Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Three Swedish MPs have nominated Greta Thunberg for the Nobel Peace Prize, because of her efforts to raise awareness of the damage fossil fuels are causing to the environment.
Greta Thunberg: The teenage climate activist tipped to win Nobel Peace Prize
Environmental campaigner delivered emotional speech to UN last month
Tom Parfitt
Swedish environment activist Greta Thunberg is being tipped to win the Nobel Peace Prize following a remarkable year in which the teenager’s “school strike for climate” movement has grown to worldwide prominence.Here is everything you need to know about the 16-year-old.
Who is Greta Thunberg?Greta Thunberg began a lone protest outside Sweden’s parliament in October 2018 when she was 15, saying would refuse to attend school on Fridays until the government tackled the growing climate and ecological crisis.
In the 12 months since, she has become one of the world’s most talked-about people, having been invited to speak at the UN general assembly – where she invoked the wrath of Donald Trump – and inspiring global protests attracting hundreds of thousands of young campaigners.
“You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words,” the teenager told world leaders during her emotional and confrontational speech at the UN last month.
“And yet I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction. And all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth. How dare you.”…
Read more: https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/greta-thunberg-speech-climate-change-nobel-peace-prize-winner-who-a9139651.html
Sorry Michael Mann, better luck next year.
I’ve got to say it would be more impressive if Greta knew anything about the global environment. There is no evidence “ecosystems are collapsing”, actual measurement suggests that the Earth is greening, thanks largely to nations like India and China planting more trees and taking better care of their environments, but also due to CO2 fertilisation.
Here’s a pop quiz question for Greta and her friends; why is it that China and India suddenly seem to have the spare cash to take better care of their environments?
The picture at the top of this post, the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, illustrates the difference between having an industrialised economy and not having a thriving industrial sector. My guess is most of you guessed correctly which side of the border ordinary people can afford to buy fossil fuel.
I must say it is difficult to see how forcing people in the Dominican Republic to go back to using climate friendly biofuel, like their friends in Haiti, would help prevent collapse of the local ecosystem.
Libya was the most prosperous nation in Africa. Now there is constant war and open slave markets thanks to Obama. The Nobel committee still hasn’t asked for their peace prize back. Kabuki theater.
The Nobel Prize is a joke and has been for decades. Liars, cads and terrorists win it. If you win it, I assume you are a bad person.
Speaking of Greta, is she back home in Sweden yet? If so, how did she get there? Kayak? Water wings? Airbus A340?
No she seems to be still out-staring the US. A couple of days ago she was reportedly in Ohio – presumably as part of the long walk home.
Heading to Chile now, after decarbonizing Iowa.
She win it, despite no new insights or relevancy since what she says has been said many times before. She is an obvious front for adults who have socialist plans to put in place.
There has been no increased peace or science understanding or contribution from her, thus her win is all POLITICAL.
I find it interesting that the very people here in the UK saying that everyone must listen to Saint Greta because she’s “telling the truth” to those in power, also say that Shamima Begum (who ran off to join ISIS in Syria and become an ISIS bride and is still entirely indifferent to the beheaded aid workers etc) should be forgiven and welcomed back home ‘because she was only a fifteen year old girl and counld’t be expected to understand what she was doing’.
HOW DARE YOU?
Someone spreading panic is nominated for a peace price. Someone being instructed to and acting so well should have an Oscar. It’s a farce and anyone having recieved the Nobel price for solid decent work previously would likely be embraced for having a retarded and abused child as their peer…..but probably they already are after Al Gore and Obama
because of her efforts to raise awareness of the damage fossil fuels are causing to the environment.
Humph. Her efforts SHOULD raise awareness of the dangers of politically generated stampedes. A scolding brat quoting slogans fits that picture perfectly, while ‘science’ is nowhere in the picture except as one of the slogans.
We can laugh, but doing so ignores the prospective damage. Such recognition would be another major legitimization of baseless but destructive environmental alarm. It is inevitable from a relentless political assault that is ignored without concrete challenge.
Trump had an opportunity to confront the hysteria with substance and, thereby, repeal the EPA’s endangerment finding – Opportunity missed. Now Trump has bigger fish to fry.
OH WOW
I didn’t see that coming I am so surprised I can hardly contain my surprisedness, she must have stopped wars, freed prisoners of conscience and so made the world a safer better place!
SARC SARC SARC SARC
All it truly does is show how baseless the awards are now and are handed out for towing the party line (selling your soul)
James Bull
I’ve been watching many YouTube channels recently which covered the griefly outpourings of St Greta of Thunberg in a less than charitable light.
OK, it’s a self-selecting sample to some extent, but many of these channels usually have little or nothing to say about global-warming, and often toe the alarmist line when they do.
