Gambit claim: UK discusses 10 hour working week for global climate control

The UK leads the way with more radical rain-dance

h/t  James Delingpole, Eric Worrall

If people work only one-day-a-week, they will need to spend the other six days growing food and feeding the chickens in their own back yards.

The head of the so-called conservative government, Theresa May, wants to spend $1,000 billion dollars on fashionable weather, and the leader of the opposition, who may be the next PM, says Brits should work less to save the world. Jeremy Corbyn’s plan last week was to cut working hours to 34 per week, and bring in lots of robots. This week, oh-so-conveniently, a Labour-leaning think tank announces that if a four day week was good, a one day week would be better, and if people worked 10 hours, and got paid 75% less, there will be no more droughts in England and the oceans will fall. Apparently money causes climate change.

Keep your eye on the ball — not on the gambit

The one working day plan is the usual wild gimmick, unmistakably timed to make Corbyn’s plan appear to be in the sensible center. It’s the bread and circuses marketing plan.

Radical scheme to tackle climate change

Rory Tingle, Mail online

Brits could work for just 10 hours a week and take home up to 75 per cent less pay under a radical scheme to tackle climate change being discussed by Labour.

The report by the Autonomy think-tank called for ‘rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society’ to cut carbon emissions, including dramatically limiting how long people spend at work.

Leo Murray, who advises shadow Treasury minister Clive Lewis, backed the report’s findings, saying: ‘I like this take a lot’.

UK FlagIt makes sense if you assume that humans are toxic enviro-monsters who harm the planet with every hour of work. Which is true for the renewables industry. Cutting hours installing useless intermittent infrastructure will save birds, bats, whales and forest. But making the nation poorer, by keeping sacred coal underground will just ensure the last tree is razed. If people work just one-day-a-week, they will need to spend the other six days growing food and feeding the chickens in their own back yards.

The left are masters of psychology and verbal wordplay but doomed by numbers and their desire to use force instead of persuasion. There are sensible things about Corbyns ideas (like increasing automation), but it’s inevitable he has to go and wreck them by making them mandatory. If people were as efficient on a four day week with a few extra robots, wouldn’t businesses want to do that voluntarily? Shouldn’t individual bosses and staff figure out what’s best for them?

The real solution to climate change lies off the political chart. First we have to figure out if there is a problem. Then ask if we need to do anything at all. We audit the data sets. We validate the climate models. Everything else is bread and circuses.

The real game — can the conservatives find a conservative PM:

Where are the sensible politicians, as Delingpole says:

Yet amazingly, none of the prospective candidates to replace Theresa May as Prime Minister is addressing this serious problem.

Rather, Michael Gove, Boris Johnson, Jeremy Hunt and the rest seem to be engaged in a competition as to who can demonstrate themselves to be most in thrall to the Ice Age 2-driven wisdom of the pigtailed, autistic child-goddess St Greta the Divine.

This is dangerous stuff.

The biggest issue in the UK this week is stopping May from gifting freeloading parasites with billions of dollars just like Kevin Rudd and Barack Obama did in their final weeks.

h/t also to Pat!

9.6 out of 10 based on 48 ratings

68 comments to Gambit claim: UK discusses 10 hour working week for global climate control

  • #
    Steve Richards

    It is sad that the UK politicians seem to be in a race to the bottom as to who can announce support for the most stupid green measures.
    Oh for technically aware and competent UK politicians who understand even a hint of science and engineering!
    Lets hope the Brexit party make strong inroads to the grip the 3 failed main parties have on life in the UK.

    280

    • #
      Robdel

      What does Farage have to say about climate change?

      140

      • #
        robert rosicka

        No idea but Boris is as green as can be .

        80

      • #
        Graeme No.3

        Robdel:

        Farage is saying nothing as he wants to win the election. Means that he doesn’t believe the scam.

        101

      • #
        Eric Worrall

        Farage once asked Lord Monckton to be UKIP’s climate spokesman, I think that is a bit of a hint.

