Crossing the Atlantic Ocean. Alone. By Stand-Up-Paddleboard | Hacker News Reader

Crossing the Atlantic Ocean. Alone. By Stand-Up-Paddleboard

zeroemissions.eu

28 pointsgnabgib48 comments

More power to him and I hope he makes it but ambitious action against climate change this is not. Under no circumstances will modified paddleboards become standard modes of transportation nor will anyone with the ability to make change look at this as something other than a rich dude risking their life.

The whole project is a series of neat stunts that bring publicity to the cause. They also make documentaries.

a team building exercise, basically. how nice

Climate change doesn't need any more publicity, everybody is aware whether or not they align, everybody is aware.

I don't quite understand this. I guess the point is to do a stunt, but it also shows how useful carbon dioxide emissions are. You can cross the Atlantic in 100 days with zero emissions or a few hours with carbon dioxide emissions...

> You can cross the Atlantic in 100 days with zero emissions

Which is fine for a lot of the cross-Atlantic shipping traffic that is currently contributing to the CO2 emissions.

For example? I don't want to be ironic, I am genuinely curious.

Zero? Human exhales like 2kg of CO2 every day. That is just 200kg of CO2 emmisions from existing!

> Preparations for this special challenge have been ongoing for many months. However, for a project like this to come together, a lot of things have to fit together perfectly.

Take all the people, time and energy spend on preparations! It is probably several tons of CO2! Very long list of sponsors!

I refuse to believe, that super economy flight for $130 has higher CO2 emmisions than this stunt! It is like taking public transport!

The 200kg of emissions aren't from the crossing though, they are there anyways. You would have to calculate the additional emissions from the physical exercise in the crossing.

Why not? We already calculate cow farts! And kill animals because they breathe to much!

Human is the engine here!

Take old galleys where hundred people rowed single boat. All that food to feed them! That is not very effient transport!

It is like when Greta crossed atlantic on sail boat, but her crew took first class flights back!

Don't forget the farts! They produces a lot of methane which a much more potent greenhouse gas!

Human breath isn’t counted as fossil fuel emissions because the natural carbon cycle is a closed loop (all carbon we exhale came from our food and goes back to growing more food [1]), and also because humans don’t eat fossil fuels, of course. It’s the additional emissions from our fossil fuel burning machines that are causing climate change; we wouldn’t have CO2 driven climate change without the fossil fuel emissions, even if everyone was exercising. The fossil fuel emissions produce around 20x more CO2 than all humans breathing.

Taking the 6000km flight produces an additional ~1 ton of CO2 per passenger. A 777 emits around 10000kg per hour, or something like 70,000 kg of CO2 for one flight from Portugal to French Guiana. That doesn’t count the people breathing on the flight, and it doesn’t make any sense to compare a 7 hour flight to a few people taking several months to plan and execute an extreme paddle board trip. It’s the rate of additional CO2 emissions that matter, not the total number.

[1] https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/environment-quirky-science...

Why we regulate agricultural CO2 emissions, if the food we eat is "closed loop"?

I would say it takes a lot of fossil fuels to feed humans!!!

But I will keep this link, next time someone says I should eat bugs!

“Agricultural emissions” are coming from and regulated based on the machines involved, and animals, not really plants. We don’t require fossil fuels to feed humans, obviously, since humans didn’t use fossil fuels before a hundred or so years ago. We now have a system that happens to use unnecessary amounts of fossil fuels, and as always companies will externalize their impacts and and cut corners whenever possible. If we want to survive, it is looking more and more certain that we need to reduce fossil fuel based machine CO2 emissions.

BTW the cows vs bugs thing is because raising the scale of cattle we have is also completely unnecessary, and cows emit methane, which is way worse than CO2 and why cattle does count as ag emissions and is a concern.

Armchair climate science aside, it doesn’t actually matter where emissions are coming from, what matters is whether we can reduce them. We can’t really choose to stop breathing, and even if we did it cannot solve the problem we’ve created at all - human CO2 emissions is too small of a portion of total emissions. We can, however, choose to reduce fossil fuel and red meat consumption, and those things can make a real difference.

> 100 days with zero emissions

By my back of the envelope math, burning 600000 kcal should produce couple hundred kg of CO2. You could also make that crossing in less than a third of the time under sail, with about a third of the daily calorie consumption, for maybe a tenth of the CO2 output.

I don't see the point beyond feeding one's ego. I think he does it because such experiences brings in money in his talks.

There are easier ways to make money, though, so it's fair to think there are more important motivations.

This is an investment though - he has however long it takes to cross the ocean that is hard. There after he can make money giving talks which is a lot easier (if you hate giving talks of course this isn't easy money, but if that doesn't bother you)

Assume you viewpoint is correct. How is this different from so many tech bros?

The person is doing something physically and technically challenging. Perfect HN material.

