Located on the southwest coast of Sicily, close to the seaside town of Sciacca, the wealthiest people have converged for the Annual Google Camp. Traditionally held every year at the end of July, the famed Verdura Resort hosts the most top-secret gathering in the world. Even though social media posts are forbidden, the superyacht owners enjoy showing off their celebrity guests throughout the week's activities and high profile lunches.

Google execs selected the resort because of its location near Sicily’s UNESCO World Heritage ruins and is an easy one hour drive from Palermo, however, many guests arrive via helicopter to the resort's helipad or via private yacht.

Read more:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimdobson/2019/07/30/billionaire-summer-cam...

Thunberg shot to fame for organizing school walkouts against climate change last year. A series of talks lamenting her generation’s impending doom have since made her the poster child for a strange, apocalyptic brand of environmentalism, with British lawmakers nodding along to her declaration that “we probably don’t even have a future anymore” in April, and the world’s power-brokers listening intently to her exhortation that they should “feel the fear I feel every day,” made at the World Economic Forum in Davos several months earlier.

She offers only one path to salvation: an immediate halt to all carbon emissions – there can be no compromise.

Thunberg practices what she preaches, though, and eschews all forms of internal combustion while she treks from climate conference to parliamentary speech. Rather than fly to the UN Climate Action Summit in New York next month, Thunberg will sail, a journey expected to take two weeks.

However, the young proselytizer will not cobble together a boat from upcycled oil drums and driftwood. Instead she’ll be traveling on the Malizia II, a 60-foot racing yacht. The Malizia II is loaded with eco-friendly innovations, like a lightened hull and an array of solar panels powering a backup turbine.

Its crew are also a far cry from the ragtag band of crusties you might imagine. The Malizia II will be captained by renowned yachtsman Boris Herrmann and Pierre Casiraghi, grandson of Monaco’s late Prince Ranier III and actress Grace Kelly. The boat, too, was once named the Edmond de Rothschild, after the financial baron and founder of a fleet of racing yachts. Its construction cost upwards of €4 million.

Despite the cheers of bourgeois bugmen, Greta’s trip of a lifetime reveals the feckless elitism at the heart of her activism. Sailing across the Atlantic on a multimillion dollar racing yacht is a wonderful stand against climate change when you’re Greta Thunberg. But to dock in New York and demand the miserable masses give up car and air travel is the ultimate in anti-humanitarianism.

Us common folk don’t have access to vessels like the Malizia II. In Thunberg’s utopia, we’d have to row. And even if we did, how many of us can take two weeks’ annual vacation just to get to America to see our friends? Or hire actual Monegasque royalty to get us there in one piece?

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/465501-greta-thunberg-hates-you/

Compared to the mugs at the top of this line of comments, Greta's stand is not as bad as theirs. Either way, to make people aware of the global warming problem, against politicians who are burning thousands more tonnes of CO2 each, or who are preparing for war, someone has to become a figurehead. The problem is more severe than we can imagine yet, as we approaching climate "flip" (massive disturbances) by 2032. And Google isn't going to show it...

Read from top.

The end of the last ice age was a natural occurrence of warming (possibly with help from burning forests by humans to create grasslands for herds) which despite taking around 4,000 years to complete, was a rapid event in geological magnitude. Such "sudden" warmings due to natural climate change have happened about five times in the last 500,000 years. These warming periods are followed by general cooling that tend to linger on for around 120,000 years, then warm again. 

Global warming is a warming event that is piggybacking on the natural slow cooling. Global warming is the unnatural added-warming to the entire planet, by humans: Fossil fuel burning, deforestation and cattle breeding being the main culprits. This added warming is SUPER-FAST in geological terms. It is scientifically observed as well as see level rising. Through computation of inducting factors (mostly anthropogenic CO2), and study of previous eras of the evolution of earth, we can extrapolate the damage that this will do. Politicians and shock jocks don't want to know. History will prove them completely wrong, but it will be too late unless they deign to study the problem in ernest... 

------------------------

The last natural melt flooded Doggerland...

Things aren’t always what they seem on the surface. Looking at the area between mainland Europe and the eastern coast of Great Britain, you probably wouldn’t guess it had been anything other than a great expanse of ocean water. But roughly 12,000 years ago, as the last major ice age was reaching its end, the area was very different. Instead of the North Sea, the area was a series of gently sloping hills, marshland, heavily wooded valleys, and swampy lagoons: Doggerland.

Mesolithic people populated Doggerland. Archaeologists and anthropologists say the Doggerlanders were hunter-gatherers who migrated with the seasons, fishing, hunting, and gathering food such as hazelnuts and berries.

Over time, the Doggerlanders were slowly flooded out of their seasonal hunting grounds. Water previously locked away in glaciers and ice sheets began to melt, drowning Doggerland. Around 6,000 years ago, the Mesolithic people were forced onto higher ground in what is today England and the Netherlands.

Evidence of Doggerlanders’ nomadic presence can be found embedded in the seafloor, where modern fishermen often find ancient bones and tools that date to about 9,000 years ago. These artifacts brought Doggerland’s submerged history to the attention of British and Dutch archaeologists and paleontologists.

Using sophisticated seismic survey data acquired mainly by oil companies drilling in the North Sea, the scientists have been able to reconstruct a digital model of nearly 46,620 square kilometers (18,000 square miles) of what Doggerland looked like before it was flooded.

Those studying the Doggerland area are finding that the climate change faced by Mesolithic people is analogous to our own. Mesolithic peoples were forced out of Doggerland by rising water that engulfed their low-lying settlements. Climate scientists say that a similar situation could affect the billions of people who live within 60 kilometers (37 miles) of a shoreline today, if polar ice caps continue to melt at an accelerated pace.

The story of the Mesolithic people and their home of Doggerland are cautionary tales for the consequences of a rapidly rising sea level. Glacial melt forced the Mesolithic people out of their homes and now Doggerland, like the fabled Atlantis, is just a sunken and mostly forgotten Stone Age culture, its only evidence being decayed artifacts and fossils of its people.

Read more:

https://www.nationalgeographic.org/maps/doggerland/

Read from top.

....

Next time, maybe Harry and Meghan can take a superyacht. According to the yachting press, Millennials are taking their concern for the environment into the superyacht dealership. From YachtHarbour.com:

Instead of materialistic attributes of luxury lifestyle, millennial superyacht owners prioritise adventure, water sports and exterior space. For them, life experiences take priority over material possessions.

Of course. Superyachts cost $275 million-plus. It is important to remember that Millennials who buy them are the kind of people who de-prioritize material possessions.

LuxuryLondon.uk reports on “the sustainable future of superyachts.” Finally, someone is paying attention to superyacht sustainability! There is nothing worse than an unsustainable superyacht, except maybe Hitler, or Donald Trump. Excerpt:

Cutting-edge yacht designers are also stirring clients towards more sustainable options. “Today’s superyacht owners are younger, and more in tune with the climate crisis around us, and therefore either request, or are open to, innovative, sustainable yacht design,” says Andrew Winch, founder and creative director at Winch Design.

“Wherever possible, design decisions are made to have minimal negative impact on the environment or a positive impact on local communities around the world. Materials will be sourced locally to reduce the carbon footprint from freighting, as profit is fed back into the local economy. Rare accessories must have a Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) certificate, to show their provenance and to try and control the overuse of rare materials.”

Why be ascetic and not buy a superyacht when you can purchase indulgences?

When I get my superyacht, I’m going to christen her the Princesse de Lamballe.

Read more:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/ships-of-fools-superyachts/

Read from top

Note: Gus's superyacht was named "der Aufstand"...