        160

      • #

        I wonder what the ‘celebrities and the other elite’ would have to say about this? The peasants will truly be peasants with no money to spend on movies, music, facetime etc, on which the former depend more than they might realise.

        70

        • #
          Sceptical Sam

          I wonder what the ‘celebrities and the other elite’ would have to say about this?

          Forget the celebs.

          Better ask the TUC.

          https://www.tuc.org.uk/national/campaigns

          It’s about time the Trades Union Congress stood up and did what their members want them to do. Brexit.

          Can you imagine workers being happy about taking a 75% reduction in wages?

          Perhaps they need to relearn the lessons of Peterloo 1819?

          70

        • #
          sophocles

          … we would quickly see the rise of Oliver Cromwell II and the New Roundhead Army.

          Civil War.

          10

    • #
      GD

      It is sad that the UK politicians seem to be in a race to the bottom as to who can announce support for the most stupid green measures.

      It’s like they’re in a race with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to show how quickly they can destroy our civilisation.

      100

  • #

    Yep, bring back the feudal era.

    70

  • #

    Not just keep the populace alarmed and in thrall to Big Bro, but weaken the populace in every possible way, energy deprived, education deprived, initiative discouraged, means of self protection and free speech forbidden, no intrusion into lives and liberties however mi-neut. to be overlooked in bringing about a New-Feudalism ruled by divine right of our modern technorat philosopher-kings.

    130

    • #
      Mal

      We had aristocracy, then democracy and now heading towards rule by the idiocracy.

      180

      • #
        ivan

        It appears that the film ‘Idiocracy’ is prophetic and is being used as a guide like the book 1984 by the lefty loons since they never have an original thought themselves.

        100

        • #

          The film Idiocracy is among the worst films ever.

          The wife and I lasted 15 minutes before I turned it off.

          The puzzling thing is that at a dinner party, a professional investment manager had spent 15 minutes telling everyone how great the movie Idiocracy was (maybe it was only 5 minutes, but seemed like 15). The next time it was on TV, we cancelled some plans to stay home and see it. BUT IT WAS AWFUL !

          So I go berserk anytime someone mentions it !

          Maybe I missed the message.

          If I want to watch stupid people in action, i can always watch a Three Stooges TV show, or start a conversation with some leftists about climate change !

          Whatever they claim, I “top”, and they believe me.

          If they say we have 12 years to go, I say 10 years, based on new research.

          If they say this year was the hottest “ever”, I say next year will be much hotter.

          If they claim CO2 lingers in the atmosphere for 100 years, I say new research shows 1,000 years.

          Anything I say that is more scary than what they already believe (based on faith, not real science) is automatically believed !

          I would hesitate to call them “lefty loons”, since many are successful on their jobs, live in nice homes in nice neighborhoods.

          They are just very gullible to the appeal to authority logical fallacy, as long as the “authorities” are leftists.

          If Donald Trump started claiming global warming was an existential threat, the leftists here in the USA would claim the Russians were blackmailing him to make him say that.

          50

          • #
            Robert Swan

            Richard:

            The film Idiocracy is among the worst films ever.

            The wife and I lasted 15 minutes before I turned it off.

            Aren’t you being a bit of a climatologist here, extrapolating the first 15 minutes of the movie to draw a conclusion about its entirety?

            I did sit through it and, while I thought it wasn’t much in terms of scripting or acting, it did have a somewhat thought-provoking storyline — more than “Titanic”, say, or many other box-office blockbusters. It may well be that your “professional investment manager” was looking at it from that perspective.

            Not that I recommend sitting through it — I had my doubts I would make it through. But you might like to read the storyline to see that the message is basically that if we follow our current intellectual trajectory, we’re headed down the toilet. But that gets us back to extrapolation, which is a dangerous game.

            40

      • #
        WXcycles

        Rome had to be burned down to save the world you see, people were gluing themselves to passing chariots ‘n all.

        70

  • #
    Travis T. Jones

    “This is dangerous stuff.”

    Quite so, the lunatics are in charge of the asylum …

    “Yet even those of us who accept the science on climate change [failed UN doomsday global warming] tend to compartmentalise our fears for the future in order to function day to day.

    It means we’re living with cognitive dissonance – the mental discomfort or psychological stress that comes from believing two or more contradictory ideas at the same time.

    https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/we-can-save-our-minds-by-saving-the-world-20190117-p50rye.html

    Ms. May, the doctor will see you now …

    100

  • #
    BoyfromTottenham

    Obviously both the PM and the leader of “Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition” want to destroy what is left of Great Britain. But why, and for whose benefit I ask? I have no bl@@dy idea, but if I were still living there I would be getting my affairs in order before I leave for somewhere less loony (even the EU looks attractive!). This makes the dreadful ‘Battle for Britain” period of 1974-79 look like it was a picnic! Good luck everyone. You are going to need it.

    140

    • #
      Hanrahan

      But why, and for whose benefit I ask?

      Why indeed. I’ve been trying to figure that out for years. They think voting to pick others’ pockets is cool but surely anyone with an IQ larger than their shoe size would realise that could never end well, The puppet masters live behind high walls or on floating palaces and have bunkers in NZ. Anarchy suits them fine, they will capitalise on it.

      80

    • #
      GD

      Obviously both the PM and the leader of “Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition” want to destroy what is left of Great Britain.

      If you want to be really afraid, try Sadiq Khan – Prime Minister.

      It could happen.

      40

  • #
    Zane

    Oh dear. Now they are drinking infusions of datura.

    70

  • #

    People have financial comittments based on the pay they are receiving. Change that and watch the bovine waste hit the rotating wind generating device.

    The ramifications of this lunacy aren’t even worth canvassing, no matter what the perceived climate crisis might be.

    If you thought people wouldn’t protest about climate change, wait till they try to implement something like this, and it’ll be for the opposite reason.

    Tony.

    230

    • #
      Peter C

      Have we reached Peak Crazy yet?

      I am not sure. However I think the Truth is slowly sinking in.

      111

  • #

    Outlandish ideas from (perceived) leaders which get mainstream coverage are not off-top-of-head outpourings or individual beliefs. They are the softening-up and conditioning for globalist projects.

    Think of Turnbull’s pottier moments. Yes, the notions were absurd and ruinous; yes, the man himself is a barely articulate oaf. But his agile-smart-mini-cities utterances were not accidental. He was doing a job for his actual employers and controllers (hint, not us).

    Recent experience has shown that with totally enslaved media you can spend about five years advancing any idea from ridiculous to acceptable and then to desirable. (Want to change your nationality to Avatarian and marry a can of fly-spray? Check back soon. With a bit more time you and Mortein will be able to adopt.)

    Let me think now…massive green projects strangling industry in the West…work week cut to ten hours in Britain…the rise and rise of the service (ie non-) economy…consumerism dwarfing production…shrinking of the middle class…naughty white persons…very naughty white males…make love not babies…

    Looks like Henry Kissinger didn’t waste that flight to China!

    120

  • #
    Another Ian

    Global climate control gone ack willie

    http://www.wxmaps.org/pix/prec7

    50

  • #
    Tim Spence

    But that would signify that politicians would also work a ten hour week and therefore cause less damage … Oh wait, sorry, I hadn’t thought that through.

    130

  • #
    Dave Ward

    Can the conservatives find a conservative PM

    That would mean the so-called “Conservative” party actually HAVING some conservative politicians to start with…

    90

  • #
    Robert Christopher

    And the Australians thought their politicians were the most mental?

    70

  • #
    Robert Christopher

    And the Australians thought their politicians were the most mental?

    20

  • #
    Serge Wright

    Of course this policy will never be implemented, but it’s an extraordinary policy to propose. The number of lives lost would be enormous, resulting from the mass poverty and starvation as the economy collapsed. The term Brexit would also take on a whole new meaning as millions of starving refugees would try and flea across the channel. But what is really astonishing and disturbing is to consider how much you would really have to hate your country along with its citizens to want to condemn them to such a living hell. How could such people ever be elected to power ?

