The BBC reports today that Greta Thunberg will travel to some climate conferences by sail.
Guest post by Mike Jonas
Greta Thunberg to sail Atlantic for climate conferences
Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg has accepted a ride across the Atlantic by boat to attend two key climate conferences.
The teenager will make the journey aboard the Malizia II, a high-speed 18-metre (60ft) yacht built to race around the globe.
“We’ll be sailing across the Atlantic Ocean from the UK to New York in mid August,” she tweeted.
Thunberg refuses to fly because of the environmental impact of air travel.
In a Facebook post, Team Malizia said they were “honoured to sail Greta Thunberg emission free across the Atlantic”.
Is Greta Thunberg the first climate activist prepared to abide by their convictions and use “carbon-free” travel? I think she is.
My personal opinion is that Greta should be congratulated for her integrity (just as the others should be condemned for their hypocrisy).
But maybe, just maybe, this story will drive home to people just how ridiculous the whole “carbon-free” idea is.
Greta is fortunate enough to be invited to visit the other side of the Atlantic in a fast racing yacht, because she is famous. That’s the positive part of the story. But let’s go through just a few of the issues arising from this story:
1. It will take a very long time compared with flying, especially if you aren’t famous. At Malizia II’s trans-Atlantic racing speed of 14.5 knots (https://www.yacht-club-monaco.mc/en/route-du-rhum-malizia-ii-finished-5th/), an Atlantic crossing takes a fortnight. Time is money to most people, and especially to businesses.
Want to use your 4-week annual leave or the children’s school holiday to visit relatives on the other side of the Atlantic? Forget it.
2. The Atlantic, just like any large body of water, has severe storms. Even professional competitors in ocean races get sea-sick.
“It’s a feeling that you just want to jump off the side of the boat and end it all. It’s miserable, you don’t feel like doing anything, you get lethargic and you get tired. You loose[sic] interest in anything except in how manky you feel and pretty much each time you move, or change your environment, you end up throwing up.”.
(There’s lots more like that). Greta will be in an ocean racer, and even without a storm I doubt she will enjoy it. What will trans-ocean travel be like in our future “carbon-free” world?
3. …
There really isn’t any point in going on with this – the whole “carbon-free” idea is utterly impractical. In a “carbon-free” world, they are going to have to have all nuclear-powered ships and planes, or the whole world just descends into poverty. How long did they say we had left to go “carbon-free”?
So, while I congratulate Greta on her high ethical standards, maybe be best thing that can come out of this journey is the final realisation that the whole “carbon-free” thing is an exercise in absurdly expensive futility. The cost of going “carbon-free” – if it is actually possible – is clearly many orders of magnitude higher than just adapting to what the climate may or may not do. And bear in mind that China and India and others will do more than enough to guarantee that we will have to adapt to that anyway.
I hope that Greta’s greatest achievement will be getting the message through to the media and the politicians that they have been conned.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
She should travel on the first Viking Longboat to make the cross Atlantic trip in recent memory:
https://www.drakenhh.com/expedition-america-2016
By no means a task for the faint of heart.
A really tough trip, and I greatly admire the crew who lived basically under an open tarp for the entire voyage, when they weren’t on deck doing the sailing.
I am not sure anyone is seeing the massive positive from all this.
At best speed the yacht is likely to take 2 weeks to do the crossing.
Think about it. Two weeks in a yacht instead of appearing in public demanding the right to eat our past.
Sounds like a win-win really 😀
In 1952-3 our family lived on the America’s Cup yatch Endeavour* in Moodies Boatyard Swanwick. This was a J Class boat built before the war. I was very young at the time but I remember how cramped the living space was. She is now fully restored. After losing in 1934 she raced for a couple of years then was left to rot at Swanwick by Tommy Sopwith her owner, eventually sinking in the 1970s. She is a beautiful boat but I would want to cross the Atlantic in her.
*The story of the race series against Rainbow is a lesson to anyone who thinks that yatch racing is an honourable sport.
I hear the Northwest Passage is also scenic and a fast route. Go for it.
A Guardian article on the same topic says Greta plans to visit Canada while in the US:
“After New York, where she will take part in several meetings and protests, Greta aims to travel by train and bus to the annual UN climate conference in Chile with stops in Canada, Mexico and other countries.”
I wonder if that will be a trip to Churchill to be further indoctrinated by Polar Bears International about the plight of the poor bears?
Send in the Iranian speed boats.
Racing yachts are notoriously dependent on high-tech materials; carbon fiber masts, artificial fabric sails, super-light materials. Definitely NOT a “green” sport! I’ll believe she really cares about the environment when she sails over on a WOODEN ship with CANVAE sails on WOODEN spars.
It’s not like there is no risk of death
Imagine the parental wrongness should something go horribly wrong in the middle of the ocean in the middle of the night.
