, Gnasher said:

and if you listen to this week's daily mail 

Never a good idea.

[Gnasher]

Good ol Daily Mail, 

 

 

[Rico1304]

Can’t we just get Robert Mason to turn his fucking lights off? 

[AngryOfTuebrook]

2 minutes ago, Rico1304 said:

Can’t we just get Robert Mason to turn his fucking lights off? 

I'll put your fucking lights out.

[Bruce Spanner]

'They' are so arsed about it they have started a disinformation campaign against an autistic kid.

 

Bravo, cunts.

 

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2021/08/greta-thunberg-far-right-climate/619748/

 

'The next front in the culture wars is climate change, and the battle lines have already been drawn. On one side are the climate skeptics—those who see global warming as nothing more than unusual weather, and argue that government interventions and regulations to curb greenhouse-gas emissions are alarmist or “eco-fascist.”

 

On the other side is Greta Thunberg.

 

This, at least, is what the populist right’s next political battleground looks like online. There you can find a barrage of disinformation and conspiracies about the Swedish climate activist, including depictions of her as a spoiled child, a leftist pawn, and even a Nazi. While much of this ridicule comes from internet trolls, a group of far-right activists, media pundits, politicians, and even heads of state have joined, and at times driven, the pile-on.

 

That a teenager could cause such a stir around the world is a testament to Thunberg’s influence. This Friday marks three years since she began her weekly protest against climate inaction outside the Swedish Parliament, a demonstration that has since ballooned into a global movement involving millions of students across more than 150 countries, with Thunberg as its Joan of Arc. Through her protests and speeches, she has galvanized the world about the climate crisis in ways few have before her. She has met world leaders, addressed the United Nations, and been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize—thrice.

 

These accolades have helped give Thunberg an enormous platform, but they have also invited a torrent of abuse, disinformation, and conspiracy theories of the kind typically reserved for older and more powerful figures such as George Soros and Bill Gates. That neither Thunberg’s youth nor her status has prevented her from becoming the far right’s latest villain reveals the extent to which she is seen as a threat. That she hasn’t been deterred by the attacks suggests that they aren’t working.

 

Although Thunberg first rose to international prominence in the summer of 2018 after starting her “school strike for climate,” it wasn’t until a year later, once she embarked on a two-week (and, crucially, carbon-neutral) boat trip across the Atlantic to deliver a speech at the UN climate summit, that she became the focus of the global right’s ire. Pundits suggested that she was a “schoolgirl puppet” being “exploited” by sinister forces including her ostensibly fame-hungry parents, energy giants, and the international left. Populist politicians as far afield as Canada, Germany, and Brazil took potshots at her, calling her a “brat,” an icon of the “climate church,” and “mentally unstable.” Perhaps her loudest critic was former President Donald Trump, who accused her of having an “anger management problem.”

 

Some of the worst attacks, however, have come in the form of memes. While many have been used to spread conspiracy theories (among them that she is tied to Soros, the billionaire financier and the right’s favorite bogeyman), others have gone further. “The stuff on the internet about her—the violence and vilification, the pure hatred—is really quite scary,” Catherine Fieschi, a political analyst who tracks dissent against climate policy in Europe, told me. Her latest study reproduced some of most popular memes, including one portraying Thunberg as akin to a member of the Hitler Youth. “There’s literally millions of those images going around the world,” she said.

 

Inherent in the attacks against Thunberg is a desire not only to undermine her credibility and her activism, but also to use her as a proxy for other left-wing movements. According to a 2020 study by the German Marshall Fund, which looked at the proliferation of online disinformation about Thunberg from 2018 to 2019, the most common narratives have focused on her mental fitness (Thunberg has Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism, which she calls her “superpower”), as well as her purported affiliations with Soros and “antifa,” a loose group of radical anti-fascist and anti-racist activists. The common thread in all of these narratives is a desire to make Thunberg appear untrustworthy and to be seen as less a person than a pawn—of her parents, of nefarious movements, and of the global elite. “Part of her power is that she doesn’t seem to represent any other interest but the interests of the climate and young people,” Karen Kornbluh, the director of the Digital Innovation and Democracy Initiative at the German Marshall Fund, told me. “Casting aspersions on that and trying to tie her to some other interest tries to take away some of her power.”

 

Such tactics have been tried and tested against other bogeymen of the far right. In the case of Soros, that has meant pervasive conspiracies about him bankrolling every movement reviled by the right—not only antifa but Black Lives Matter—with the ultimate goal of destroying the United States. With Gates, it’s the claim that he has invested billions of dollars into the development and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines (which is true) with the intent of using them to control people via microchip (which is false). Unlike both men, however, Thunberg is not a billionaire. She isn’t a patron of left-wing causes (though she has donated prize money to climate groups in the past). She doesn’t claim to be the climate-movement figurehead that many have made her out to be.

