Greta Thunberg to sail the Atlantic for UN summit

Yahoo – AFP, July 29, 2019

Greta Thunberg is to attend climate demonstrations in the United States and address
a UN summit after sailing across the Atlantic (AFP Photo/Lionel BONAVENTURE)

Stockholm (AFP) - Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg said Monday that she would cross the Atlantic on a racing sailboat to attend a UN climate summit in New York in September.

"I've been offered a ride on the 60 ft. (18-metre) racing boat Malizia II. We'll be sailing across the Atlantic Ocean from the UK to NYC in mid August," Thunberg, 16, said on Twitter.

It will be her first visit to the US since she launched her environmental drive a year ago.

Thunberg -- who has inspired thousands of her peers in many parts of the world to press their elders to act on climate change -- refuses to fly owing to the negative impact on the environment.

German Boris Herrmann and the Monaco-based founder of the Malizia team Pierre Casiraghi will steer the boat, which is to carry a sail marked "#Fridays for future".

The phrase stems from Thunberg's decision to skip school on Fridays so she could push for action against climate change in front of the Swedish parliament.

"After months of research and considering different options for her journey, Greta will sail across the Atlantic in a zero-carbon racing boat called Malizia II, a foiling sailboat built in 2015, which is fitted with solar panels and underwater turbines to generate electricity on board the vessel," Herrmann said on his website.

Once in the United States, she is to take part in "large-scale climate demonstrations on September 20 and 27 and speak at the United Nations Climate Action Summit, hosted by Secretary General Antonio Guterres," he added.

Thunberg also planned to visit Canada and Mexico, and attend a UN climate conference (COP25) in Santiago, Chile, in early December, Herrmann said, with other South American stops also planned.

Her spokesman could not be reached Monday for confirmation of the complete itinerary, but people close to Thunberg have already said that she would attend the COP25 conference.

British daily The Guardian said she would also be accompanied by her father Svante, and a filmmaker.

Casiraghi, the grandson of Monaco's late Prince Rainier III and US-born actor Grace Kelly, has said the boat's name was taken from the Moneguesque language and meant "the wily one."

Greta Thunberg refuses to fly because of the carbon emissions caused by
planes (AFP Photo/Ben STANSALL)

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Record 42.6C in Paris as Europe heatwave hits blistering peak

Yahoo – AFP, Stuart WILLIAMS, July 25, 2019

In the sweltering French capital, tourists and locals alike made a beeline for
fountains (AFP Photo/Bertrand GUAY)

Paris (AFP) - Paris on Thursday baked in an all-time high temperature of 42.6 degrees Celsius (108.7 Fahrenheit) as a ferocious heatwave smashed records across northern Europe, sparking concerns about public health and causing new misery for rail travellers.

As records also tumbled in Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany, Paris beat the previous top of 40.4C set in July 1947.

Trains have been slowed in several European countries to avoid damage to the railway networks. French national operator SNCF urged travellers to delay journeys planned for Thursday, while German railway company Deutsche Bahn offered travellers a chance to change tickets free of charge.

In the sweltering French capital, authorities warned people to keep an eye on those living alone.

At the same time, the scorching weather spelled misery for millions of commuters on public transport.

"It's so hot in the metro, it's unbearable. There are so many people, no air conditioning and everyone is on top of one other," said Paris commuter Petra Ulm, 34, a clinical researcher.

The heatwave, which was expected to ease up on Friday as rain and thunderstorms move in, again focused public attention on the problems caused by climate change.

The heatwave, which is expected to ease up on Friday as rain and thunderstorms 

move in, re-focused public attention on the problems caused by climate change

(AFP Photo/LOIC VENANCE)

'Great day on the beach'

In Britain, temperatures reached 38.1C in Cambridge, only the second time temperatures over 100 Fahrenheit have been recorded in the UK, weather services said. It was still below the UK's all-time high of 38.5C.

Those lucky enough to be by the sea could still enjoy the weather.

"It's obviously not so good for some people, but if you've got the day off and young kids then it's great for a day on the beach," said Graham Clarke, 50, an insurance agent, enjoying the sands of Broadstairs in southeast England.

