A 16-year-old teeny-bopper environmental activist attempted to use scare tactics with the European Parliament on Tuesday. Swedish girl Greta Thunberg stood before parliament and lectured them on global warming and climate change with a threatening message: "I want you to panic."
She ranted about how she wants politicians and world leaders to take charge and prevent "the end of our civilization as we know it" that she predicts is coming in the next ten years.
She's cute, I'll give her that. Her accent and seemingly innocent appearance gives her an appeal. However, her speech is a load of crock.
"I want you to act as if the house is on fire," Greta said while attempting to incite terror, “Around the year 2030, ten years, 259 days, and ten hours away from now, we will be in a position where we set off an irreversible chain reaction that will most likely lead to the end of our civilization as we know it. That is, unless, in that time, permanent and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society have taken place … We are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction, and the extinction rate is up to ten thousand times faster than what is considered normal with up to 200 species becoming extinct every single day.”
She continued, “Our house is falling apart and our leaders need to start acting accordingly because at the moment they are not. If our house was falling apart our leaders wouldn’t go on like you do today. You would change almost every part of your behavior as you do in an emergency. If our house was falling apart, you wouldn't hold three emergency Brexit summits and no emergency summit regarding the breakdown of the climate and environment."
"It’s okay if you refuse to listen to me; I am, after all, just a 16-year-old schoolgirl from Sweden. But you cannot ignore the scientists or the science or the millions of school-striking children who are school-striking for the right to a future. I beg you: please do not fail on this," Thunberg concluded.
I honestly don't buy it. She claims that 200 species goes extinct a day? Give me a break! According to a Yale study, there's actually no way of knowing how many species are going extinct a day. It is all based on a computer program.
But nobody knows whether such estimates are anywhere close to reality. They are based on computer modeling, and documented losses are tiny by comparison. Only about 800 extinctions have been documented in the past 400 years, according to data held by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Out of some 1.9 million recorded current or recent species on the planet, that represents less than a tenth of one percent.
Nor is there much documented evidence of accelerating loss. In its latest update, released in June, the IUCN reported “no new extinctions,” although last year it reported the loss of an earwig on the island of St. Helena and a Malaysian snail. And some species once thought extinct have turned out to be still around, like the Guadalupe fur seal, which “died out” a century ago, but now numbers over 20,000.
You hear that? No "documented evidence of accelerating loss." So why are people pushing the whole dooms day theory? It's all scare tactics.
Even if we were spiraling into an impending apocalypse, what exactly could world leaders do about it? The climate is out of our control. Does it change? Yes. That is just how God created nature. It is ever changing and evolving. However, that doesn't mean that everything is about to implode.
I think Greta has been watching too many sci-fi movies.
Here is her rant:
