Greta Meme

[GannonFan]

Good story on NPR yesterday - reporter was talking about the climate conference going on right now in Spain and how something like 25,000 people need to get there from all over the world and the irony of 25,000 spending so much CO2 in jet fuel usage to fly there. So she decided to try to take a train there - she's based out of Berlin so she just needed to take a train from Berlin to Spain. European trail travel, should be easy in the mecca of train transportation.

However, turns out crossing over countries' borders in Europe is still difficult, and there have been tons of cuts to service throughout Europe because supporting trains and their infrastructure is incredibly expensive. So, she ended up having to make 4 different bookings of trains over two different websites. Because they really cut back on sleeper cars (again, cost) she would have to make an overnight stop in Paris, so that included a hotel stay. Total cost at booking, including the hotel, was about $700 USD and the trip was going to take all of two days. But hey, lesser carbon footprint and because she's not paying herself (work expense) no biggie.

Manages to get to Paris, and then, lo and behold, France is in the midst of a nationwide train worker strike. Trains get cancelled and she's not able to get a train from Paris to Madrid. Has to buy an airline ticket for about $150 and is able to make the 2 hour flight to Madrid and finish the trip. Total cost for the trip ends up being close to $1000 and it still took her most of 2 days.

If she had decided to just fly from Berlin to Madrid, flights are cheap and she could've gotten a $50 ticket and the trip would've been 5 hours.

Good microcosm of the bigger problem. Climate change is certainly real, and it's going to continue (and frankly, no matter what we do now, it will be changing for the next 50 years at least). The current environmental approach is to have governments sign on to draconian greenhouse gas cuts and then self report them, with the actual means of measuring emissions throughout that country being, well, dubious. Of course, while all of this is being discussed, we're emitting away everyday. The actual work continues all the time - electric cars are becoming more and more adopted (in rich Western countries, at least), fuel cells are being heavily invested and researched, nuclear power plants can be made smaller and vastly more safe than ones from even 10 years ago, and so on (of course, people are, paradoxically, moving away from zero emission nuclear plants because environmentalists still think we live in the 3 Mile Island era or that we'll build new ones in tsunami zones - imagine the less amount of CO2 that would be in the air today if environmentalists didn't get their way with the anti-nuclear campaign they're still waging 50 years in). All the hub-hub and focus tends to be on the wrong stuff while the real work either is being done anyway or is being blocked because of the wrong focus in all of this. And to top it all off, we're going to have climate change anyway, can't put the bottle back in, so learning to deal with it and adapt is probably the best course of action. People aren't going to take multiple week sailboat cruises to get back and forth across the Atlantic, and people aren't going to take multiple day train trips either. People are going to fly, people are going to drive, etc. Make the goals of all of this effort something real and tangible and not pie in the sky hopes that will never be realized.

[BDKJMU]

Good story on NPR yesterday - reporter was talking about the climate conference going on right now in Spain and how something like 25,000 people need to get there from all over the world and the irony of 25,000 spending so much CO2 in jet fuel usage to fly there. So she decided to try to take a train there - she's based out of Berlin so she just needed to take a train from Berlin to Spain. European trail travel, should be easy in the mecca of train transportation.

However, turns out crossing over countries' borders in Europe is still difficult, and there have been tons of cuts to service throughout Europe because supporting trains and their infrastructure is incredibly expensive. So, she ended up having to make 4 different bookings of trains over two different websites. Because they really cut back on sleeper cars (again, cost) she would have to make an overnight stop in Paris, so that included a hotel stay. Total cost at booking, including the hotel, was about $700 USD and the trip was going to take all of two days. But hey, lesser carbon footprint and because she's not paying herself (work expense) no biggie.

Manages to get to Paris, and then, lo and behold, France is in the midst of a nationwide train worker strike. Trains get cancelled and she's not able to get a train from Paris to Madrid. Has to buy an airline ticket for about $150 and is able to make the 2 hour flight to Madrid and finish the trip. Total cost for the trip ends up being close to $1000 and it still took her most of 2 days.

If she had decided to just fly from Berlin to Madrid, flights are cheap and she could've gotten a $50 ticket and the trip would've been 5 hours.

