[trends] damned lies and statistics

Both sides of the debate will latch on to this and use it as "evidence" but it seems to me one of the more sensible approaches:

Now, the Wilkins ice shelf on the other side of the peninsula appears to be disintegrating. All these changes would seem to be signs of global warming, but are they just a recent phenomenon or part of a natural cycle?

There is controversial evidence from sediment cores drilled from where the Larsen B Ice Shelf used to be that suggest it may have broken up previously.

"Marine sediments tell us that an ice shelf break-up happened around 5,000 years ago as well. This core will tell us for certain if it got warmer then, too," Dr Mulvaney said. It should also tell him about how the great Antarctic ice sheets began to retreat at the end of the last ice age.

I think I'd prefer evidence like that rather than statistics cleverly used to support things just not happening. Broadening this away from climate change, Andrew Brown wrote on my post "[britain] could be america, canada or australia", undoubtedly from good motives:

A little more digging and I see that the ONS are saying that the number of teenage conceptions are at the lowest rate for 20 years. You can download the data here.

On the other hand, this seems to tell a different story:

Britain's teenage pregnancy rate is the highest in Europe. In 2002 there were 39,286 teen pregnancies recorded. The government has spent more than £60 million to tackle the problem but so far failed to halt the rise.

Andrew would say that is old news [2004] and that the government campaign is working. This is why it might be working:

Encouraging schoolchildren to experiment with oral sex could prove the most effective way of curbing teenage pregnancy rates, a government study has found. Pupils under 16 who were taught to consider other forms of 'intimacy' such as oral sex were significantly less likely to engage in full intercourse, it was revealed.

Oh wonderful, wonderful. So children are going to be told they have to do oral sex. Are these people off their collective brains or are they just lost to evil?

Never crossed the government's mind that this is an activity between adults in a marriage? Never occurred to the government to re-establish the family as the unit and work on parents to take responsibility for their children?

Never occurred to the government to adhere to the country's tradition of sane societal values e.g. kids are kids and adults are adults and it's a gradual process from one to the other at ages 16-21 as it most certainly was earlier?

No, the approach of NuLab and it's accolytes in the teaching profession prefer to exacerbate the problem by pleading "well, kids are already doing it." And why are they? Because you people turned a blind eye instead of educating them.

And why did you turn a blind eye? Because you yourself were allowed to adopt stuffed values, in line with being a modern person.

Enough, I say. Quantum shift needed here in the paradigm. Total shift in values required. And from where will it come? The termited C of E? Will it heck as like.

So from where?