Swedish teenage climate change activist Greta Thunberg will spend two weeks travelling across the North Atlantic, to send a signal that "the climate change crisis is a real thing". Her goal is to attend a crucial climate change conference in New York.

Climate change is still a controversial topic and that’s exactly why we need people like Greta - to spread the debate further.

Scientists and weather nerds already pretty much agree on consensus climate change is not just real, but it seems we people are responsible and we should take much “greener” stance, starting with decarbonization ASAP (don’t miss this this huge post about decarbonization Ivo wrote couple of weeks ago).

Even if you don’t believe that CO2 pollution is the main cause and you think the proof is not scientific, you should take a “greener” stance, given what we know about complex system (climate is complex system).

Back to Greta and her journey. Before I get to the details, let me tell you, how surprised I was, when I found out Greta gets a quite a lot of criticism too - I’d rather say hate.

The hate goes from basic climate change deniers stuff, up to the accusations of child abuse with some hidden agenda, that kind of stuff. And—despite depressing comments you can see below—that’s a good thing. To make something that stands out, you get not only supporters, you get a lot of hate too. I take it as a sign Greta is doing great job.

Malizia II, the boat she’s travelling across the North Atlantic on, is a boat with no toilets, kitchens or privacy. The electricity on the boat will solely come from water turbines, or in the sailing world known as hydro generators, and solar panels, meaning the journey has a zero carbon footprint.

Professional sailor Boris Herrmann (38), who lives in Germany and is preparing for 2020 Vendée Globe (as the only German racer), is on board. Other crew members are her dad Svante, Pierre Casiraghi (co-skipper and founder of team malizia) and Nathan Grossman (close friend of Thunbergs and film maker).

We consider ourselves members of the supporters camp, and that’s why we decided to give Greta some coverage. Our friends from Follow My Challenge built a Windy plugin tracking Greta's journey, that makes it possible follow her path in realtime. You can view the tracker at https://www.windy.com/greta-thunberg

Recap & few more interesting facts:

• The journey from UK to NY, where UN Climate Action Summit 2019 will take place, takes about 10-14 days, depending on the weather and waves
• Approx 3,000 miles long journey begun on August 14th 2019 at 3 p.m. local time
• The 60 feet long and 20 feed wide ship is called Malizia II. Malizia means "the wily"
• She has not mentioned how he will return back to Europe

Departure in Plymouth

• Watch more videos from the departure here

Related content

• Windy founder's message to Greta
• Watch Greta Thunberg leaving Plymouth

https://www.windy.com/annotation/5d52dd2d1cec4500191ba6fc