When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

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.

Okay, the Declaration of Interdependence sounds a lot like the Declaration of Independence.

By saying that it is a self-evident truth that all humans are created equal and that our inalienable rights include life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, our Founding Fathers were telling us that we are all in this together, that we are interdependent, that we have a moral duty to protect these inalienable rights for all humans. President Lincoln, perhaps above all others, was instrumental in making clear that the second sentence of the Declaration was “a moral standard for which the United States should strive,” as Wikipedia puts it.

The double appeal to “Nature” — including the explicit appeal to “the laws of Nature” in the first sentence — is particularly salient. For masters of rhetoric like the authors of the Declaration, a repeated word, especially in an opening sentence, is repeated for the singular purpose of drawing attention to it (see “Why scientists aren’t more persuasive, Part 1“).

Yes, the phrase “laws of nature” meant something different to Jefferson than it does to us (see here). But as a living document, and as a modern Declaration of Interdependence, the words have grown in meaning.

It is the laws of Nature, studied and enumerated by scientists, that make clear we are poised to render those unalienable rights all but unattainable for billions of humans on our current path of unrestricted greenhouse gas emissions. It is the laws of Nature that make clear Americans can’t achieve sustainable prosperity if the rest of the world doesn’t, and vice versa.

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The Galileo Movement co-opts the father of science’s name to pursue an anti-science agenda.

Ian Enting, Professorial Fellow at Melbourne University, looks at the front groups and writings of Australia’s deniers . This is an extended excerpt from The Conversation series on climate.

Many of us, including most of the authors of this series, have engaged with the arguments of self-styled “sceptics”.

We’ve looked at not just the blogs, but also the information from organised groups, the few published scientific papers and the books in which these their claims are presented in detail.

I would argue that any self-styled “sceptic” who claims to have a genuine case should do what normal scientists do and dissociate themselves from those who practise fabrication and misrepresentation….

The reality is that the most prominent pseudo-sceptical scientists are doing the opposite: gathering together to provide apparent respectability to front organisations that are designed to spread confusion.

This is the message from Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming.

Authors Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, backed up by documents obtained in the course of tobacco litigation, show that not only was greenhouse denial using the same misinformation techniques as the tobacco industry, but that it was often the same groups and the same people. These anti-science activities hide behind names such as “Friends of Science”.

In Australia we have a similar phenomenon, with the additional twist of often using names that aim to capture a “martyr for science” image. They present themselves as being ignored by an entrenched establishment, when in reality they are ignoring or distorting the accumulated scientific knowledge.

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Rec fishermen spent $18 billion on equipment and for-hire vessels in 2006 alone according to NOAA’s most recent figures.  AP photo.

by Michael Conathan

Beneath recreational fishing’s bucolic veneer of a solitary angler alone with his thoughts—and perhaps a striper or two—on a desolate beach, the reality is that sportfishing is big business. Still, the perception remains that the effect of this hobby on the environment is far below that of commercial fishing despite the overall quantity of fishermen on the water.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, nearly 12 million Americans went sportfishing annually from 2005 through 2009, making about 80 million saltwater sportfishing trips per year. That’s roughly equivalent to the entire population of the five coastal New England states getting out on the water seven-and-a-half times apiece.

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by Brennan Alvarez

A new study released by the Sierra Club found that Latinos are disproportionately exposed to toxic mercury and other harmful pollutants emitted from coal-fired power plants. Much of the risk is due to the fishing habits of Latinos, who traditionally fish in local waterways near their homes for personal consumption.

Representatives from the Sierra Club warn that “Hispanics in the United States should be especially concerned about the fish that they catch, since many local waterways have high levels of mercury pollution.” Additionally, according to poll results: one-third of Latinos fish in freshwater lakes, where mercury pollution levels are significantly higher, thus increasing the likelihood of mercury exposure.

According to the report, 76 percent of Latinos eat the fish that they catch and 64 percent share what they catch with their families, which often include children and women of childbearing age – two of the most vulnerable populations at risk of mercury poisoning.

A University of California study found that Latinos tend to fish in their immediate urban communities due to a lack of adequate transportation to safe fishing areas. Fish caught in these areas tend to have the highest concentrations of mercury; as a result, Latinos fishing in contaminated urban areas consume an average of 13.9 micrograms of mercury per day (twice EPA’s safe limit).

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