    110

  • #
    TdeF

    “The biggest issue in the UK this week is stopping May from gifting freeloading parasites with billions of dollars just like Kevin Rudd and Barack Obama did in their final weeks.”

    Consider the nearly $0.5Billion Malcolm gave to Lucy’s friends without application, review or even a request. To ‘save’ the Great Barrier Reef from what exactly, no one knows. They had yet to apply for the 7 1/2 tons of gold. Climate Change?

    190

  • #
    TdeF

    Also you have to consider Boris is playing politician. Everyone knows he wants Brexit. More than half the parliament do not. If he wants out of Climate Change too, he has no hope of being elected and that means no hope of getting out of the EU. It’s a question right now of which is more important. No one seriously believe in Climate Change, except children. And the Greens, but I repeat myself.

    160

    • #
      TdeF

      I have to make a distinction. There are two types of Greens. Green politicians who believe nothing they say. Green voters who believe everything. It is a cult.

      170

    • #
      Gerry, England

      The lying oaf Johnson has been an EU fan for years – check with Peter Hitchens on that. Given that he is totally untrustworthy and just wants to be PM with no idea of what to do if he does, he took a gamble on backing Brexit, hoping that Cameron would resign (correct) and he would then be party leader and so PM (incorrect).

      60

    • #
      ivan

      Sorry TdeF but Boris is a green as they come, he supports the decarbonisation of the UK as proposed by the CCC for 2050 and pushed by Mrs. May after her resignation as PM.

      50

      • #
        TdeF

        I am reading that from a very disappointed Delingpole. As Delingpole says, if Boris himself isn’t Green, his wife is a dedicated Green supporter. However as the man likely to be PM, removing the UK from the EU is a priority and his priority. If he can achieve that, other things are connected to it like the whole EU Carbon Credits/Windmills business. We are half way there.

        However I would accept that no one else is going to challenge the Green monster, Grexit at the same time as pushing Brexit. That would infuriate Brussels and half of Britain and would kill any hope of either. So one at a time. Sadly Brexit is more important right now and a tough battle. Trump too is pulling the US out of Paris but he is not talking about it.

        Also consider that Nigel Farage is making the Tories wake up. It’s support Brexit or lose your job. It’s that simple. Otherwise Boris would not have a hope of convincing anyone. It is Farage who is calling the shots now.

        As with the US, first Trump, then Paris. For the UK, it’s Boris first, then Brexit, then Grexit. It’s taken 40 years for the Common Market to become the European Council to become the European Union and a proxy for the takeover of Europe by the French and Germans with their own army. It’s going to take a little while to dismantle the 4th Reich.

        100

        • #
          TdeF

          Or to put it another way, the only topic on the table in the UK is BREXIT. It is not Climate Change or Global Warming. Yes, they are parts of the same thing but without BREXIT, there is no UK government anyway. 60% of the laws are written in Brussels and the British people are ruled from overseas. As in WWII, some parts of the UK establishment are very happy with that.

          70

        • #
          Graeme No.3

          I heard that he is having a Wifexit. Does the new version like Green colours?

          20

  • #
    Sean McHugh

    My –d! And I thought Australia was the most stupid country.

    50

  • #
    Richard Ilfeld

    Any bureaucrat realizes that the actual work done in their bailiwick could easily be accomplished in ten hours a week; and with a tea interval included to boot. Thus folks in government are sanguine about the proposal; give them the time off for real rather than forcing them to while away idle time in the workplace.
    Surely the private can’t be different, can it? After all we keep paying government folks more to keep them from being recruited by a private sector supposedly clamoring for their talents.

