Freedom, Not Climate, Is At Risk

From the President of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus:

"We are living in strange times. One exceptionally warm winter is enough – irrespective of the fact that in the course of the 20th century the global temperature increased only by 0.6 per cent – for the environmentalists and their followers to suggest radical measures to do something about the weather, and to do it right now."

"The author Michael Crichton stated it clearly: “the greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda”. "

"The scientists should help us and take into consideration the political effects of their scientific opinions. They have an obligation to declare their political and value assumptions and how much they have affected their selection and interpretation of scientific evidence. "

"As a witness to today’s worldwide debate on climate change, I suggest the following:
■Small climate changes do not demand far-reaching restrictive measures
■Any suppression of freedom and democracy should be avoided
■Instead of organising people from above, let us allow everyone to live as he wants
■Let us resist the politicisation of science and oppose the term “scientific consensus”, which is always achieved only by a loud minority, never by a silent majority
■Instead of speaking about “the environment”, let us be attentive to it in our personal behaviour ■Let us be humble but confident in the spontaneous evolution of human society. Let us trust its rationality and not try to slow it down or divert it in any direction
■Let us not scare ourselves with catastrophic forecasts, or use them to defend and promote irrational interventions in human lives.

Read the whole article here.

"Sicko" Is Sick With Hypocrisy

As expected, Michael Moore's Sicko is the typical hypocrisy and dishonesty we usually get from him.

From Rich Lowery:

"He is practically the Leni Riefenstahl of socialism. Anyone in a country with government-provided health insurance is portrayed as tripping through daisies to the hospital, where everything is free and the care is perfect. America, in contrast, is a vista of unrelieved gloom. Moore is adept at the propagandist’s art — keep it simple and keep it dishonest. "

Read the whole article here.

A Brief History of Economic Time

From Steve Landsburg:

".. just a couple of hundred years ago, maybe 10 generations -- people started getting richer. And richer and richer still. Per capita income, at least in the West, began to grow at the unprecedented rate of about three quarters of a percent per year. A couple of decades later, the same thing was happening around the world."

"...The source of this wealth -- the engine of prosperity -- is technological progress. And the engine of technological progress is ideas -- not just the ideas from engineering laboratories, but also ideas like new methods of crop rotation, or just-in-time inventory management. You can fly from New York to Tokyo partly because someone figured out how to build an airplane and partly because someone figured out how to insure it. I'm writing this on a personal computer instead of an electric typewriter partly because someone said, "Hey! I wonder if we can make computer chips out of silicon!" and partly because someone said "Hey! I wonder if we can finance startups with junk bonds!" ...

"...Engineers figure out how to harness the power of technology; economists figure out how to harness the power of incentives. Our prosperity relies on both."

Read the whole article here.