Good microcosm of the bigger problem. Climate change is certainly real, and it's going to continue (and frankly, no matter what we do now, it will be changing for the next 50 years at least). The current environmental approach is to have governments sign on to draconian greenhouse gas cuts and then self report them, with the actual means of measuring emissions throughout that country being, well, dubious. Of course, while all of this is being discussed, we're emitting away everyday. The actual work continues all the time - electric cars are becoming more and more adopted (in rich Western countries, at least), fuel cells are being heavily invested and researched, nuclear power plants can be made smaller and vastly more safe than ones from even 10 years ago, and so on (of course, people are, paradoxically, moving away from zero emission nuclear plants because environmentalists still think we live in the 3 Mile Island era or that we'll build new ones in tsunami zones - imagine the less amount of CO2 that would be in the air today if environmentalists didn't get their way with the anti-nuclear campaign they're still waging 50 years in). All the hub-hub and focus tends to be on the wrong stuff while the real work either is being done anyway or is being blocked because of the wrong focus in all of this. And to top it all off, we're going to have climate change anyway, can't put the bottle back in, so learning to deal with it and adapt is probably the best course of action. People aren't going to take multiple week sailboat cruises to get back and forth across the Atlantic, and people aren't going to take multiple day train trips either. People are going to fly, people are going to drive, etc. Make the goals of all of this effort something real and tangible and not pie in the sky hopes that will never be realized.

European trail travel is easy in the mecca of train transportation. Crossing over European countries borders isn’t difficult, at least with much smaller distances. But Christ, this lady was trying to go Berlin to Madrid . Thats over 2300 km/1400 miles. Even given that, if the frogs weren’t striking, she could have made it by train, even without a sleeper car and hotel room, by booking 1st class.

This past Sept while in Germany/Austria on 13 day trip with the gf, did trains the 1st week/rental car the 2nd week. Took an ICE (international) train from Munich to Salzburg, Austria. You wouldn’t even know you had crossed the border. Easy peasy (Gf is fluent in German, mine is limited). Booked 1st class, so even if it was had been an overnight train instead of under 2 hrs, would have been able to get a few hrs zzz..

Last week took a round trip train trip from the Amsterdam airport to Oberhausen, Germany (right by Essen). I had to connect to the ICE train (which runs from Amsterdam to Frankfurt) at Utrecht Centraal (still in Holland). Rode the ICE train across the German border to Oberhausen. You wouldn’t have known you crossed the border unless you were following along on google maps or similar. Did in reverse on the way back. Total train time about 1 3/4 hrs each way. Easy peasy. Expensive though (about 118 Euros roundtrip- might have been about 11-15 or so Euros more because I used a live agent to book it)

Have also heard taking trains between Switzerland and Germany isn’t difficult.

BTW Oberhausen has a huge Christmas market right by what’s touted as the largest shopping center. Go in the mall you would think you were at King of Prussia or the Mall of America. 1/2 the stores were American.

[GannonFan]

Good story on NPR yesterday - reporter was talking about the climate conference going on right now in Spain and how something like 25,000 people need to get there from all over the world and the irony of 25,000 spending so much CO2 in jet fuel usage to fly there. So she decided to try to take a train there - she's based out of Berlin so she just needed to take a train from Berlin to Spain. European trail travel, should be easy in the mecca of train transportation.

However, turns out crossing over countries' borders in Europe is still difficult, and there have been tons of cuts to service throughout Europe because supporting trains and their infrastructure is incredibly expensive. So, she ended up having to make 4 different bookings of trains over two different websites. Because they really cut back on sleeper cars (again, cost) she would have to make an overnight stop in Paris, so that included a hotel stay. Total cost at booking, including the hotel, was about $700 USD and the trip was going to take all of two days. But hey, lesser carbon footprint and because she's not paying herself (work expense) no biggie.

Manages to get to Paris, and then, lo and behold, France is in the midst of a nationwide train worker strike. Trains get cancelled and she's not able to get a train from Paris to Madrid. Has to buy an airline ticket for about $150 and is able to make the 2 hour flight to Madrid and finish the trip. Total cost for the trip ends up being close to $1000 and it still took her most of 2 days.

If she had decided to just fly from Berlin to Madrid, flights are cheap and she could've gotten a $50 ticket and the trip would've been 5 hours.

Good microcosm of the bigger problem. Climate change is certainly real, and it's going to continue (and frankly, no matter what we do now, it will be changing for the next 50 years at least). The current environmental approach is to have governments sign on to draconian greenhouse gas cuts and then self report them, with the actual means of measuring emissions throughout that country being, well, dubious. Of course, while all of this is being discussed, we're emitting away everyday. The actual work continues all the time - electric cars are becoming more and more adopted (in rich Western countries, at least), fuel cells are being heavily invested and researched, nuclear power plants can be made smaller and vastly more safe than ones from even 10 years ago, and so on (of course, people are, paradoxically, moving away from zero emission nuclear plants because environmentalists still think we live in the 3 Mile Island era or that we'll build new ones in tsunami zones - imagine the less amount of CO2 that would be in the air today if environmentalists didn't get their way with the anti-nuclear campaign they're still waging 50 years in). All the hub-hub and focus tends to be on the wrong stuff while the real work either is being done anyway or is being blocked because of the wrong focus in all of this. And to top it all off, we're going to have climate change anyway, can't put the bottle back in, so learning to deal with it and adapt is probably the best course of action. People aren't going to take multiple week sailboat cruises to get back and forth across the Atlantic, and people aren't going to take multiple day train trips either. People are going to fly, people are going to drive, etc. Make the goals of all of this effort something real and tangible and not pie in the sky hopes that will never be realized.

