Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Dr. Willie Soon – Swedish climate messiah Greta Thunberg has a problem. She desperately wants to attend climate conferences in New York (September) and Santiago (December), but unlike most greens she is serious about avoiding air travel.
How do you cross the Atlantic Ocean without flying?
I’ve got a few ideas, but I doubt arriving by luxury transatlantic cruise liner is quite the down to earth minimalist image Greta wants to project.
Some of Greta’s fans have suggested telecommuting, but if this was a solution surely all greens would be telecommuting to climate conferences, instead of scarring their personal consciences with distasteful but ecologically necessary air travel.
I’m sure you are all as keen to help as I am. Perhaps we can all pitch in, help little Greta figure out how to attend those crucial climate conferences in far flung locations, without compromising those heartfelt climate principles which have attracted so much global media attention.
There are a few tall ships in working order still out there.
Or she could look for someone with a sailing yacht to take her to New York.
Balloon.
Would work to get back. To get from Sweden to/i> NY by balloon you must cross the Pacific. Doable, but not simple.
It would keep her out of mischief for a while.
Perhaps this is a good reason to bring back the zeppelins.
Graf Zeppelin/Hindenburg needed 4800 hp to move 72 passengers (and 40 crew) at a cruise speed of 125 kph (78 mph).
Airships were less efficient than even 1930’s aircraft. Their only point of superiority was range.
As a comparison the Boeing 314 flying boat “Yankee Clipper” needed 6400 hp to move 74 passengers (and 11 crew) at a cruise speed of 302 kph (188 mph)
Yes – plenty of hot air to keep it in the air. Might have to go the wrong way round, though…
The focus on the “emission curve” is all part of the shell game, which can be disrupted by focusing on the atmospheric CO2 curve (such as the Mauna Loa data), it is obvious why the actual CO2 data is neglected, because it shows the futility of chasing emission targets, which is what controls the health of the Green Blob.
I am actually confused by this. She is not adding anything to the debate. She is not a scientist with new research, an economist with a new model, she has no original ideas about how to solve the problems. She simply parrots what she has been told by those who know (or think they do) far more than her.
So why does she need to go anywhere?
Because … because …. CLIMATE!
How dare you question her right to virtue signal so the whole world can see! You lack vision, certainly you lack the vision to see CO2.
She is desperately needed so she can use her special powers to spot the CO2 clouds and allow other conference goers to avoid exposure.
Same reason as the other non scientists and politicians. To tell us dummies what to do.
Exodus13:21
And the LORD went before Greta by day in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them in the way; and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light; to go by day and night.
She can smile. I wonder if Abigail Williams smiled much?
You call that a smile? That looks to me like someone who knows precisely what she is doing and finds our reaction to her just one big joke. Possibly not but whatever way that expression — even at 16 — would have got me a good smacking. If not from my mother then from my peers!
That is a smirk not a smile.
A smirk is a smile evoking insolence, scorn, or offensive smugness.
The first (and half-way realistic) idea that comes to mind would be by sailboat. Preferably one without any type of FF backup.
By why not think outside the box for a minute? Here’s a few less conventional ideas…
Helium balloon
Paddle boat powered by squirrels
Hot air balloon using Al Gore’s infinite hot air supply
Any other ideas?
Sailing to New York before September is quite feasible. Getting to Santiago by November will be more difficult, but not impossible. The record from NY to San Francisco is about 7 weeks.
Of course it will require chartering an oceangoing yacht with a largish crew for several months to do it, but I guess Steyer or Bloomberg can afford it.
She would get the opportunity to experience both the North Atlantic hurricane and South Atlantic cyclone seasons.
Going around the Horn into the Drake Passage is a fairly safe method to experience (non-tropical) hurricane winds any time of the year, though more than Cat 1 is unusual. I’ve succeded twice.
The Furious Fifties’ westerlies make it a lot easier to sail in one direction than the other.
Ask the adults who influenced this girl. They should know.
I have the perfect solution: Visualize a magic carpet, using the same powers you use to “see” CO2. Then, hop on. Simples!
That magic carpet required lots of money (Lsd or better known as pounds shillings and pence).
Perhaps she could swim or better yet, Just stay in school!
Dirigibles filled with hydrogen will be what is used in the future. They will have giant solar arrays on their roofs to power the propellers.
Oh the humanity!
Helium, for safety.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a17858/chinas-new-spy-airship-cruises-near-space/
A solar-powered dirigible is the answer to Greta’s prayers to Gaia. Never mind the environmental costs of building such a dragon.
The Chinese Communists should offer her rides to and from the Big Apple and the Big Carmenere Grape on the beast, since she is such a useful tool serving their interests.
http://www.solarcompanies.com/high-speed-solar-powered-blimps-coming/
They’re coming.
Time to spare?
Go by (lighter than) air!
OK for cargo. For passengers, not so much, unless maybe the cruise ship trade.
