So the internet is going nuts over Greta Thunberg, a teenager from Sweden.  She yelled at the UN about climate change. Her supporters are calling her speech “Stirring” and “Passionate” and “Powerful”.  Detractors are complaining about a child being propped up to support a political issue. Just about everyone is being angry and annoying.

Now, granted, the propping up of children, widows, grieving mothers, and victims can go too far.  They’re presented in a way that makes them unassailable, with even mild criticism resulting in a cacophony of “How-dare-you”s.  And typically, proponents get a bit carried away. Thunberg has already been compared to Joan of Arc and Jesus.

But that doesn’t warrant her critics being huge douchebags.  The response from the right is just a bit too vituperative. Like Dinesh D’Souza comparing her to Nazi propaganda, and managing to prove Godwin’s Law in record time.  Or YouTuber Mark Dice calling her a brat and threatening to dump trash in the ocean. This would be a petulant act reminiscent of Xerxes whipping and branding the waters of the Hellespont to punish it for destroying his bridges.  And, of course, @realDonaldTrump couldn’t resist trolling her on Twitter. They all need to take a breather.

The perfect microcosm of the hysteria was an interaction on Fox News between Michael Knowles of the conservative Daily Wire and Democratic activist Chris Hahn.  Knowles called Thunberg a mentally ill child. Technically, an accurate statement (she has depression and Asperger’s), but intoned in a way that sounds like an ad hominem dig.  Chris Hahn took umbrage, but his response focused primarily on Thunberg’s age. Thus, supporting the point of many rightwingers that children are used as props because they are perceived as untouchable.  

Children can participate in activism, and frequently have to good effect.  They are not immune to criticism, though, and shouldn’t be. But effective criticism should always contain a degree of tact, especially when dealing with children.  So here’s how to appropriately criticize a child.

Thunberg insists that the “climate budget” will be used up in 8.5 years.  That’s true if we want to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius.  To limit to two degrees, we have 26 years, although the consequences of that would be much worse than 1.5.  So it would behoove us to move quickly. Nothing wrong with this part of it.

She says people are dying and ecologies are collapsing.  Sort of true, although what the scientists tell us is that the truly dire consequences (such as losing 250K per year due to climate change) are what happens if we do nothing.  They’re not really saying that it happens right now. But there are deaths happening. As a guy who ran away from Hurricane Irma, a storm that was more powerful than it would have been otherwise due to climate change and absolutely devastated the Florida Keys, I’ve seen it first hand.

But where she went wrong is when she berated attendees for offering “technical solutions” and “business as usual”.  If I’m not mistaken, replacing fossil fuels with wind and solar (and possibly nuclear) is a technical solution.  And why not invest in other technologies that would improve mitigation or adaptation?  We’re being told that what’s happening is not enough, but what alternatives is she proposing?

This vagueness is one thing that aggravates me.  We’re being told of dangers, but not being told what should be done differently.  And she doesn’t get to play the “I’m only 16” card, because if she has time to be as involved as she is in this, she has time to read up on solutions too.  When I was her age, I was quite capable of doing research, and Google wasn’t a thing back then. So if technical solutions are not enough, what is?

Climate change deniers (of which I am not) seize on this vagueness to claim that there is an underlying motive.  As if it’s all a ploy to bring in “Green Socialism”. They support this by showing pictures of Thunberg in what looks like an Antifa shirt.  And the truth is, there have been numerous pundits pushing this notion, which I find to be despicable opportunism. Using a crisis to push a political agenda is slimy.  The truth is, there is little need to adopt green socialism.  

The scientists show that going green would actually improve efficiency, meaning energy production would be more profitable.  That means that capitalist solutions are entirely possible, although some of the more intractable energy producers might need a nudge or two to get moving.  The fact that U.S. renewable energy has nearly doubled since 2008 and now produces nearly one sixth of our energy supports this. So there’s no need for alarmism on a socialist takeover.  But it also means that the “technical solutions” do actually appear to be producing results, although we need to speed things up.

But Thunberg’s vagueness is not the only problem.  When I saw a bunch of young people protesting and speechifying about climate change a couple of days ago, I started to freak out.  One young lady insisted that some damage would be irreversible within 18 months. I live about 100 yards from Tampa Bay, which makes me one of the most vulnerable people in the country (if not the world) when it comes to things like sea level rise and increasingly powerful storms.  So, naturally, I feverishly searched the internet for details about the specific damage that would be irreversible within 18 months.

And found bupkis.  I did find one BBC article which quoted someone saying that the next 18 months were critical because of various climate summits and conferences and whatnot where decisions will be made.  But nothing about damage within the next 18 months.  Oh, and the person quoted was Prince Charles.  I don’t think he’s a climate expert.  

This is not the first time someone oversold the threat.  Like when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said the world would end in 12 years.  We need to reduce emissions significantly over the next twelve years to limit the damage, but the world will still be here.  Or when she said Miami would be gone in a few years. Scientists say the sea will rise two to seven feet by 2100. That means pieces (perhaps most) of Miami might be gone sometime in the next eighty years.  That’s a bit more than a few years.

No one ever seems to bother specifying the threat.  “Irreversible damage” is a bit vague. What does that mean?  Will all the crops die? Will all the glaciers melt? If so, when and where?  Let us know the details.

Here’s one thing I discovered about this word “irreversible”.  It doesn’t necessarily mean “irreversible”. For example, if we dump a bunch of CO2 into the atmosphere, it can be pulled down to earth by plants and whatnot.  But about twenty percent of it will hang in the air for a much longer time. So this part isn’t “irreversible” it’s “irreversible in our lifetime with existing technology”.  If we were specific about this, it would tell us that one way to reverse this is to invest in research and development. We could produce technologies to speed up this reversal.  But instead, we’re just inundated with scary language.

Now some things are irreversible.  If a species goes extinct, it’s gone.  If Greenland melts, you can’t just up and refreeze it.  And if anything like this is going to happen, we need to know when and where so we can take action.  But nobody in the news bothers to cover that. It’s just people yelling and waving signs and telling us the world is going to end.

I’m not a denier.  If the climate goes to hell, I’ll be one of the first victims.  I want people to take quick and decisive action. I want to try anything we can to fix this.  But when people seem to exaggerate the danger from climate change, it just hurts that cause. Deniers will point to the exaggerated and frequently vague claims as evidence that the whole thing is a hoax.  They’re already pointing to times when past predictions went awry.

If you want to motivate people, give them a concrete goal.  This definitely works on Americans. Don’t make vague and contradictory claims.  Tell us what technologies need to be developed. Tell us how we might change our lifestyles to avert this.  Tell us how many wind turbines and solar panels and nuclear plants need to be built to replace fossil fuel power plants.

Doomsday threats, especially when they are of questionable validity or incredibly vague, don’t tell us what to do.  It just results in fear and anxiety, and then backlash if the claims are shown to be spurious or exaggerated. This perpetuates the climate deadlock, which we can’t afford.  Deniers aren’t helping, but neither are overzealous activists. Instead of exaggerating the risks, let us know the details of the danger, and how we can fix this.

I’d recommend ignoring all of these people.  Ignore the screaming activists, ignore the trolls (even if they are president of something), and ignore the pundits throwing rhetorical feces at each other.  Instead, look to responsible, science based sources, like NASA or NOAA or the United States military. All of them agree that climate change is a big problem, and are proposing and researching numerous potential solutions.  Reports from them, not from climate activists and their detractors, provide a fair and accurate picture, and have the wisdom to include potential solutions to the problem.