    30

    • #
      Another Ian

      As Parkinson put it – “Work expands to fill the time available for its completion”

      But I doubt he imagined an expansion figure as big as that

      30

  • #
    Gerry, England

    When it comes to automation there is a very good analogy as to why the UK has less of it and so has a lower productivity which baffles so many. Car washing. Automated car washes have been around for decades but currently investment in installing them has dried up. If you travel the UK you will find old service station forecourts and parts of many car parks providing a hand car wash service. In days gone by in car parks it might be the boy scouts – in those days they were boys – earning some money for their troup. Now you will find they all speak eastern european. So why would you invest in automation if labour is cheap? Thanks to Labour opening up the floodgates to imigration, labour became cheap. By contrast, a programme looking at what would happen to our fruit industry if the cheap pickers left after Brexit showed a strawberry picking machine being developed. With labour in short supply and therefore more expensive, enter the machine.

    60

    • #
      TdeF

      That was the irony in the emancipation of the slaves in America in 1865 It was at the same time automatic cotton picking machines were coming, so the jobs and the need for cheap labour was vanishing anyway. Lincoln was an astute politician who recast the aims of a brutal economic war to make it a battle over slavery. History was rewritten and motives recast as noble and not plain greed.

      So the unemployed slave population moved north but found the poor Irish migrants would do the work for less. It was a tough time for everyone and remained that way with 25% unemployment before the advent of the greatest invention of the 20th century, consumerism. Factories which made guns, planes and trucks made refrigerators, planes and passenger cars. Consumerism was a concept Karl Marx had never considered and the making of the rich post war Western world. Make the poor rich and life improves for everyone and machines can do the repetitive tasks. So it’s really odd that the Capitalists of America are still chasing cheap unskilled labor. They are the very people Marx hated and the left is an alliance between greedy Capitalist exploiters and communists. Presented as idealism. As always.

      70

    • #
      PeterW

      Gerry….

      I may be wrong, but I suspect that what you are seeing there is the free market at work.
      When regulation and red tape drive up the cost of employed labour and infrastructure, it creates a niche for people who are willing to work for themselves with a minimum of equipment. If it pays, people will do it.

      Another problem with processes demanding expensive infrastructure is that the concentration that makes it more productive, also makes it less convenient for the customer. A valid comparison is between rail and motor transport. Rail is significantly more efficient per ton or person over a kilometre, but we continue to use road transport because rail cannot deliver door-to-door and suffers from inflexible schedules.

      30

  • #
    pat

    Aljazeera today, thanks to theirABC team – Eric Campbell and Tomas Ybarra.
    as recently as Jan 2019, ***Campbell & Ybarra had “Walk In Their Shoes” on ABC’s Foreign Correspondent, in which they travelled with illegals trying to get into the wicked Trump’s America.

    also features Bjorn Lomborg:

    VIDEO: 25min: 13 Jun: Aljazeera: People & Power: Climate Hackers
    (A film by ***Eric Campbell, Tomas Ybarrra and ABC)
    As the world faces an existential crisis due to climate change, can science devise feasible solutions to global warming?
    In October 2018, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a shocking warning that we have just 12 years to avoid climate catastrophe.
    But is it already too late?
    For Professor Jason Box, a Copenhagen-based ice climatologist and former lead author for the organisation, humanity’s predicament is now almost beyond repair
    “When we lose the reflective cover of the arctic sea ice, when we lose the Greenland ice sheet, the climate system globally unravels. And it’s going to create the kind of problems that will make it pretty hard to govern society: the migrations, the droughts,” he says.
    “What’s at risk here is practically civilisation.”…
    “For better or for worse, geoengineering will have to be part of the mix going forward,” Box says…

    In this film, reporter ***Eric Campbell asks whether science and technology can provide a solution to the existential threat posed by global warming or whether these efforts will merely give us yet more excuses to keep burning the planet to a cinder.
    https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/peopleandpower/2019/06/climate-hackers-190613105804336.html

    ***Wikipedia: Eric Campbell (reporter)
    Eric Campbell is a prominent Australian foreign correspondent, who began his career as a journalist at The Sydney Morning Herald…
    From 1987 to 1988, Campbell co-presented The Investigators program for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), before a two year stint at the Nine Network reporting for A Current Affair. He was the ABC’s Moscow correspondent from 1996 to 1999…
    In 2000 he returned to Sydney as a reporter/producer for ABC TV’s Foreign Correspondent program. Campbell has also reported for other ABC programs: The 7.30 Report, Lateline and Quantum…
    In 1999 Campbell won a New York Television Festival Award for environmental reporting…