Well, let’s say she braves the North and South Atlantic (and Cape Horn) in a sailboat, she’s still attending conferences populated by hypocrites who have arrived by plane, commercial and, even worse, private (Al Gore, Leo, Prince Charles, etc.).
Greta Thunberg is, by her mother’s own declaration, an emotionally fragile child. It doesn’t explain her parents using her as she is being used, or allowing it. A remote analogy may be found in Joan of Arc, save that she did end up at the head of the armies of France. Later things went less well for her, but we do not wish that fate for Greta, only that she might be allowed to grow up.
As to getting her to these theatrical conferences, there is no solution witty or practical. This, in an adult, should be compelling: a problem without a solution suggests that the problem has been misunderstood.
She can always sail there. There’s got to be a longboat in Sweden somewhere.
Astrial projection.
Dammit. You took my idea. Before anyone poo-poo’s this idea, think about it. Astral projection is just as real as the climate emergency.
Buy some ruby red slippers and tap your heels together 3 times, Greta. The big advantage in this is you don’t smell CO2 while you’re traveling.
Okay, enough silliness. Just find the nearest wormholes that connect to the conferences and hop in. Simples.
Swim?
Remember 1971 EST – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erhard_Seminars_Training. Hey, maybe it would cool her untenable concern with CO2 too.
Turning this sad girl into a modern-day Joan of Arc is child abuse. Her growth is stunted by lifelong anorexia. She parrots doomsday scenarios and the media echo chamber parrots them back to bolster their Luddite agenda. The real scandal here is not carbon dioxide, but say-anything, do-anything fanaticism in service to a crackpot cause.
Don’t forget the fate of Joan of Arc, burned at the stake for heresy.
I fear a grisly fate for Greta. What if she says someday, “Uh, I grew up. Now I realize the crackpot schemes of my youth were a lot of hooey. Got my driver’s license, swell hubby, moved to the burbs; am much happier now.”
“Heresy” might be a mild term compared to what the climate True Believers use against her.
Having set aside the eminently sensible idea of Skyping or teleconferencing, Greta Thunberg might be able to cross from Europe to America in winter via the ice packs around the Arctic. Extra warm clothing would be advised.
Giant slingshot.
It worked for Wile E. Coyote … sort of.
Greta might as well fly. The airplane is going that way anyway whether she is onboard or not.
Well, interestingly adding payload onto a airplane actually increases its fuel consumption. Oddly it takes energy to keep mass aloft and fight gravity.
No, keeping mass aloft takes no energy at all, otherwhise your cupboard would require a mains plug to keep your vases on its shelves. Planes need energy for ghree purposes: 1 To lift the mass of itself, passengers and cargo up to its flight level, 2 to overcome friction with the surrounding air, 3 For heating the inflight meals. 1. Is actually regained during descent, but currently it’s not put to any use, just heating up the plane’s hull.
“No, keeping mass aloft takes no energy at all”
It does for heavier-than-air aircraft which do it by deflecting the airstream downward. This is known as “induced drag”, and there is no way to avoid it or getting it back.
Just hop onto Leonardo DiCaprio’s private jet or yacht. Those are going to make the trip either way, so no net gain in emissions.
I’m guessing that she will fly like any sane person, but then arrange for ‘carbon credits’ to be used to ‘offset’ the ‘carbon costs’.
In other words, she will fly, and then use some mystic green excuse to increase taxes in her homeland to ensure that she, and those like her, can continue to sponge off the state…
Finally…somebody gets the right answer. She will agonize about it endlessly and send out a billion virtue signals. Then she will just board the airplane.
Apparently Greta and her mother suffer from aviophobia, so it’s unlikely she’ll board a plane any time soon. The fact that both of their psychological conditions coincide with their ideology comes in very handy …or maybe it’s not a coincidence after all.
That’s what I came up with too, Dodgy. She will fly. She will rationalize that CO2 produced by flying doesn’t cause warming if someone pays the appropriate indulgences to expiate the sin.
There are different kinds of carbon credits. There are the ‘standard’ kind which you and I have to pay through the nose for, and then there are the ‘saving the world’ kind which come at a substantial discount to the tireless, unheralded benefactors of humanity.
Interestingly, the evil oil and gas business, has whole heartedly adopted teleconferencing due to the inconvenience of travelling from the field to their head office.
That was being funding as far back as the 1980s with microwave networks to control the wells. A lot of EEs were hired for that back then.
No hotel, shopping or Jacuzzi? That’s not much of a Junket mate.
Oceanvolt is a Finnish company that makes electric motors for boats with various accessories. She should approach them. There is symbolic synergy at play. Wind and solar at sea. Greta on the bow with the wind in her hair.
Scandinavia is perhaps the center of “green ideology”. It’s a perfect pairing. Get Nat Geo to sponsor and let the Propaganda set sail.