In the Netherlands, a new high Thursday of 40.4C in the south broke a record dating back to 1944.

In Amsterdam, crowds jumped into a central square fountain, while municipal workers sprayed water on bridges over the city's famed canals to stop metal structures deforming in the heat.

"I'm just trying not to move too much," said Serona Methorst, a 19-year-old Dutch student sitting under a tree with friends. "We are so used to a colder climate, people are really disturbed by this weather."

In the centre of the country, Dutch police jokingly urged criminals not to plan any heists during the heatwave.

"It's tough to work now, not just for you but also for us," the police posted in a Facebook message. "Stay at home, turn on the air-conditioning."

Even the animals like baby elephant Ben Long needed to take a cooling dip 

at the zoo in Leipzig in eastern Germany (AFP Photo/Jens Kalaene)

On Thursday, Germany again hit a national record of 41.5 C in Lingen, western Germany.

The Grohnde nuclear plant in western Germany will temporarily shut down on Friday as a way to protect the environment, its operator said. Water used to cool the reactor is poured back into rivers and the shutdown is meant to protect already overheated river ecosystems.

Belgium on Thursday also reached a new record high of 40.6 degrees Celsius, on the Kleine-Brogel military base, in northeastern Belgium.

Two suspected drug smugglers had to call police in the Belgian port city of Antwerp after becoming trapped in a shipping container filled with cocaine, prosecutors said.

Train disruptions

Eurostar and Thalys rail services from Brussels to London and Paris also experienced major delays and cancellations after a cable failure the day earlier.

"I ask everyone who can avoid or delay their journeys to do so," said French Environment Minister Elisabeth Borne, advising workers who could do their jobs at home not to go to their offices.

The northern third of France, including Paris, was under a red alert while the rest of the country had a yellow warning and water-use restrictions were in force.

In Austria, a three-year-old child died of dehydration after falling asleep in a car parked in full sunshine at the family farm, local authorities said.

Advice on avoiding heatstroke and dehydration in a heatwave. (AFP Photo/

Sophie RAMIS)

'Look after others'

France remains haunted by the early summer of 2003 when 15,000 deaths were blamed on the heat and the authorities were hit for not mobilising fast enough.

"We need to take care of ourselves but above all others, especially those who are alone, and be able to detect the first symptoms of heatstroke," said Prime Minister Edouard Philippe.

Local authorities have placed restrictions on water usage in many areas due to drought-like conditions that have seen ground and river water levels fall dramatically.

A June 26-28 blast of heat in France was four degrees Celsius hotter than an equally rare June heatwave would have been in 1900, the World Weather Attribution (WWA) said this month.

One study by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology said the deadly weeks-long heatwave across northern Europe in 2018 would have been statistically impossible without climate change.

Temperatures in Paris and some other notably hot cities on Thursday ☀️🥵 pic.twitter.com/zvsrDoGeJ4

— AFP news agency (@AFP) 25 juli 2019

Related Article:

20TH KRYON SUMMER LIGHT CONFERENCE, US (7), June 2-4, 2017 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Carroll) (Text version "The State of the Earth")

"A Summary" – Apr 2, 2011 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll)

(Subjects: Religion, Shift of Human Consciousness, 2012, Intelligent/Benevolent Design, EU, South America, 5 Currencies, Water Cycle (Heat up, Mini Ice Ace, Oceans, Fish, Earthquakes ..), Middle East, Internet, Israel, Dictators, Palestine, US, Japan (Quake/Tsunami Disasters , People, Society ...), Nuclear Power Revealed, Hydro Power, Geothermal Power, Moon, Financial Institutes (Recession, Realign integrity values ..) , China, North Korea, Global Unity,..... etc.) - (Text version)

“… The Weather

Let's talk about the weather. We retreat to exactly what we told you before in this very chair. The water cycle is a cooling cycle, not a heating cycle. You're going to have more severe winters and storms. It's going to get colder. But it gets warmer before it gets colder. That is the cycle, and it has always been the cycle. You can see it in the rings of the trees and the cores of the ice. Don't let your scientists pull the political wool over your eyes for their own purposes. Start seeing these things for what they are. It's a recurring cycle based on four Earth alignment attributes, including the wobble (the precession). You're in this cycle. Prepare.