European trail travel is easy in the mecca of train transportation. Crossing over European countries borders isn’t difficult, at least with much smaller distances. But Christ, this lady was trying to go Berlin to Madrid . Thats over 2300 km/1400 miles. Even given that, if the frogs weren’t striking, she could have made it by train, even without a sleeper car and hotel room, by booking 1st class.

This past Sept while in Germany/Austria on 13 day trip with the gf, did trains the 1st week/rental car the 2nd week. Took an ICE (international) train from Munich to Salzburg, Austria. You wouldn’t even know you had crossed the border. Easy peasy (Gf is fluent in German, mine is limited). Booked 1st class, so even if it was had been an overnight train instead of under 2 hrs, would have been able to get a few hrs zzz..

Last week took a round trip train trip from the Amsterdam airport to Oberhausen, Germany (right by Essen). I had to connect to the ICE train (which runs from Amsterdam to Frankfurt) at Utrecht Centraal (still in Holland). Rode the ICE train across the German border to Oberhausen. You wouldn’t have known you crossed the border unless you were following along on google maps or similar. Did in reverse on the way back. Total train time about 1 3/4 hrs each way. Easy peasy. Expensive though (about 118 Euros roundtrip- might have been about 11-15 or so Euros more because I used a live agent to book it)

Have also heard taking trains between Switzerland and Germany isn’t difficult.

BTW Oberhausen has a huge Christmas market right by what’s touted as the largest shopping center. Go in the mall you would think you were at King of Prussia or the Mall of America. 1/2 the stores were American.

I've only taken trains in Italy and in the UK, and I've always found them to be extremely simple and I believe reasonably priced. Just passing along what the intrepid NPR reporter was reporting. She may have been a millennial so at least take that into account.

[JohnStOnge]

[kalm]

[kalm]

She’s still living rent free in conk minds as Chizzy predicted.

[Winterborn]

She’s still living rent free in conk minds as Chizzy predicted.

Conk?

I am just a fan of a decent joke/meme and her facial expression fits many different situations. She occupies less room then you do many because some of your cooking really gets me thinking about how I should cook salmon or what wine would go good with this dessert.

Now baby Yoda on the other hand has a full room in my head dedicated to him.

[kalm]

She’s still living rent free in conk minds as Chizzy predicted.

Conk?

I am just a fan of a decent joke/meme and her facial expression fits many different situations. She occupies less room then you do many because some of your cooking really gets me thinking about how I should cook salmon or what wine would go good with this dessert.

Now baby Yoda on the other hand has a full room in my head dedicated to him.

I wasn’t including you in that assessment.

[BDKJMU]

She’s still living rent free in conk minds as Chizzy predicted.

Not mine. I didn’t even know who she was at 1st. Don’t care whatever it is she’s said or done (haven’t heard her). She’s had, and will continue to have, zero effect on my life..

[CID1990]

WTF is all this talk about climate/environmental shit? I just like her because she’s got more balls than the entire GOP in DC combined!

Hey Jearf

What parts of her “solutions” do you agree with?

Have you read them?




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[CID1990]

Hey Jearf

What parts of her “solutions” do you agree with?

Have you read them?




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I don’t really give a flying fuck what she thinks or says....she deserves the award for standing up to Trump....something the entire GOP in DC is incapable of.

That’s what I thought.

I thought supporting Trump to “own the libs” was a tendency limited to the right but obviously it is broader in scope. It is a tendency of the small minded


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[Winterborn]

Conk?

I am just a fan of a decent joke/meme and her facial expression fits many different situations. She occupies less room then you do many because some of your cooking really gets me thinking about how I should cook salmon or what wine would go good with this dessert.

Now baby Yoda on the other hand has a full room in my head dedicated to him.

I wasn’t including you in that assessment.

Phew! For a moment there I thought you used your 36" shop broom to sweep me in with the rest of them. Instead of using such a big broom, maybe you could use a more accurate whisk broom next time? That way you can't be mistaken for sweeping up the good bolts and nuts along with the dirt.

[UNI88]

Looks like Time PotY has gone the way of the Nobel Peace Prize.

I don't completely agree with her but I think it's cool that there is a young person speaking up and giving a voice to a group of people that typically don't have one.

You don't have to like her but I don't think you can argue that she hasn't had an impact and influenced the discussion.

[CID1990]

That’s what I thought.

I thought supporting Trump to “own the libs” was a tendency limited to the right but obviously it is broader in scope. It is a tendency of the small minded


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The GOP has given up governing and joined the Trump Shitshow. They shall be rewarded.

