The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.
NOTE: The excerpt below is from the Nov. 30 BOTW archives.
The Heat Is Off?
“In a series of papers published by the Royal Society, physicists and chemists from some of [the] world’s most respected scientific institutions, including Oxford University and the Met Office”–Britain’s equivalent of the National Weather Service–“agreed that current plans to tackle global warming are not enough,” London’s Daily Telegraph reports.
Wow, that’s a surprise!
The report continues:
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.
This would mean a drastic change in lifestyles for many people in countries like Britain as everyone will have to buy less ‘carbon intensive’ goods and services such as long haul flights and fuel hungry cars.
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 proposals come, the paper notes, “as the world meets in Cancun, Mexico for the latest round of United Nations talks on climate change.” Maybe ideas like this would be a little less difficult to take seriously if the global warmists would begin by rationing their own travel to places like Cancun, Mexico!
Meanwhile, the Associated Press reports that today is the end of the Atlantic hurricane season:
While extreme tropical weather ravaged Haiti, Mexico and elsewhere, U.S. forecasters are wondering if the nation can make history and extend its luck into 2011. If so, it would be the first time ever that the U.S. escaped a major hurricane for six years.
“That would be a record I would like to break,” said Dennis Feltgen, a spokesman for the National Hurricane Center in Miami.
Of course, the last big hurricane season was 2005, the year of Katrina and Rita. Back then, we kept hearing that this was caused by global warming. The words “global warming” and “climate change” appear nowhere in the AP dispatch–demonstrating yet again why global warming is undeniable: Bad weather is always evidence for it, but good weather is never evidence against it.
For more “Best of the Web” click here and look for the “Best of the Web Today” link in the middle column below “Today’s Columnists.”