 

That the far right has had to resort to often misogynist and ableist attacks against Thunberg is in itself a testament to how difficult she is to discredit. Part of that challenge is due to the fact that her activism is rooted in science rather than politics (she leaves policy making to the policy makers). But it also has to do with the fact that she’s genuine. Unlike other high-profile climate activists, she can’t easily be accused of even occasional hypocrisy: In addition to being vegan, she abstains from plane travel and mass consumerism. “The last time I bought something new was three years ago and it was second-hand,” Thunberg told Vogue Scandinavia in a recent interview. “I just borrow things from people I know.”

 

Katrin Uba, an associate professor at Sweden’s Uppsala University who has been studying Thunberg’s impact on climate activism, told me that her rise to global prominence wouldn’t have been possible without social media—the same tool that her detractors are trying, and by all accounts failing, to use against her. Thunberg has already had a demonstrated impact on how her generation views the climate crisis, with one recent survey showing that nearly 70 percent of people under the age of 18 believe that climate change is a global emergency compared with 58 percent of people over the age of 60. Her influence, on the general public as well as on politicians and corporations, has been termed by Uba and others as “the Greta effect.”

 

Thunberg isn’t daunted by her status. The way she sees it, the demonization is a diversion from climate science, to which skeptics have few answers. It is proof that she and her fellow activists are having an effect. Those who attack her “are not evil,” she said in her interview with Vogue Scandinavia, extending a level of empathy that few of her detractors are ever likely to return. “They just don’t know better. At least that’s what I am trying to think.'

[Kepler-186]

Politicians won’t save us, it’s their full time job to look out for their own skins. 
 

https://popularresistance.org/greed-and-consumption-why-the-world-is-burning/

 

Global Warming Is, In Large Part, The Outcome Of A Destructive Pattern Instigated And Sustained By Capitalism.

The Latter Can Only Survive Through Unhindered Consumption, Inequality, Greed And, When Necessary, War.

Rome is scorching hot. This beautiful city is becoming unbearable for other reasons, too. Though every corner of the beaming metropolis is a monument to historical grandeur, from the Colosseum in Rione Monti to the Basilica of Saint John Lateran in San Giovanni, it is now struggling under the weight of its own contradictions.

In Via Appia, bins are overflowing with garbage, often spilling over into the streets. The smell, especially during Italy’s increasingly sweltering summers, is suffocating.

Meanwhile, many parts of the country are literally on fire. Since June 15, firefighters have reportedly responded to 37,000 fire-related emergencies, 1,500 of them on July 18 alone. A week later, I drove between Campania, in southern Italy, and Abruzzo, in the center. Throughout the journey, I was accompanied by fire and smoke. On that day, many towns were evacuated, and thousands of acres of forests were destroyed. It will take months to assess the cost of the ongoing destruction, but it will certainly be measured in hundreds of millions of euros.

Additionally, the entire southern Europe is ablaze, as the region is experiencing its worst heat waves in many years. Greece, Spain, Turkey, and the Balkans are fighting fires that continue to rage on.

Across the Atlantic, the US and Canada, too, are desperately trying to battle their own wildfires, mostly direct outcomes of unprecedented heat waves that struck North America from Vancouver to California, along with the whole of the American northwest region. In June, Vancouver, Portland and Seattle all set new heat records, 118, 116 and 108 Fahrenheit, respectively.

While it is true that not all fires are a direct result of global warming – many in Italy, for example, are man-made – unprecedented increases in temperature, coupled with changes in weather patterns, are the main culprits of these unmitigated disasters.

The solution is more complex than simply having the resources and proper equipment to contain these fires. The impact of the crises continues to be felt for years, even if temperatures somehow stabilize. In California, for example, which is bracing for another horrific season, the devastation of the previous years can still be felt.

“After two years of drought, the soil moisture is depleted, drying out vegetation and making it more prone to combustion,” The New York Times reported on July 16. The problem, then, is neither temporary nor can be dealt with through easy fixes.

As I sat with my large bottle of water outside Caffettiamo Cafe, struggling with heat, humidity and the pungent smell of garbage, I thought about who is truly responsible for what seems to be our new, irreversible reality. Here in Italy, the conversation is often streamlined through the same, predictable and polarized political discourse. Each party points finger at the others, in the hope of gaining some capital prior to the upcoming October municipal elections.

Again, Italy is not the exception. Political polarization in Europe and the US constantly steers the conversation somewhere else entirely. Rarely is the problem addressed at a macro-level, independent from political calculations. The impact of global warming cannot and must not be held hostage to the ambitions of politicians. Millions of people are suffering, livelihoods are destroyed, the fate of future generations is at risk. In the grand scheme of things, whether the current mayor of Rome, Virginia Raggi, is elected for another term or not, is insignificant.

Writing in the Columbia Climate School website, Renee Cho highlights the obvious, the relationship between our insatiable appetite for consumption and climate change. “Did you know that Americans produce 25 percent more waste than usual between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, sending an additional one million tons a week to landfills?,” Cho asks.

This leads us to think about the existential relationship between our insatiable consumption habits and the irreparable damage we have inflicted upon mother earth.

