My parents used to talk about rationing during the war with great apprehension. Clearly the nutters in and supporting Cancun are clueless as to how such a scheme would be viewed by the public. My inbox has lit up today from all around the world over this issue. Short of Climategate itself, I haven’t quite seen any other similar reaction.
Excerpts from the Telegraph: Cancun climate change summit: scientists call for rationing in developed world
Global warming is now such a serious threat to mankind that climate change experts are calling for Second World War-style rationing in rich countries to bring down carbon emissions.
…
In a series of papers published by the Royal Society, physicists and chemists from some of world’s most respected scientific institutions, including Oxford University and the Met Office, agreed that current plans to tackle global warming are not enough.
…
In one paper Professor Kevin Anderson, Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, said the only way to reduce global emissions enough, while allowing the poor nations to continue to grow, is to halt economic growth in the rich world over the next twenty years.
…
Prof Anderson admitted it “would not be easy” to persuade people to reduce their consumption of goods
He said politicians should consider a rationing system similar to the one introduced during the last “time of crisis” in the 1930s and 40s.
This could mean a limit on electricity so people are forced to turn the heating down, turn off the lights and replace old electrical goods like huge fridges with more efficient models. Food that has travelled from abroad may be limited and goods that require a lot of energy to manufacture.
“The Second World War and the concept of rationing is something we need to seriously consider if we are to address the scale of the problem we face,” he said.
Full story here: Cancun climate change summit: scientists call for rationing in developed world
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Does anyone really want to see a ration stamp like this?
For anyone that wishes to get the Royal Society’s papers referenced in the article, they are available for a limited time download here:
http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/369/1934.toc#content-block
Actually, I loved the rationing idea floated earlier. Take aways the car keys of every 16-21 year old and tell them its to fight climate change. In very short order we’ll have saved a whole generation from this madness. Tell an 18 year old he can’t drive anymore because of his carbon emissions and he’ll become sceptical so fast…
First day of Cancun follows the coldest night in the UK Midlands for 134 years.
Isn’t it funny that the UK was the first country to surrender to the AGW nuttiness and is punished this way by Mother Nature?
http://www.thisisderbyshire.co.uk/news/snow-set-coldest-November-night-134-years/article-2947337-detail/article.html
@johanna says:
November 30, 2010 at 8:30 am
Thanks for the link, curiousgeorge. Have added it to my modest collection of fine c&w. Nothing to do with WUWT, however. Will now read subsequent posts.
You’re welcome. There are a great many C&W songs that assault nonsense like AGW, stupid politician tricks, and other forms of group think. Country folks generally don’t put up with infringements on their freedoms and make it known thru our music. You might also be interested in Pandora radio (on the net) customizable by genre.
[ Note: I swapped angle brackets for the square braces in your italics marker. It’s < i > – MOD]
Perhaps the scientists and politicians who have caught flights to Cancun should set an example. Next time a global warming conference is arranged in an exotic location they can try getting there without creating more than a tiny carbon footprint. Thor Heyerdahl sailed to Polynesia on a balsa wood raft and later crossed the Atlantic in a boat made from reeds so it should be perfectly possible.
Of course they might not all make it but in that case they would be martyrs to their beliefs.
Who the heck elected them emperors of the world?
Did someone dissolve all sovereign national borders when we weren’t looking???
Trying to impose your will on other nations used to be an act of war…
I agree. It’s time to start making serious cuts.
– Take away all personal jets.
– Only one vehicle allowed per household.
– Only one house allowed per family.
– Downsize one’s homestead to no larger than 1000 sq ft.
– Cut out all trips to the massage therapist.
– No more being chauffered around in the back of a gas-guzzling limousine whilst surfing the web on your energy consuming laptop computer.
– No more jetsetting vacations to such places as Copenhagen and Cancun.
– Reduce food consumption to WW2 sized ration proportions.
– Remove all excess clothing in closets to WW2 standards (aka 2 pairs of pants, socks, unmentionables, practical shoes, etc). Yes, that means the custom $5000 Hugo Boss suits too.
– No more 15 ft Christmas trees with 5000 lights on them.
Okay, now that we’ve taken care of Al Gore, who wants to be next ?
