How do you attend a Distant Climate Conference Without Flying?

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.

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Ivor Ward
June 19, 2019 2:46 pm

She could part the waters and walk across the sea floor. It worked for Moses…. Maybe she could lead her followers to the promised land that way.

June 19, 2019 3:00 pm

How do you cross the Atlantic Ocean without flying?

Greta will need to start early.

Pre-steam (i.e. sail) Atlantic crossings could take 30 days or more (Columbus took 5 weeks). A modern racing trimiran with favorable winds can make the West to East passage in 4 days and some change (the record is 3 days, 15 hours). Gretta would be going the other way, which is slower. Also racing sailboats have no space for passengers; Gretta would have to work for her passage and at least not get in the way.

I did find one company offering passenger Atlantic crossings by sail. They quote a Tenerife (Spain) – Barbados cruise in November that lasts 24 days (roughly 3,200 nautical miles – Stockholm to New York is about 4,100). This is a party cruise, so they’re probably not making optimal speed. And at $3,900 it’s not cheap either.

In any case, young Greta should allow 4 weeks to get to New York without increasing her carbon footprint.

Then on to San Diego by bicycle, which according to this guide requires about a month to cover the roughly 2,800 miles from New York to San Diego:

A strong recreational cyclist might be able to average somewhere between 50 and 100 miles per day. If you can average 100 miles per day and not take days off then it will take about a month.

So that’s at least 30 days of meals and lodging Greta will need. I wonder how many cross-country cyclists are vegetarians? She can’t eat meat and still be carbon neutral.

Now reverse the whole process to get Greta back home, probably about 5 months later, but you can never be certain when sailing across the Atlantic.

Kind of pointless, considering you can fly from Stockholm to San Diego in 15 hours with one stopover, but hey, I’d be really impressed if Gretta did it the pre-industrial way. She would certainly gain an appreciation for exactly why the world likes powered transport so much.

Before railroads and the Panama Canal, people would spend over a 100 days on a ship to get from New York to San Francisco, but does anybody today want to go to San Francisco badly enough to miss half the major league baseball season? Well probably Willis would, just for the adventure and to have something to write about.

RACookPE1978
Editor
Reply to  Alan Watt, Climate Denialist Level 7
June 19, 2019 4:20 pm

And all of those days, she is going to “expect” air conditioning and heating, hot meals and cold beverages, packed and properly sealed food fresh from the trucks carrying it from the fields to the fossil-fueled canning and cooking plants, but all grown from ox-pulled tractors and harvesters, planted behind horse-drawn plows, right?

James Fosser
June 19, 2019 3:07 pm

In many peoples minds this child is a goddess. If true she should be able to walk across providing she takes a lot of packed lunches.

EternalOptimist
June 19, 2019 3:12 pm

Ha ha ha. youse denialists do not understand basic common sense.

let me take you through it step by step, nincompoops.

1. St Greta flys to conference, using one million times her carbon allowance

2. are you with me so far ? idiots

3. St Greta converts one million and one sceptics to greenery. making her journey worthwhile. (by one, or whatever the conversion rate actually is)

4. And there we are. the ultimate carbon offset.

5. Well obviously the one million converts have to spend a year with zero carbon. which means dying. But you asked whether it was possible. and I have clearly demonstrated that is probably is

mr bliss
June 19, 2019 4:49 pm

I believe the A-Team encountered the same problem -” I Ain’t gettin’ in no plane fool! ” was a stance taking by BA Baracus on several occasions – but he still miraculously arrived at his distant destination, suitably confused of course

WXcycles
June 19, 2019 5:01 pm

“How do you attend a Distant Climate Conference Without Flying?”
>>

Stop pretending you’re anything but an ignorant little girl, or that you have anything anyone else needs to hear that can’t be spread like the flu on faceplant.

WXcycles
June 19, 2019 5:15 pm

Can’t she just just the Farce to hover across the Atlantic?

Use The Farce Greta!

Toto
June 19, 2019 6:37 pm

“We will all have to do the impossible.”
– Greta

There’s no shortage of impossible things, so at least there will be full employment.

Davis
Reply to  Toto
June 19, 2019 7:00 pm

Like travelling overseas without an airplane or boat?
I will give her one thing though, she hasn’t the hypocrisy typical of your average climate stooge.

Robertvd
Reply to  Davis
June 20, 2019 3:45 am

Because she is a real believer.

Davis
June 19, 2019 6:46 pm

Rent one of the world’s largest yachts ala DeCrapio?
Borrow the electric car “driven” from Amsterdam to Adelaide Australia?
Stay home with the rest of your bat crap crazy family?

yarpos
June 19, 2019 8:41 pm

In the end she can always fall back on the “greater good” argument. You have to do a little harm to educate the masses type stuff. Been working for decades for Al Gore flitting around the world and being chaffeured around in luxury SUVs . Why should the Gret-ster miss out?

June 19, 2019 10:01 pm

Get Alexandria Ocasio Cortes to carry her.

She can walk on water.