    Wikipedia: Jason Box
    Box received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from the University of Colorado, Boulder in 1994, 1997, and 2001, respectively…
    (Box) has also protested against the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline in 2011, and also signed a letter to President Obama urging him not to approve it, which was sent earlier that year and was also signed by James Hansen and Peter Gleick, among others…

    20

  • #
    pat

    this remains the elusive CAGW holy grail:

    13 Jun: CarbonPulse: China issues tender to build national carbon trading platform
    The Shanghai United Assets and Equity Exchange has issued a tender seeking bids to build the trading platform for China’s national carbon market, one of the last pieces of the puzzle before the world’s biggest cap-and-trade programme can commence…

    6 Jun: BusinessGreen: Industry hopes high for China’s carbon market
    by Madeleine Cuff
    Latest survey from IETA shows doubling in proportion of respondents who believe China will have carbon trading system for its power sector up and running by 2021
    The proportion of carbon market ***experts who expect China to have a nationwide carbon trading system for its power sector up and running by 2021 has almost doubled in the space of a year…

    8 May: Bloomberg: China Is Dawdling on Carbon Trading
    by Bloomberg News, With assistance by Feifei Shen, and Jason Rogers
    A bureaucratic reshuffle has left China months behind in its preparation to launch a national carbon market…
    The delays in the initial phase of development are due to a regulatory restructuring last year that saw responsibility for the carbon market moved to the new environment ministry, according to an adviser to the Chinese government on climate change policies. Despite the hiccup, the nation should still be able to meet its 2020 launch target, according to the adviser, Ma Aimin…
    China’s use of financial markets to help cut greenhouse gases is expected to result in the world’s biggest market for trading carbon emissions…
    A bureaucratic shift of that size would “unavoidably have some impact on the progress of building a carbon market,” said Zhao Xiaolu, a China Climate Initiative manager at Environmental Defense Fund, a global non-profit organization…

    The outcome of China’s emissions trading system is being closely watched by businesses and governments as its massive scale could shape global trends and spur a faster transition toward clean energy…ETC
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-07/china-dawdles-on-carbon-trading-as-reshuffle-slows-development

    theirABC was carrying Reuters’ piece as far back as 2015:

    Sept 2015: ABC: Reuters: Xi Jinping’s US visit: China to announce 2017 launch of carbon market; Obama greets Xi with ‘ni hao’
    China is set to announce the launch of a national carbon emissions trading market in 2017 as part of a joint climate change statement with the United States meant to boost prospects for a global climate pact, US officials say…
    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-09-25/china-to-announce-2017-launch-of-carbon-market-us-officials-say/6804344

    20

  • #
    pat

    ***will these children be allowed to work only 10 hours per week? doubt it. birds, bats, children – not a concern for the CAGW mob:

    12 Jun: UK Independent: How green is a battery-powered future?
    Analysis: They can hold renewable energy, but the lithium-ion batteries that power our lives have their own issues
    by Phoebe Weston Science Correspondent
    As we move towards a coal-free future, batteries will increasingly be used in conjunction with renewable energy production.
    One problem with renewable energy sources is that turbines generate electricity only if it’s windy and solar panels work only when the sun shines. Batteries help us get around this problem as they can store energy and release it when demand is high…

    More than 60 per cent of the world’s cobalt comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
    Chinese companies are running many of the country’s industrial mines using ***more than 35,000 children – some as young as six – to do the dirty work. They are risking their lives to mine cobalt for big electronic firms, many of which are likely to be aware of the appalling conditions they work in…
    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/climate-change-renewable-energy-lithium-ion-batteries-mobile-phones-solar-power-wind-energy-a8954296.html

    20

  • #
    StephenP

    Have they thought about te implications on businesses, and there is a further dose of reality needed fom the net zero CO2 target.
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2019/06/12/2050-zero-carbon-emissions-target-means-consumers-business/

    20

  • #
    Tom O

    A 10 hour work week would not pay the taxes needed to pay for the welfare requirements of people on a 10 hour work week, especially if they took an “up to 75% pay cut.”