Right now it is looking like that reward will be a second term for Trump


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[CID1990]

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[kalm]

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This!

[CAA Flagship]

WTF is all this talk about climate/environmental shit? I just like her because she’s got more balls than the entire GOP in DC combined!

She is preaching to her own crowds. Nothing ballsy about that.
The average Hong Kong protester has balls (BALLS).

[Winterborn]

I don't completely agree with her but I think it's cool that there is a young person speaking up and giving a voice to a group of people that typically don't have one.

You don't have to like her but I don't think you can argue that she hasn't had an impact and influenced the discussion.

I would argue that the only thing she has brought to the discussion is more emotions and table thumping in a topic/theater that is already overfull with emotion and table thumping. She will disappear just as quickly as she came on the scene, as she is nothing more than a pawn in this game; designed to elicit a certain emotional response.

She has brought no facts, no ideas, nor contributed to a meaningful discussion other than the fact that we are "stealing/stole her future". That type of "impact" is useful in only generating news and clicks and the "influence" will only be around as long as she fills the role she is being "paid" to play. Or do people think she (or her parents) lined up all the speaking time slots or the yachting across the oceans on their own? And that the people helping her are doing it out of the goodness of their heart?

There is always an agenda and one only has to follow the money to see it.

I should of prefaced the post saying that I am a full blooded cynic when it comes to these things and whenever I see a person just "appear" on the world stage with great fan fare and am told that I should listen to their message as gospel, I tend to be more than a bit septic on what they bring to the table.

Or maybe I just really don't like being preached at.

[Gil Dobie]

She has good intentions, leave her alone.

[CAA Flagship]

Another worthier candidate for POY

[Baldy]

Trump has already attacked this 16 year old girl on Twitter this morning.

I’m sure that 89Hen and the rest of the Conks on here are fine with this because......after all he is the President of the United States and all.

So?

If it offends your little sensibilities that a 16 year old developmentally disabled kid is being "attacked" on the world stage, maybe you shouldn't push a 16 year old developmentally disabled kid onto the world stage.

[CAA Flagship]

Another stronger candidate:

[Baldy]

So?

If it offends your little sensibilities that a 16 year old developmentally disabled kid is being "attacked" on the world stage, maybe you shouldn't push a 16 year old developmentally disabled kid onto the world stage.

It doesn’t offend by sensibilities but it does reveal the idiocy and hypocrisy of Trump & the GOP for going postal on a comment where Barron Trump is mentioned vs. The President of the United States of America Donald J. Trump verbally assaulting a 16 year old girl for being named a Time Person of the Year....which he previously won which shows how truly meaningless it is.

*my

The constant stream of diarrhea out of your mouth and onto this forum about it says different.

[UNI88]

Trump has already attacked this 16 year old girl on Twitter this morning.

I’m sure that 89Hen and the rest of the Conks on here are fine with this because......after all he is the President of the United States and all.

So?

If it offends your little sensibilities that a 16 year old developmentally disabled kid is being "attacked" on the world stage, maybe you shouldn't push a 16 year old developmentally disabled kid onto the world stage.

I don't have a problem with her being criticized, when you step on to the stage you're opening yourself up to criticism. But Trump criticizing her and then whining about Barron is hypocritical. Like it or not, Trump put Barron on the stage when he ran for President. Sasha and Malia got shit, Jenna and Barbara got shit. If you don't want your family getting shit then you shouldn't run for President.

[UNI88]

I don't completely agree with her but I think it's cool that there is a young person speaking up and giving a voice to a group of people that typically don't have one.

You don't have to like her but I don't think you can argue that she hasn't had an impact and influenced the discussion.

I would argue that the only thing she has brought to the discussion is more emotions and table thumping in a topic/theater that is already overfull with emotion and table thumping. She will disappear just as quickly as she came on the scene, as she is nothing more than a pawn in this game; designed to elicit a certain emotional response.

She has brought no facts, no ideas, nor contributed to a meaningful discussion other than the fact that we are "stealing/stole her future". That type of "impact" is useful in only generating news and clicks and the "influence" will only be around as long as she fills the role she is being "paid" to play. Or do people think she (or her parents) lined up all the speaking time slots or the yachting across the oceans on their own? And that the people helping her are doing it out of the goodness of their heart?

There is always an agenda and one only has to follow the money to see it.

I should of prefaced the post saying that I am a full blooded cynic when it comes to these things and whenever I see a person just "appear" on the world stage with great fan fare and am told that I should listen to their message as gospel, I tend to be more than a bit septic on what they bring to the table.

Or maybe I just really don't like being preached at.

I don't disagree WB but there is an agenda on both sides. Like I said I don't completely agree with her but I think it's great that she is speaking up for something she believes in (even if the people putting it up have an agenda) and that she is encouraging young people to care about the future and get involved. They might be naive and idealistic but they can learn.