
Greta Thunberg is set to head into a stormy Atlantic Wednesday on board the "Malizia II," a no-comfort, high-tech ocean racer skippered by a champion yachtsman and a member of Monaco's royal family.
Sixteen-year-old Thunberg — who has long refused to fly due to planes' carbon emissions — is setting sail on a zero-emissions yacht to New York for a UN climate summit.
The Fridays for Future star's voyage is skippered by round-the-world sailor Boris Herrmann from Hamburg and Pierre Casiraghi, the grandson of Monaco's late Princess Grace Kelly.
Critics will find fault with its 18-meter-long, carbon-fiber hull — derived from oil — but otherwise relies on its sails and autopilot, hydrofoils for underwater dynamics, a solar panel and water-driven turbines for electricity.
A mandatory diesel motor is sealed away for emergencies.
The weather forecast looks good, we are due to leave Plymouth as planned, at 15.00 GMT. pic.twitter.com/6iAOejMWZR
— Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) August 14, 2019
Dozens of Offers
Thunberg announced mid-June that she had no intention of flying to avoid the "enormous climate" costs of aviation, and soon after she received dozens of trans-Atlantic sailing offers, deciding on "Malizia."
The 16-year-old plans on September 23 to attend a New York "climate action" summit called by UN Chief Antonio Guterres.
Deafening Hull Acoustics
At 15 knots, every wave resounds deafeningly through the hull and can toss crew off balance. On deck safety lines are essential, reported the German Jacht magazine. In the pantry is merely a gas cooker.
Herrmann, who in 2015 sailed heat-thawed Arctic waters and helps run a climate-awareness sailing program for school pupils, said the exact route to New York depended on avoiding the Atlantic's equatorial hurricane season.
"Perhaps we'll sail northerly around one of other lows (air pressure zones)," said Herrmann
"I can imagine that because of her impressive understanding of climate issues she'll bring a strong curiosity for the weather and navigation," he added.
Also due on board were Thunberg's father and actor Svente, and Norwegian filmmaker Nathan Grossman.
Ocean Novice
At a Plymouth dockside briefing last Sunday, Herrmann said Thunberg had assured him she was upbeat despite being a maritime novice, the risk of seasickness and spartan equipment.
To his question whether she was scared, she answered with a "clear no," said Herrmann, who yacht at top speed does 25 knots (46 kilometers per hour).
Efforts "Fading," Warns Guterres
While visiting worried low-lying Pacific island nations in May, UN chief Guterres decried "fading" efforts to keep global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius as agreed in the UN's 2015 Paris agreement — and aimed a net-zero emissions by 2050.
Already, the planet's surface has warmed by 1 degree on average since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in the late 18th century.
Passenger Ship Demise
Upwards of 2,500 flights take place daily across the Atlantic, with each one-way trip estimated to emit about one ton of carbon dioxide per passenger.
In some 50 countries — from Burundi in Africa to Paraguay in South America — the average resident emits less carbon dioxide in a whole year.
Compared to mainstream trans-Atlantic crossings that brought migrants to the Americas in the 19th century, passenger shipping was overtaken in the 1950s by jetliners.
The few current maritime passenger alternatives across the Atlantic are the luxurious Queen Mary II and several hundred container and cargo ships that carry but only handfuls of paying passengers.
Reposted with permission from our media associate Deutsche Welle.
- Redwoods are the world's tallest trees.
- Now scientists have discovered they are even bigger than we thought.
- Using laser technology they map the 80-meter giants.
- Trees are a key plank in the fight against climate change.
They are among the largest trees in the world, descendants of forests where dinosaurs roamed.
Pixabay / Simi Luft
<p><span>Until recently, measuring these trees meant scaling their 80 meter high trunks with a tape measure. Now, a team of scientists from University College London and the University of Maryland uses advanced laser scanning, to create 3D maps and calculate the total mass.</span></p><p>The results are striking: suggesting the trees <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">may be as much as 30% larger than earlier measurements suggested.</a> Part of that could be due to the additional trunks the Redwoods can grow as they age, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">a process known as reiteration</a>.</p>New 3D measurements of large redwood trees for biomass and structure. Nature / UCL
<p>Measuring the trees more accurately is important because carbon capture will probably play a key role in the battle against climate change. Forest <a href="https://www.wri.org/blog/2020/09/carbon-sequestration-natural-forest-regrowth" target="_blank">growth could absorb billions of tons</a> of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year.</p><p>"The importance of big trees is widely-recognised in terms of carbon storage, demographics and impact on their surrounding ecosystems," the authors wrote<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank"> in the journal Nature</a>. "Unfortunately the importance of big trees is in direct proportion to the difficulty of measuring them."</p><p>Redwoods are so long lived because of their ability to <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">cope with climate change, resist disease and even survive fire damage</a>, the scientists say. Almost a fifth of their volume may be bark, which helps protect them.</p>Carbon Capture Champions
<p><span>Earlier research by scientists at Humboldt University and the University of Washington found that </span><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378112716302584" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Redwood forests store almost 2,600 tonnes of carbon per hectare</a><span>, their bark alone containing more carbon than any other neighboring species.</span></p><p>While the importance of trees in fighting climate change is widely accepted, not all species enjoy the same protection as California's coastal Redwoods. In 2019 the world lost the equivalent of <a href="https://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/deforestation-and-forest-degradation" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">30 soccer fields of forest cover every minute</a>, due to agricultural expansion, logging and fires, according to The Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF).</p>Pixabay
<p>Although <a href="https://c402277.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/publications/1420/files/original/Deforestation_fronts_-_drivers_and_responses_in_a_changing_world_-_full_report_%281%29.pdf?1610810475" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">the rate of loss is reported to have slowed in recent years</a>, reforesting the world to help stem climate change is a massive task.</p><p><span>That's why the World Economic Forum launched the Trillion Trees Challenge (</span><a href="https://www.1t.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">1t.org</a><span>) and is engaging organizations and individuals across the globe through its </span><a href="https://uplink.weforum.org/uplink/s/uplink-issue/a002o00000vOf09AAC/trillion-trees" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Uplink innovation crowdsourcing platform</a><span> to support the project.</span></p><p>That's backed up by research led by ETH Zurich/Crowther Lab showing there's potential to restore tree coverage across 2.2 billion acres of degraded land.</p><p>"Forests are critical to the health of the planet," according to <a href="https://www.1t.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">1t.org</a>. "They sequester carbon, regulate global temperatures and freshwater flows, recharge groundwater, anchor fertile soil and act as flood barriers."</p><p><em data-redactor-tag="em" data-verified="redactor">Reposted with permission from the </em><span><em data-redactor-tag="em" data-verified="redactor"><a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/03/redwoods-store-more-co2-and-are-more-enormous-than-we-thought/" target="_blank">World Economic Forum</a>.</em></span></p>EcoWatch Daily Newsletter
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