Here in Via Appia, the contradictions are unmistakable. This is the summer sales season in Italy. Signs reading “Saldi” – or “Sale” – are everywhere. For many shoppers, it is impossible to fight the temptation. This unhinged consumerism – the backbone and the fault line of capitalism – comes at a high price. People are encouraged to consume more, as if such consumption has no repercussions for the environment whatsoever. Indeed, Via Appia is the perfect microcosm of this global schizophrenia: people complaining about the heat and the garbage, while simultaneously consuming beyond their need, thus creating yet more garbage and, eventually, worsening the plight of the environment.

Collective problems require collective solutions. Italy’s heat cannot be pinned down on a few arsonists and California’s wildfires are not simply the fault of an ineffectual mayor. Global warming is, in large part, the outcome of a destructive pattern instigated and sustained by capitalism. The latter can only survive through unhindered consumption, inequality, greed and, when necessary, war. If we continue to talk about global warming without confronting the capitalist menace that generated much of the crisis in the first place, the conversation will continue to amount to nil.

In the final analysis, all the conferences, pledges and politicking will not put out a single fire, neither in Italy nor anywhere else in the world.

[Gnasher]

Thunberg comes out this morning and calls out the British government for climate change lies, here's a response from a so called British journo,

 

 

 

Hmm, tough question posed by Barry here,

 

 

 

 BBC to get someone impartial on Newsnight to give their veiw on Greta and Boris..

 

[Gnasher]

https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/extinction-rebellion-london-protest-xr-news-today-b1907046.html

[Captain Willard]

I work in the industry and an increasingly of the view that we’ve crossed the point of no return and we need to focus on mitigation not prevention. 

[Skidfingers McGonical]

I’ve just spent 4 days shitting on to sawdust in a wheelie bin. 
 

It’s helped me reduce my “library” and going missing for half an hour time.

 

I presume this is helping. 
 

 

[Bjornebye]

Skids saving the planet, one shit at a time

 

 

 

[Captain Willard]

8 minutes ago, Skidfingers McGonical said:

I’ve just spent 4 days shitting on to sawdust in a wheelie bin. 
 

It’s helped me reduce my “library” and going missing for half an hour time.

 

I presume this is helping. 
 

 

She’ll be grateful. Every little helps. 

[Skidfingers McGonical]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/oct/01/apple-amazon-microsoft-disney-lobby-groups-climate-bill-analysis

 

 

[Bjornebye]

On 23/08/2021 at 20:31, Captain Willard said:

She’ll be grateful. Every little helps. 

Now thats a pair of chebs. @lifetime fan get on these 

[lifetime fan]

25 minutes ago, Bjornebye said:

Now thats a pair of chebs. @lifetime fan get on these 

https://giphy.com/gifs/reaction-mood-1jkV5ifEE5EENHESRa

[TheHowieLama]

On 23/08/2021 at 14:53, Captain Willard said:

we’ve crossed the point of no return and we need to focus on mitigation not prevention. 

Extreme, climate-fueled rainfall broke records this week in a part of Italy known for its rain and an area in Oman not known for rain at all.

On Monday, a series of storms put on the parking brakes over northwestern Italy, unleashing rainfall rates never before seen in all of Europe after over 29 inches (742 mm) of rain fell in just 12 hours. In Oman, a rare tropical cyclone dumped years' worth of rainfall, bringing deadly floods to the desert landscape that rarely sees much rain in an entire year.

[Captain Willard]

1 hour ago, TheHowieLama said:

Extreme, climate-fueled rainfall broke records this week in a part of Italy known for its rain and an area in Oman not known for rain at all.

On Monday, a series of storms put on the parking brakes over northwestern Italy, unleashing rainfall rates never before seen in all of Europe after over 29 inches (742 mm) of rain fell in just 12 hours. In Oman, a rare tropical cyclone dumped years' worth of rainfall, bringing deadly floods to the desert landscape that rarely sees much rain in an entire year.

Wow. we need a weather thread. Apparently one of the factors in the gas price rise is the lack of rain in Brazil so their in river hydro schemes are not producing electricity and they have had to power up the gas fired power stations. 

[Bjornebye]

This is funny

 

 

 

 

[Clem H Fandango]

My partners 15 year old son likes to use any opportunity to call us boomers and claim its our fault for the environment.

 

The little prick had the heating on for 6 months last year, 6 months!

 

He uses so much toilet paper to wipe his lazy arse that it blocks the toilet. Too much paper, too much flushing.

 

Constantly leaves taps dripping all night.

 

Too lazy to recycle properly any rubbish he creates.

 

Plays video games every hour of the day thus using loads of electric.

 

And it's all us boomers fault!

[AngryOfTuebrook]

1 hour ago, Bjornebye said:

This is funny

 

 

 

 

I was just going to post that, but I couldn't decide between this thread, Tory Nation or Instant Cunt Identifiers.

[Bjornebye]

31 minutes ago, AngryOfTuebrook said:

I was just going to post that, but I couldn't decide between this thread, Tory Nation or Instant Cunt Identifiers.

How typical of them though. Thick brexit shagging twats

[Nelly-Szoboszlai]

Sicily looks a bit fucking scary at the moment!