17 | September | 2006

I just sent this off to Senator Smith. Here in Oregon we have excellent representation from Senators Smith (R) and Wyden (D). Both are bright, ethical guys with a global vision. This letter is about the reckless spending and the ill-concieved idea that terrorists should be treated with techniques that most of the world views as torture. Maybe they should, but both our current terror spending and terrorist interrogation practices appear to be counterproductive.

Dear Senator Smith,

First, thank you for your excellent efforts on behalf of our wonderful state. I want to express my opinion on two items related to the war on terror:

* The President is wrong about treatment of terrorists. They *deserve* death in most cases and he’s right we may have a right to harsh interrogations, but world opinion and the opinions of Sen. McCain and Powell should be respected by the President as we face even more global condemnation. We are not an imperial power but we are seen as such because the President has such poor sense of marketing and presentation. He’s leaving a legacy of mistrust and global condemnation we’ll feel for an entire generation, and you must stop this at the Senate level and stop it now.

* ROI is far too low and spending should decrease immediately and dramatically. All scenarios involve risk and we need to absorb more risk to save trillions over the next decade, trillions that can save millions of lives using high ROI means.

You (we) are spending at levels that cannot be sustained, and this “war”‘ will go on for decades. It’s not even clear the current spending has a positive ROI. I think the neoconservative mindset is “stuck” on the idea that the potential threat of a major attack justifies virtually all available resources. This is not true. The EPA and DOT make this type of decision all the time, and appropriately place monetary values on human lives of approximately 5 million per life saved, to justify spending on safety measures. This type of equation should also be used to determine spending on terrorism threats but I get the idea it is not.

Laurie David, Global warming crusader, is very right to challenge professors that take corporate contributions. Her Huffington Post post entitled A Conflict of Interest in the Halls of Academia suggests that taking money from companies that benefit from weaker environmental regulations may bias the science. Good point, and worth follow up.
But she fails to point out a similar problem, but also one that should be of great concern to the clear minded. This is the fact that grant funding from the US Government may also have political strings attached. They are not as direct but funding does relate to the emphasis, direction, and scale of research.

It’s obvious (and appropriate) that big money grants for research on potentially catastrophic things is far more likely to go through, than, say, a grant to fund research into the basket weaving habits of pliocene hominids.

This is hugely important because bias can easily creep into this equation in the form of exaggerating the peril of the topic under scrutiny – not so much in the peer reviewed studies which are subjected to close methodological scrutiny – but in the quotes of scientists and the lack of concern by scientists when the popular press spouts alarmist nonsense about their research often interpreting anecdotal observations associated with the science or reviews of the science by non-scientists as part of the research.

I’m actually looking for a way to test this hypothesis scientifically. Something along the lines of “scientists describe their own research topics as more life threatening than their own research suggests.”

Common sense suggests it is going on around us all the time, especially now with the dramatic difference between the actual science aboout Global Warming that suggests it’s a bad thing but unlikely to be catastrophic versus the popular alarmist concerns that suggest the tipping point is here and planetary peril is paramount.

If planetary health is at the top of your agenda the answer to the clear minded is obvious:

* Invest our tax money and time heavily in current catastrophic things like Malaria, AIDs, and Poverty. This type of work clearly has the highest ROI by any reasonable human measure.

* Decrease massive military spending in favor of infrastructure spending here and in developing nations and invest heavily in marketing the USA as helping and not crusading.

* Invest in Global warming remediation schemes that have a high ROI but don’t buy into all the catastrophe mongering going on. It’s deflecting attention from actual catastrophic conditions we affluent type first world people tend to simply … ignore.