“Power Grab says:
November 30, 2010 at 11:38 am”
That’s exactly the point. I am however totally in awe of the fact that supporters of AGW and carbon taxes can’t quite make the same connection even when politicians talk of “prices on carbon”, ETS and CPRS etc etc…
“Patrick Davis says:
Already installed in many countries. Australia is also pushing for smart meters, while power costs are rising exponetially at this time. The Australian Govn’t is also pushing for an internet information filter – designed to protect our children. What the minister fails to understand that “tech savvy” crimials know how to get around these things.”
I’ve got a ‘smart meter’ but no ‘smart appliances’. The most that could be done is to shift me onto my UPS boxes and / or backup generator 😉
BTW, secure tunneling isn’t very hard at all; and most anyone can do it. It’s not just for ‘criminals’ either. Lots of “tech savvy” folks want their stuff to be private:
http://www.stunnel.org/ for the GNU / Open Source version.
You can even get it prepackaged for Windows boxes if you like:
http://www.stunnel.org/download/binaries.html
So folks who think they are “in power” and “have control” can do most anything they like to “limit access” and a whole bunch of us “tech savvy” folks will just flow around them…
(How it works is pretty simple. You make a ‘secure tunnel’ to another person. They can be in the same country, or not. Peer to peer stuff flows between you two privately. “Blocked” stuff just flows from the person who isn’t blocked into the ‘intranet’ to the folks who are ‘blocked’. You need someone in the group who knows how to set up DNS servers / proxy servers / etc. if you go the shared portal route.)
If you have trouble setting it up, find a 14 year old kid to help you 😉
BTW, I’ve used such private tunnels to set up secure links between corporate offices; to protect corporate private data from public view. It’s a very common technique in business to use VPN (Virtual Private Networks) in this way.
Freedom, it’s not just for criminals anymore …
Curiousgeorge says:
November 29, 2010 at 7:18 pm
>… From that sample I’d estimate that there are upwards of 10,000 firearms, with appropriate ammo, within a 4 mile radius of my house . Crime is non-existent, btw.
An armed society is a polite society.
“E.M.Smith says:
November 30, 2010 at 6:01 pm”
Agree with what you say however, there are too many people who swallow, hook, line and sinker, Govn’t popaganda, “to save the children”. With the “internet filter”, anyone who knows knows how to get around these restrictions can do, easily.
johanna says:s
The most ludicrous example is the so-called greenies who want today’s organic fresh pulled carrots delivered to their homes. A more inefficient, expensive and transport intensive mechanism could hardly be devised. But hey, it is all about Tarqin and Samantha (won’t anyone think of The Children?).
Well, the US Senate just passed the “Food Safety Bill” that will make “organic” growing and selling very much harder:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/11/30/grow-a-tomato-go-to-prison/
It also grants the Homeland Security Department (aka TSA) the right to come grope your tomatoes and animals in your garden whenever they feel the need to ‘pat a tomato’…
It will be interesting to watch the collision between the “organic” green folks and the police state they have asked to be built…
I don’t think that WUWT is about politics, directly. But I hope it keeps deflating political balloons based on bogus science.
Compared to many posters, I am practically a communist. Please don’t categorise people in terms of Left or Right. It just doesn’t work these days.
The “right and left” just comes from France long ago. It’s basically a choice between fascist dictators and socialist republics, both using authoritarian controls. Missing from it is the US paradigm of a sovereign and free people. Yeah, you are right, right and left just don’t apply.
tj;
Wrong, to the roots.
P. Solar and others who focus on Green illogicalities are being suckers. That’s all incidental to the Statist control agenda, means to an end.
As for the Danish VAT fraud, it’s trivial and also incidental. The entire carbon(-dioxide) trading system is fraud, and properly allocating taxes on fraud is miniscule distraction.
P. Solar: if you are “almost a communist”, you are with the enemy. Your effort to misdirect is duly noted.
#We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when, ..#
Ric Werme says:
An armed society is a polite society.
Correct; when I was a kid in the 50’s and 60’s in a North Carolina small town (<500 population) doors were rarely locked. Everyone had guns, and you never heard of anyone being shot. Lots of rabbit, ducks and squirrels were but we had to eat.
All the statements are in line with the opinions of the Club of Rome: so the global alarmists starting with spread of fear will end up with the establishment of a repressive society and then we have to fight for our freedom again.