So foolish, so unnecessary and frankly screamingly stupid.
I’ll wager this foolish notion will be cancelled all together.
That Greta and her parents will announce that upon further consideration they have concluded it is just not prudent to embark on such a risky endeavor.
Adults believing in a child prophet. The Greta syndrome.
Group of ‘Climate change’ protesters instead unwittingly brought chaos to the entrance of a building which houses the offices of a leading renewable energy company.
Climate change activists chained themselves to the wrong building in the City of London after failing to realise the fossil fuel company they wanted to disrupt had moved address last year.
Her action will have zero impact. Does she not realize that any commercial flight that she would normally take to go to the conference will still fly ANYWAY. Duh.
She’s 16. It’s an adventure. I hope she has fun and stays safe. I’m more worried about the millions of grown adults who take the words of a mentally ill teenager as gospel. They should know better.
I’m or worried about the others on that boat.
I hope she is completely miserable (more so than usually), and she does not benefit in any way (be it adventure, monetary profit, or increased self esteem) from the lies and BS.
While I admire that she’s sticking to her beliefs, she’s going to hate every minute of it and never, ever want to do it again.
After all, I went on a 17′ racing sailboat in Lake Michigan nearly 3 years ago for Louie’s Regatta and was uncomfortable in the high waves and even 1 sailor who has been sailing longer than I’ve been alive threw up.
Like the post pointed out, even experienced sailors get seasick when the waves are bad enough and the standard crew who usually drank ample amounts of alcohol during this race (it’s completely for fun) had nothing more than ginger ale the whole time we were on the water and I think that was only 6 foot waves on a Great Lake for a couple of hours!
Imagine 2 weeks of weather ranging from eerily calm to 10+ foot waves and someone who isn’t even accustomed to those waters is going to want to die even more than the racers who CHOOSE to do this. With that knowledge, anyone can understand that the only way that people travel this way is by choice, after all, as soon as something far better was available it was readily abandoned for powered craft.
Good for Greta. At least she thinks she is practising what she preaches, although she may be intellectually led astray by her parents and the Soylent Greens. She surely doesn’t really know any better. At least she will really make all the rest of the climate challenged, like Al Boar, look really, really stupid for flying to Chile to protest global warming. You couldn’t make this stuff up.
Dear me, i am disappointed, i thought that this Child was able to walk on water, as I thought eco warriors are not of this planet.
Yaaawn.
How will she come back having vomited her ring up all the way over? A boat like that is very bumpy at speed. I expect she’ll fly.
And this is the easy bit. She is supposed to go on to Santiago de Chile in November. Going New York-Santiago and back by land or sea isn’t that easy.
And finding a yacht that is crossing the Noth Atlantic in winter is going to be hard. And honestly, I wouldn’t care to be on it, even though I’m immune to seasickness.
That means that you will have the pleasure of her company in New York all winter . Enjoy!
https://theecologist.org/2018/aug/23/extinction-rebellion-diary-1-so-it-has-come
Perhaps if you spent less time “crying alone in the dark” due to your “depression,” left your computers and went out of doors occasionally, you’d realize that there is no such “planetary destruction” taking place.
I’d pity you, but for the fact that you are openly advocating for the dismantling of our society. Therefore you are my avowed enemy, and rest assured that when push comes to shove, you’ll find that the many millions of us not afflicted with the curse of lifelong suspended adolescence are more than prepared to meet your threat head-on.
Not kidding. Wish I was. None of this is even slightly funny to me any more.
Sitting comfy and safe, she would have been flown with an individual fuel efficiency of 65 mpg. Yes, our rides are that much fuel efficient per passenger.
On the other side of the equation we have CG and press choppers at departure and arrival, huge press and PR team on the move, the eventuality of a S&R party. And definitely an armada of yachts/boats full with admirers.
Do I really need a calculator ?
probably used more carbon producing parts to build boat then she would use flying.
the fiberglass alone uses a ton of carbon based items, can’t find info now but seem to recall this desidn used a lot of carbon fiber for weight. huh….carbon used.
https://team-malizia.com/en/boat/
If she’s smart she will go visit Bernie to learn the ways of yelling combined with making a million dollars on book sales. You might have to write more than one boom though to get your own luxury yacht. Don’t forget to mine the student activity fees at college campuses for speaker fees. You could go home quite rich.
So just how does she keep warm while at home? If she’s lucky enough to live in geo thermal area good for her. All I see in this girl is how easy it is to manipulate and program kids today. Which I doubt has changed that much since the 70s when I was a kid, but they were talking coming Ice Age then, all hail the great Leonard Nimoy andthe epic show In Search Of!
What’s the only man-made object visible from space? St Greta virtue-signalling.
Pity she couldn’t persuade the Green Blob to hold their bonehead conference online. Then I might start taking them seriously. But they prefer to take the “don’t do as I do, do as I say” line.