The beginnings of it will be with you from now at least until the end of the 2012 36-year window, and you can watch it work. The first thing that happens is that the ice melts at the poles, but not completely. It's the way it has happened before. As the redistribution of weight from the poles to the oceans of the earth takes place, the weight is redistributed to the crust, and that creates earthquakes. And the earthquakes that will be the most powerful are the ones that are closest to the poles. We told you that some time ago. So it's not a mystery that suddenly you have some of the most powerful earthquakes that you've ever had. Not only that, but a cooling ocean creates larger storms.

What do the conspiracists do with all this? "See? We're doomed. Here it comes," they say. "Here it comes! The end is here!" Twenty-two years ago, we gave you the information that is happening today. We told you about the weather. We told you to get ready for it, but we still haven't told you why the water cycle is needed. We've hinted at it since it is very controversial, and we'll lose many readers right here and now. Here's the prediction: The scientists are going to laugh and biologists are going to scratch their heads and roll their eyes.

The Refreshing of the Cycle of Life

When you change the temperature of the waters of the planet, it changes the life cycle of the ocean and it eventually renews itself. The life cycle of the planet has a limit to its viability over time. There has to be a refreshing of the very cycle of life, and this is what the water cycle does. Are there any places you've seen too many fish lately? Yes. Millions of salmon in the north. Odd that it was in Alaska, isn't it? Alaska is very close to the poles where the water temperature is being felt first. Oh, again the experts will tell you that this is not the reason. It's about hatcheries and rivers. But nobody predicted this, did they? Science is fast to give you reasons, but slow to give you logic in advance. They always seem to be surprised.

We are saying things we haven't said before. Again, watch for this, an actual change in the life cycle of the planet's oceans because of the water temperature shift. Biologists are going to have to start redesigning the paradigm of how everything works, including reefs, ocean bottoms, and how plankton survive and reproduce. Listen, this is not the first time that the life cycle has been refreshed! But again, this may take generations of humanity to complete. In the process, you may again lose species. This is normal. Gaia is slow, and Humans are impatient. Your textbooks may someday tell of how naive humanity was back in 2011 when they tried to blame weather changes on everything but a natural cycle. Now you know why there is a water cycle.

So what does that tell you about Gaia? Gaia is beginning the cycle of refreshing life on over-fished oceans. It tells you that in the cracks, there is love and caring about the Humans who live on the earth. There's a reason you're here. There's a plan here, and a benevolent Universe and quantum energy with intelligent design. All is there for you, precious, sacred Human Being. …”

Teenage climate campaigner Thunberg honoured in France

Yahoo –AFP, 21 July 2019

WWII veterans Charles Norman Shay and Leon Gautier flanked Thunberg at
Sunday's ceremony

Greta Thunberg, the Swedish teenage activist whose Friday school strikes protesting government inaction over climate change helped sparked a worldwide movement, received the Freedom Prize in France on Sunday.

Flanked by two WWII veterans who sponsor the prize, she accepted the award at a ceremony in the northwestern city of Caen, Normandy.

"This prize is not only for me," Thunberg said. "This is for the whole Fridays for Future movement, because this we have achieved together."

She said she would donate the 25,000 euro ($28,000) prize money to four organisations working for climate justice and helping areas already affected by climate change.

'I'm deeply happy that you and the young generation fight for 

this noble cause,' veteran Charles Norman Shay told Thunberg

The prize was awarded before an audience of several hundred people and in the presence of several WWII veterans, including France's Leon Gautier and US native American Charles Norman Shay. Both are sponsors of the prize.

Thunberg said she had spent an unforgettable day with Shay on Omaha Beach, one of the sites of the 1944 Normandy landings that launched the Allied offensive that helped end World War II.

Paying tribute to their sacrifice, she said: "The least we can do to honour them is to stop destroying that same world that Charles, Leon and their friends and colleagues fought so hard to save for us."

