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...
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.
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!
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.
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.
MalbertKerman|5 months ago
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.
throw83939449|5 months ago
> 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!
dahart|5 months ago
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...
echoangle|5 months ago
juancn|5 months ago
throw83939449|5 months ago
zimpenfish|5 months ago
Which is fine for a lot of the cross-Atlantic shipping traffic that is currently contributing to the CO2 emissions.
etamponi|5 months ago