Yet they seem almost unanimous in that the world should not be paying any attention at all to a very ignorant 16 year old girl, no matter how angry and frightened she has been made by adults who ought to know better.
Most adults clearly do know better. Those devoted to “the cause” have seriously shot themselves in the foot with this one.
It seems that she might have been named after some Scottish ancestors: https://literalbarrage.org/blog/2005/02/03/your-scottish-slang-word-o-the-day-greet/
Tells more about the Swedish MPs intellectual capacities than about Greta.
If the Nobel committee doesn’t bestow the prize unto St. Greta, they will certainly be admonished for for hating the children. The wrath of St. Greta will be unleashed upon the committee with a series of “HOW DARE YOU STEAL MY NOBEL PRIZE FROM ME”
The image from Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory of the little girl Veruca Salt throwing a tantrum to get a goose that lays a golden egg came to mind:
https://youtu.be/Pqsy7V0wphI
War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength
Robert, you forgot:
Weather is climate.
except when it’s getting colder
Eric
I believe you have used this picture before. I have two questions: 1) Are there armed guards regularly patrolling the border between the two countries to prevent trespassing and theft of firewood from the forested side? and 2) Why is there a patch of land in the upper left side of the picture, with the same aspect (compass direction) and equally dense vegetation as the area on the right?
Vegetation is strongly controlled by slope, aspect, and underlying bedrock and produce very different kinds of vegetation even in the same general areas.
Based on the steep terrain, there is likely a river or mountain stream separating the two countries. Transporting wood across something like that is not feasible.
icisil
There is indeed a stream separating the two countries at the location of the picture. It is not a major river. Wood floats, so if you are desperate for alternatives to fossil fuels, I’m sure the locals could find a way to get it across the stream.
Streams often develop along fault lines where there are either rocks of different erodibility, or brecciated rocks in the fault zone, which tend to be more erodible than the unfractured rocks. That being the case, it is possible that there are different kinds of rocks on the east and west sides.
According to my brother who did 2 tours as an aid worker in Haiti, ALL of Haiti is pretty well denuded of vegetation. He was working in Gonaive on recovery from a Hurricane that had occurred 2 years before – installing casings around wells to prevent run off contamination and toilets that did not run into the high water table. Mud 1-2 feet deep still lay in most homes and streets. There was total social breakdown with the whole population on relief and basically incapable of any constructive actions to better themselves. Women were regularly raped when they went out of the town to defecate in the surrounding area. The earthquake had occurred at about that time, but he continued on the Gonaive project.
There’s a bit of colonial-era history behind Haiti’s deforestation (and poverty).
After the Haitians rebelled and killed their previous French owners (as well as their wives and children) in the early 19th C, France demanded financial reparations and imposed a blockad. The Haitians sold a lot of their forests’ trees to raise the money to meet the payments.
Why hasn’t it grown back?
I’d suggest going to Google Earth and zoom in on the boundary between the two countries. Eric cherry-picked one of the best examples to support his thesis. I have followed the entire trace of the boundary and I have found examples where there is no visible difference between the two sides, and I have found examples where the situation is reversed.
It also looks like the eastern side of the island generally has higher elevations and steeper terrain. The higher elevations favor cooler temperatures and more rain. The steeper terrain discourages farming, which requires clearing of the land.
I think that Eric has gone a bridge too far.
I was wondering too why he took that rickety bridge. To show industry? Or is it his sandbox?
Clyde, you bring up a good point. Sometimes the picture doesn’t tell the whole story, especially if it specifically cropped to leave out information that contradicts the narrative. The political left is an expert at that.
So, I pulled up Google (always an unbiased information source… /sarc) and put in for maps of the Dominican Republic. I then did satellite view of the whole island. Zooming into the defined border between the two countries, yes, there is a noticeable tone difference between the two countries, very sharp demarcation at the border. A darker, richer green on the DR side. On the Haitian side, much lighter, some places even barren . Sure, zooming in one can find a few places on the DR side that are barren, and on the Haitian side rich in vegetation. But overall, the DR side is abundant with vegetation, the Haitian side has noticeably less.
Trust, but verify..
MikeH
I did verify. However, I’d be unwilling to reach the conclusion that Eric did without seeing a topographic map and geologic map of the island. A landuse map would also be instructive.
MikeH
Historically, political boundaries have often been established along obvious differences in topography. That is, rivers and mountain ranges have often been used as boundaries. Mountains (below the timber line) generally are more vegetated in non-glaciated terrains than the surrounding areas because they harvest more moisture from orographic uplift. Mountains also present more of a barrier to harvesting and transporting trees for native people who don’t have access to machinery. Also, mountains are more difficult areas for subsistence farming because of the shallow soils and sparsity of flat land. Thus, there is less pressure on the environment because of the lower population density.
