Individual Liberty — Individual Responsibility

For those we lost, We will not forget 09/11/2001

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
— The Continental Congress, July 4, 1776

“The task of statesmanship has always been the re-definition of these rights in terms of a changing and growing social order.”
— Franklin D. Roosevelt (Commonwealth Club Address, 1932)

“Roosevelt was wrong! The principles laid down in the Declaration of Independence are the principles of individual liberty. Our unalienable rights, given to us by God are given to us as individuals. Our rights do not come from society or the government, and they cannot be redefined by politicians. The nature of these rights carries with it the implication of individual responsibility, without which we surrender them.”
— Perri Nelson, November 6, 2008

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Hockey Stick? More Like a Roller Coaster

Published Fri, Oct 20 2006 4:40 PM
Technorati Tags: Global Warming

Global warming enthusiasts like to point out Mann et al's "Hockey Stick" graph of the IPCC temperature reconstruction for the past 1000 years as "proof" that global warming is anthropogenic in nature. There have been lots of criticisms of this graph, including some that point out the flawed statistical methods used to create it. Two major problems with the hockey stick are that it doesn't account for the medieval warm period, or the "little ice age".

Now there's a new study out in Quaternary Research that provides a fairly good reconstruction of the temperature trend for the past 800 years. This study is based on sediment cores taken from Lake Tsuolbmajavri in Finland. By analyzing the types of diatoms that were growing in the lake and laid down in the sediments they come up with a completely different picture. You can read more about this at World Climate Report, the web’s longest-running climate change blog.

Here's a picture of the roller coaster. What's interesting is that it's actually cooler now than it was in the late 1400s...

World Climate Report's Roller Coaster