Shay said that young people "should be prepared to defend what they believe in and how they want to live in their life and their country.

Thunberg paid tribute to WWII veterans

"As a soldier, I fought for freedom and to liberate Europe and the world from Nazism 75 years ago," he added. "But this is a nonsense if Mother Nature is deeply wounded and if our civilisation collapses due to inappropriate human behaviour.

"I'm deeply happy that you and the young generation fight for this noble cause," he told Thunberg.

Describing the challenges posed by climate change, Thunberg said: "Seven million people die from illness related to toxic air pollution every year.

"This is a silent war going on. We are currently on track for a world that could displace billions of people from their homes, taking away even the most basic living conditions from countless people, making areas of the world uninhabitable from some part of the year.

Thunberg set out the implications of climate change in her acceptance speech

"The fact that this will create huge conflicts and unspoken suffering is far from secret.

"And yet the link between climate and ecological emergency and mass migration, famine and war is still not clear to many people. This must change."

The Freedom Prize was set up to honour the values embodied by the Normandy landings. Its winner is chosen by a worldwide online poll of respondents aged between 15 and 25.

WWII veterans Charles Norman Shay and Leon Gautier flanked Thunberg at Sunday's ceremony

'I'm deeply happy that you and the young generation fight for this noble cause,' veteran Charles Norman Shay told Thunberg

Thunberg paid tribute to WWII veterans

Thunberg set out the implications of climate change in her acceptance speech.

Kenya launches Africa's biggest wind farm

Yahoo – AFP, Nick Perry, July 19, 2019

The $680-million wind power project is delivering 310 megawatts of renewable
power to Kenya's national grid (AFP Photo/Yasuyoshi CHIBA)

Lake Turkana (Kenya) (AFP) - Kenya on Friday formally launched Africa's biggest wind power plant, a mammoth project in a gusty stretch of wilderness that already provides nearly a fifth of the country's energy needs.

The $680-million (600 million euro) scheme, a sprawling 365-turbine wind farm on the eastern shores of Lake Turkana, is delivering 310 megawatts of renewable power to the national grid of East Africa's most dynamic economy.

The largest private investment in Kenya's history, the Lake Turkana Wind Power project was beset with delays and took nearly a decade to rise from the arid landscape 600 kilometres (372 miles) north of Nairobi.

The turbines, scattered across Turkana's stark lunar landscape and rocky hills, began to deliver their first electricity last September.

Today, their giant blades deliver 15 percent of Kenya's entire installed capacity, connected to the national grid through a 428-kilometre power line.

"Today, we again raise the bar for the continent as we unveil the single largest wind farm," said President Uhuru Kenyatta, after touring the project.

"Kenya is without a doubt on course to become a world leader in renewable energy."

Turkana Corridor

The project lies in a natural corridor dubbed "the windiest place on earth" and promises to harness this endless power at low cost.

The nearly-50 metre turbines were engineered to handle the fierce gusts that tear through the "Turkana Corridor", a wind tunnel that generates optimal conditions, year round.

The winds howling near constantly through the barren valley deliver double the load capacity enjoyed by similar projects in America and Europe.

"It is unprecedented. This is one of the most consistently windiest places in the world," said Rizwan Fazal, the executive director of the Lake Turkana Wind Power Project.

A Herculean effort was needed to construct the behemoth wind farm in Kenya's farthest extremes.

The windmills, manufactured by Danish company Vestas, had to be brought one-by-one overland from the Kenyan port of Mombasa, some 1,200 kilometres away.

The sprawling 365-turbine wind farm is on the eastern shores of Lake Turkana

(AFP Photo/Yasuyoshi CHIBA)

Each one was customised so its different segments could be packed "like Russian dolls", the company said

More than 2,000 trips were needed to bring all the materials from port to plant.

Some 200 kilometres of road leading to the site had to be tarred to allow trucks through.

Another 100 kilometres of internal roads linking the turbines dotting the hot, desert horizons were also constructed.

'Incredible journey'

The project, far more ambitious in scale than rivals elsewhere on the continent, has been closely watched as a case study of investing in renewables in Africa, where demand for energy is soaring as economies grow and populations swell.