    Automation is the ruination of the industrial world, not the savior. The more “robots” that work and do not consume, the less consumption of industrial goods. Let’s face it. A robot puts a human out of a job and on to the dole. No income requires lowered consumption. Lower consumption will bring on more layoffs since the cost of the robot has already been paid, and layoffs will again, lead to even lower consumption. Robots are only needed and are only useful, when there is no available labor to do the job. They will always be counter productive, from a societal point of view, if developed for “profit taking.” As an example, a “robot” developed to “flip burgers” in a society that has 10% or more unemployment among teens and 20 year olds is ridiculous and a burden on society while making profit for the corporation and its stockholders.

    61

    • #
      John F. Hultquist

      You wrote: “Automation is the ruination of the industrial world, not the savior.

      As early as 1935 [William Aberhart of the Social Credit party in Alberta] there has been the poorly attributed comment such as “ why not give them spoons and forks instead of picks and shovels if the object was to lengthen out the task.”

      I’ve cut grapes from vines, 20 pounds to a box. While picking the first 5 boxes, it is fun and one thinks about the wine that will follow. When the 20th box is filled, it is no longer fun. Now, almost all grapes are picked by machines. Hours worked have moved out of the bright & hot sun into buildings where the large harvesters are constructed, serviced, and repaired. The work is more interesting and the pay is better.
      The jobs from 50 years ago are gone and the children of those pickers are likely writing computer code in an air conditioned building.
      Using machines to grow and pick strawberries will, likewise, be a wonderful thing – – and it is not far off.

      https://www.growingproduce.com/fruits/automated-strawberry-picker-one-step-closer-to-reality/“>automated strawberry picker

      30

    • #
      PeterW

      Tom O.

      Automation is not some new thing looming on the horizon that we have never experienced before. It is an ongoing process that has been growing ever since the steam engine started to replace muscle-power at the beginning of the industrial revolution.

      Predictions of some kind of industrial Armageddon are as ill-founded as those of climate catastrophe, being produced by those without real experience in the process.

      40

    • #
      MudCrab

      Tom,

      to take your logic to the extremes, there is no need for machines to control our information, when we could have humans pass on data by word of mouth.

      Or to go back to the time of Ug and Og, and argue there is no need for spears when homo-examplis have perfectly good fists that can be used to hunt animals to eat.

      Robots are tools. Humans have been using tools since before humans were even humans, probably when some proto-ape first picked up a rock to help gain access to the yummy grubs inside the semi rotten tree, but maybe even before then.

      If you want to truly live a life without automation then you need to go back to utter basics. Get naked and only use your fingers.

      30

  • #
    Ruairi

    Every minute a warmist is born,
    Brought up to alarm and to warn,
    That the end is now nigh,
    That the Earth will soon die,
    Though each is a climate greenhorn.

    60

  • #
    PeterW

    As an employer, why the hell would I want to employ four people at 10 hours each, when I can employ one for forty?

    That means I’m paying for one work-station, instead of four, one set of tools instead of four, one lot of training, one lot of insurance, one lot of government-mandated paperwork…..

    50

  • #
    Gerry

    Of course humans are “enviro monsters” we take good (oxygen) and convert it to bad (carbon dioxide) …..

    30

  • #
    MudCrab

    First we have to figure out if there is a problem.

    Sorry, Jo, but disagree.

    First we need to establish that ‘Climate Change’ in the context our Educated Elite like to throw about actually exists. (ie – Is CO2 driving a raise in global temperature ).

    Then we need to establish that man made CO2 is significant in terms of global CO2.

    and THEN we can establish if it is a problem or not.

    50

  • #
    gowest

    What a great idea — let the public service and politicians do it first and pay them accordingly… That will make sure there is less damage they can do to us.

    20

  • #
    Eddie

    They have to find time for joining the schoolkids and

    protesting on Fridays somehow

    00