Would love to dive into how he built the paddleboard, etc.

Likely talks that they fly him to thus making him a lager than average cause of global warming...

It's rather stretching the definition of a SUP if you ask me, but fair winds and following seas to him anyway.

Looking at the plotted journey....IE Portugal, ivory coast, west to FG.... Isn't this a route normally/regularly done by sail?

Before modern era, surely was done this way in antiquity..

I guess I just don't get it. Does the "paddleboard" represent something more than sail?

Naive question - how will he handle storms? This is hurricane season.

The blurb says it is an 'offshore' paddle board and that they do expect to encounter storms.

From the pics, it's a little difficult to classify it as a paddle board. Certainly doesn't look much like what I see if I search for "paddle board" or "offshore paddle board".

It's fairly large. There appears to be a hatch leading to an interior space. Presumably that's where he sleeps and stores supplies.

It's really more of a small paddle-powered boat. Given the shape and the ability to seal off the interior, it probably can survive a fair bit of rolling around in a storm.

Seems like a really inefficient way to paddle?

People have already rowed solo across the Atlantic and Pacific.

Rowing won't get the attention the paddleboard will?

wouldn't the current negate the paddling as you go farther out?

Depends on the crossing. Usually they will choose a route that is favorable. This is probably the same as the ocean crossings by row boat.

https://youtu.be/6SYHamnHqU8?si=vp-NLeMnsdQz1R-Z

Generally speaking there is a route called the "Milk Run" from Europe to the Caribbean that has tail winds and good currents in the right direction. Also much nicer weather.

Portugal to French Guiana means following the North Atlantic Gyre - The Canary Current then the North Equatorial Current.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_Gyre

Looking at the current maps, I think most of the paddling will be southward, to get down to South America rather than the Caribbean.

For example, Thor Heyerdahl's Ra II, a square-sailed reed boat, went from Morocco to Barbados - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thor_Heyerdahl#Boats_Ra_and_Ra... .

The people I've heard of who have rowed across the Atlantic generally do Canary Islands to the Caribbean. There's even "The World's Toughest Row" for that route - https://www.worldstoughestrow.com/ .

Like...why? Why do we need to try this?

Well.. better doing that then trying to understand cryptic C++ compiler warnings.

I don't know about you, but I get paid a lot of money to understand cryptic C++ compiler warnings, and I'm not risking my life at sea. In a strange sort of way I enjoy the challenge (which is part of why people cross the sea, so I can't even claim I'm very different)

You’re risking your life at sea++

Why are humans pushing themselves to do challenging stuff? I don't know man, but it's just what we do, and I think that's cool.

We don't. I'm not going to try this. You appear to not want to either, and that is fine. He is trying this, and I see no reason anyone should prevent him from trying. (I'm open to changing my mind if someone comes up with good justification, but in generally I like the freedom message and so place a high bar on what a good justification would be)

The real question everyone is wanting to know but not asking - can we laugh if he dies?

Climate change fanatics are not just climate change fanatics

Why stand up and not use your legs at all?? People have rowed it.

This is a weird stunt that won’t prove anything. If he (magically) made it in a week people would still fly.

What’s the point? Don’t say “raising awareness”. Whose mind does the exercise have a chance of changing about what question? What behavioral change will that changed mind cause?

Is there going to be anyone checking that he is actually standing up all the time he's paddling, and not taking a sneaky kneeling break?

I'm intrigued how he will store 600,000 kcals of food for the 2500 hours+ on that board. And Water... Any help from a helicopter will be a bit disingenuous.

This was my question too, my bet is support from a vessel and so this whole thing is kind of silly.

Fresh water will presumably be reverse-osmosis energy-recovery desalination. These are normal on sailboats nowadays and often driven off a small PV array like shown on the pictures of the paddleboard.

Regards food, the paddleboard looks about the same size as people who have previously rowed across the Atlantic solo.

This seems… ill-advised.

"Ubaid/Uruk did not possess the blue ocean technology to reach America. All cultural diffusion models assuming external impulses in the creation of Caral / Olmec civilizations are ruled out"

Writing, Metallurgy, Weaving, Pyramids, … all co-evolution? Could be. Or…

Where on the page are you quoting from?

"Hyperdiffusionism is a pseudoarchaeological hypothesis that postulates that certain historical technologies or ideas were developed by a single people or civilization and then spread to other cultures. Thus, all great civilizations that engage in what appear to be similar cultural practices, such as the construction of pyramids, derived them from a single common progenitor." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperdiffusionism

Thor Heyerdahl advocated hyperdiffusionist ideas, and to his credit showed two such routes were possible. However, "His hyperdiffusionist ideas on ancient cultures had been widely rejected by the scientific community, even before the expedition." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thor_Heyerdahl

I write more about it at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44399051 .

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