And then announce the solution to renewable energy

A toilet equipped with solar panels for all the greens who think the suns shines out of their…

Wiliam Haas
June 20, 2019 12:20 am

If these organizations were really concerned about the burning of fossil fuels, they would have their conferences over the internet where the people involved never have to leave home.

Alexander Vissers
June 20, 2019 1:45 am

Sailing used to be a popular way to cross the Atlantic before the steamships took over most of the traffic but still hundreds of sailing boats cross the Atlantic each year so either sign as crew or be a paying passenger.
https://www.crewseekers.net/notices/atlantic-ocean-north-atlantic/

PaulD
June 20, 2019 2:27 am

I think someone needs to gently explain to Greta that her presence at the conference s is not needed and won’t make any difference to the outcomes.

tim wells
Reply to  PaulD
June 23, 2019 4:07 am

Yes, but she will make a great ‘spiritual’ contribution by being there. All we have to do is,
“Reach out and touch
somebody’s hand,
Let’s make this world a better place,
If we can.”

A Sarc Production.

Hop
June 20, 2019 3:02 am

You should not be focussing on a kid here folks. I know most of it is innocent fun but it is the foolish fame-seeking eco-parents here that you should be going after.
Moderators: you should keep a close reign on posts involving kids – it’s bad form. In this case, you could have a young person with Aspergers who when reading some of the above comments may not understand the sarcasm/humour and could suffer because of it. I would make the decision to not post the names of minors when they are being used for propaganda or promotion on any side of any debate.

Robertvd
June 20, 2019 3:54 am

She can walk crossing the Bering street in winter. Cold and hungry Polar bears could be a problem.

June 20, 2019 7:17 am

WE HAVE BEEN TRYING TO CONTACT GRETA AND INVITE HER TO SAIL WITH US ACROSS THE ATLANTIC ONBOARD THE TALL SHIP FLORETTE. A TRIP WE HOPE TO DO TOTALLY UNDER SAIL.. WE SAIL IN NOVEMBER TO THE CARIBBEAN AND WILL GETTHERE WITHIN THE MONTH, GRETA PLEASE LOOK AT OUR WEB SITE AND CONTACT THE CAPTAIN RONY HAYSE.
RONYS TWO GIRLS OF 10 AND 12 YEARS ARE BIG FANS OF YOURS AND THE TALL SHIP IS IN THE PROCESS OF STARTING ECOLOGICAL BUSINESS PLAN, LIVING/ SAILING, CLEANING THE OCEAN AS WE GO. ..

http://www.svflorette.com

http://www.ecoship.eu

Reply to  Richard Lindley
June 20, 2019 8:12 am

Try sending this to her Twitter account

https://twitter.com/gretathunberg

tty
Reply to  Richard Lindley
June 20, 2019 4:05 pm

Are you planning to continue around Cape Horn?

Michael H Anderson
June 20, 2019 7:46 am

@Hop – Sorry, but although your mileage clearly differs, I see a bog-standard entitled 21st-century attention whore. Perhaps you have no kids and no experience of kids, but to place a halo over all of them is a very retrograde viewpoint; frankly, the sort of attitude that creates entitled kids in the first place.

I doubt very much that someone like Saint Greta reads WUWT, but I hope she does, and wakes up, and begins to create a life for herself that doesn’t place her at the imaginary centre of everyone else’s universe. Then at the age of majority she can divorce her parents: win-win.

jeyon
June 20, 2019 8:29 am

unlike most greens she is serious about avoiding air travel

she gets that from her mother – opera singer Malena Ernman – who has committed to not flying to gigs

Michael H Anderson
Reply to  jeyon
June 21, 2019 5:04 am

Excellent – then billions of people will never have to listen to the psycho chicken sing. Go stick a Magic Flute up your arse, Malena.

Toto
June 20, 2019 2:38 pm

If she is so important to the COP meetings, the COP meetings should all be wherever she is. Almost everybody else is going to travel anyway. Why is she so important? Why not send a cabbage patch doll instead? Or a poster. Or an icon of her to pray to? Is it because any other activist can be ridiculed but children are off limits? Especially challenged children. So that she is like a human shield? What is going on ?

Earthling2
June 21, 2019 12:45 am

I really hope she makes it to both conferences without flying, and then uses that to preach to all her comrades like AL Gore and Leonardo/Hollywood who just showed up on private jets how hypocritical they are. What we need now is a fracture within the cabal of CAGW/climate change. They have in the past pretty much circled their wagons from any inside criticism, but this could be a game changer. Greta sees things in binary and I bet she would only see the hypocrisy of their actions for what it is, which pure unadulterated hypocrisy.

JS
June 22, 2019 1:29 pm

Indeed, why don’t they all telecommute?

I’m honestly fed up with seeing richer friends and associates of mine use far more carbon producing resources than me then complain about how people don’t care enough about climate change. Walk the walk or shut up. Not that I believe individual action would make any significant difference if this is all as true as they claim, but at least, some consistency.

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