Clearly, charcoal production has had an impact on the land in Haiti. But, I think the case is overstated. A country with scarce natural resources often has to resort to activities that exacerbate the conditions. Thus, it is easy to confuse cause and effect.
Greta is a secular saint of a faction that has declared war upon normal middle-class living.
Enjoying unprecedented prosperity, health and longevity that is mainly due to free association and markets.
And the face of anger and war will likely get the Nobel Peace Prize.
Current betting odds from a Norwegian site.
?chk=B73D33
Forget Joan of Arc, Greta is the new pope.
This took less effort than your post.
https://www.google.com/search?q=haiti+dominican+republic+border+photo&rlz=1C1CHZL_enUS717US717&sxsrf=ACYBGNT6l4TT3279Dx2XE9tyjJ6Tfwlcjg:1570290647338&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiz5unBvIXlAhVnIDQIHasVADsQ_AUIEygC&biw=1920&bih=969
Robert W. Turner
Many of the photos showing the contrast between the two countries appear to be the same area as Eric chose to use. It must be the best example.
I do not see a problem here. She deserves a Noble at least a much a Barack. While we are at it give one to Penn State’s Pillsbury Dough Mann because he wants one really bad.
Well, they gave one to Barry for doing nothing. Why shouldn’t Greta get one? In fact, let’s give one to everybody as a participation prize.
“And now, for her tireless efforts in spreading mass hysteria around the globe, and her relentless pursuit of the destruction of Western Civilization, we present this years Nobel Peace Prize to Ms. Greta Thunberg! Unfortunately, Greta could not be with us tonight because she is currently in Ottawa torturing preschoolers, but here to accept the prize on behalf of Greta is the one, the only, the man himself…Lucifer! Let’s give it up for him! Come on!”
According to https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/14/greta-thunberg-nominated-nobel-peace-prize she was nominated by mid March of this year.
“We have proposed Greta Thunberg because if we do nothing to halt climate change it will be the cause of wars, conflict and refugees,” said Norwegian Socialist MP Freddy André Øvstegård. “Greta Thunberg has launched a mass movement which I see as a major contribution to peace.”
“[I am] honoured and very grateful for this nomination,” said Thunberg on Twitter. Tomorrow we #schoolstrike for our future. And we will continue to do so for as long as it takes.” She has already challenged leaders in person at the UN climate summit in late 2018 and at Davos in January. “Change is coming whether they like it or not,” she said.
…“Change is coming whether they like it or not,” she said…
The same can be said of climate. How ironic.
Hoping that not everyone in Sweden is that irrational.
The committee for the Peace prize is in Norway, not Sweden.
I wonder if the Norwegians would be willing to give up all that money from North Sea oil that pays for all their socialism?
When has she promoted peace? All she has done is foment division.
Greta Thunberg’s nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize has been lauded by mainstream media outlets and public figures in Europe, but not everyone is as enthusiastic. Only 15% of Germans welcome the idea, a new poll found.
66 percent of German citizens responded with a clear ‘no’ to the prospect of Thunberg being given the prestigious award, according to a YouGov survey on climate change and the environment. Only 15 percent supported the nomination and 19 percent were undecided.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.rt.com/news/470196-thunberg-nobel-prize-poll/amp/
Czech historian Václav Vlk Sr, writes I am scared of innocent children, translated and endorsed by Lubos Motl. He puts Greta and the children’s crusade into nistorical context, and worries about the whirlwind to come.
At the end of his article, Veis exclaims with some pathos: “Who is afraid of the children?” Well, dear friend, I am afraid of radicalized, fanatical, abused children because the history teaches us – and the oldest generations still know from their experience – that there is no crime, no atrocity, and no monstrosity that wouldn’t have been committed by fanaticized youth. With songs on their lips and energized by the faith that they are doing the most correct things possible, while washing their hands in the buckets of blood. We have already seen it.
I am afraid of the so-called innocent children from the texts by Mr Jaroslav Veis and many others. But they are wrong. The fairy-tale boy said the truth but he didn’t demand the king to be killed and the kingdom to be destroyed. And that’s exactly what Greta is doing. So there is some difference, isn’t there?
When I say that I am afraid of them – I don’t mean that I am afraid of my life or my future. I will no longer join those who trust these liars and fanatics. And given my age… But what about our children and grandchildren? Who are marching like herds of enthusiastically bleating sheep on the Friday For Future rallies?
https://motls.blogspot.com/2019/10/i-am-scared-of-innocent-children.html