In Kenya -- which relies heavily on hydropower and geothermal -- power is unreliable and costly, hindering business as energy-intensive sectors such as manufacturing look to take off.

Kenyatta has previously committed to 100 percent renewable energy for Kenya by 2020 -- a pledge the government has been accused of betraying with plans to build a coal-fired power plant off the coast in Lamu.

That project -- deemed unnecessary by experts -- has been stalled by legal challenges.

The Turkana wind farm involved years of planning and construction but the turbines went up quicker than one a day, with the last raised in March 2017, ahead of schedule.

But difficulties in financing the transmission line, being laid by state-owned power company Ketraco, and problems acquiring land, meant this landmark project didn't connect to the grid for another 18 months -- in September 2018.

"The farm was built on time. But the project can only operate if you can bring power to the client," said Catherine Collin, East Africa head of the European Investment Bank.

The EU's lending facility loaned $200 million for the project, which received other finance from a consortium of European and African companies

"There was a delay, there was a few difficult moments, I have to say, for everybody, but in the end we all made it," Collin said.

Fazal said it had been "an incredible journey" but more than anything it let the world know Kenya's untapped clean energy markets were open for business.

"It sends a very strong signal about Kenya being ripe for projects," he said.

New Zealand bans single-use plastic bags

Yahoo – AFP, Neil SANDS, July 1, 2019

Companies that break New Zealand's plastic bag ban will face heavy penalties
(AFP Photo/Drew Angerer)

Wellington (AFP) - New Zealand officially banned single-use plastic shopping bags Monday, introducing hefty fines for businesses that continue to provide them.

Plastic pollution has become a growing global concern, with a million birds and more than 100,000 marine mammals injured or killed every year by becoming entangled in packaging or ingesting it through the food chain.

Companies that break New Zealand's ban will face heavy penalties, including fines of up to NZ$100,000 ($67,000).

"New Zealanders are proud of our country's clean, green reputation and want to help ensure we live up to it," environment minister Eugenie Sage said.

"Ending the use of single-use plastic shopping bags helps do that."

Under the new rules, thin plastic single-use shopping bags can no longer be supplied -- but the law allows reusable carriers to continue being provided.

The legislation -- which was announced in August last year and came into force on Monday -- will have little practical effect, as New Zealand's major supermarkets have already voluntarily banned the bags.

However, Sage said it was putting the issue of recycling on the agenda.

"(The ban) doesn't go far enough, but what is really great is it's started the conversation," she told Radio New Zealand.

A million birds and more than 100,000 marine mammals worldwide are injured 

or killed every year by plastic packaging (AFP Photo/Silke Struckenbrock)

"People are now talking about single-use plastics and how we can phase them out."

Britain's Royal Statistical Society estimates 90.5 percent of all plastic waste -- some 6,300 million metric tons -- has never been recycled and is either in landfill or accumulating in the natural environment.

If current production and waste management trends continue, the ocean of plastic waste is estimated to almost double to 12,000 million metric tons by 2050.

More than 80 countries have already introduced bag bans similar to New Zealand's, according to the UN Environment Programme.

While it praised such initiatives, it said more needed to be done to minimise other sources of plastic waste including microbeads and single-use items such as straws.

Canada last month announced plans to ban disposable plastic items such as straws, cutlery and stir sticks from 2021.

The Pacific nation of Vanuatu will implement a ban in December on disposable diapers, which not only have non-biodegradable plastic linings but also use chemical absorbents which leach into the environment.

Sage said the New Zealand government was committing NZ$40 million ($27 million) to find ways to reuse plastic waste instead of sending it to landfill overseas.

"We have been sending our waste offshore for too long," she said.

"China and other countries refusing to take our waste is the wake-up call we need."

The issue of wealthy developed nations using poorer countries as trash dumps was highlighted this week when Canada had to accept back tonnes of rubbish it shipped to the Philippines years ago.

For years, China received the bulk of scrap plastic from around the world, but closed its doors to foreign refuse last year in an effort to clean up its environment.

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G20 agrees marine plastic pollution deal