Category Archives: Poverty and Development

Hurricanes! Not.

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I’ve been assuming that Global Warming was in fact contributing to an increase in the severity and number of hurricanes, but wondering if the alarmists had been exaggerating the effects for psychological effect. But here is the NOAA Hurricane data and this more recent NOAA analysis.  Neither suggest any catastrophes are looming. In fact we may have one of the *least* severe Hurricane seasons on record this year unless some big ones are brewing out there in the twinkling eyes of …. mother nature.

Excuse me but I’d like people to separate the politics from the science. Why is this so hard for *scientists* to do these days? I’m rapidly, and with great frustration, coming to the conclusion that it is because alarmism fuels research and focuses more attention on scientists.

Global warming is clear but catastrophic consequences from it appear to be so uncertain, so ill defined that it would be immoral and foolish to base hugely expensive public policy decisons on delaying warming for a few years.

Let’s try an experiment for a few years.

1) Take $80 billion – each year – from our bloated defense and homeland security budgets.

2) Ignore Global Warming

3) Solve *every major human problem* on earth. (The UN estimates that approximately 80 billion per year would solve virtually all major health, water, food problems).

Global Challenges vs Global Warming. An Inconvenient Truth * * *

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I finally got to see “An Inconvenient Truth” On the upside I think Al Gore comes off like the fine, sincere, bright fellow he is.    A movie like this around election 2000 would have given Florida, and the Presidency, to Al Gore.   The film’s creative use of graphics and video is also very impressive.  This is educational media used in compelling fashion and all presenters should take note of this approach which cleverly blends animation, video, and lecture.

Unfortunately the fundamental premise of this film – that global catastrophe is looming just around the corner – is misguided and not supported by the science Gore claims he holds so dear.   As the film suggests, global warming is well established and it has become clear that much of that warming is a result of human processes (anthropogenic warming).   However, the film strongly implies that castastrophic sea level rises and weather conditions are “likely” when science says only that they are “possible”.   Many things are possible and it’s very foolish to allocate resources without addressing “how likely is this to happen?”.

The science Gore abuses to support the wild claims comes mostly from IPCC reports which actually suggest that sea levels will probably rise at most a few feet *over the next century*.  The best estimates suggest that global climate change is not creating catastrophic sea level rises and killer storms.

What is certain is that we have many current global catastrophes.  They are the hunger, disease, and bad water supplies that plague hundreds of millions of people on earth right now, killing tens of thousands of people *daily*.

First let’s solve those problems, which are much cheaper and easier to solve than global warming and have much clearer and immediate positive benefits.

Clear thinking people should work towards prioritizing issues of global concern and then solving as many of those significant global concerns as possible given the constraints of money, politics, and human ignorance.  Drive less?  Sure.   Support wise resource use?  Of course.   We should apply common sense principles to all problems and wiser use of resources is important.   It’s just not the world’s most pressing problem.  Not by a long shot.

Rather than simply jump on another alarmist bandwagon of the many that litter the historical landscape I’d hope folks will ask themselves “If I could allocate a billion dollars to solving some global problems, what would be the best use of that money?”

Need a hint? It’s been done here:  Copenhagen Consensus 

Mashup Camp 2 – Day 1 – wait, there’s more!

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The excellent unconference format makes the entire conference something of a networking session.  Still,  it’s great to have a few beers with folks who make the internet … so darn interesting.

I always enjoy talking with the brilliant Adam Sah who brings plenty of Google gadget enthusiasm to the mashup mix and I’m sure will have some great stuff to show us tomorrow during the last session. Also really enjoyed meeting mashup and housingmaps.com  legend Paul Rademacher  (whoa – not to be confused with this Paul Rademacher, who is dead).

Paul’s early mashup of Craigslist and Google maps (before there was a maps API no less!)  helped usher in the notion that mashups are a very useful, great way to mix data in innovative ways.   Had a great chance to talk about some travel mashing ideas with Adam and Paul.   There’s a hurricane of real time road data at the transportation departments but it’s non-trivial to pull even a fraction of that in effectively.   Mashups to the rescue?  Maybe.

Also got to meet the famous ex-googler blogger Mark Jen who was fired by Google for … blogging!    He works over at Plaxo now where he won’t get fired because … he wrote the blogging policy!  Very nice and sharp guy.

Buffet and Gates News Conference

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It's great to see CNN and FOX covering this story live at the press conference though unfortunate that commentators are more interested in the cash and personalities than what this means to global health.

37 Billion to Charity  = Thirty Seven Thousand … Million dollar donations.  This appears to be history's greatest act of philanthropy. CNN suggests this is true even if you look at Carnagie and Rockerfeller's huge giving and adjust for inflation. Also important is that those early foundations did not focus on third world problems where the money can be far more effective.

Buffett and the Gates' may prove to be the most powerful global welfare partnerships in history as Buffett, with his remarkable ability to evaluate companies, joins the Gates on the board. For the many who see corporate America as a threat to the welfare of humanity this should also be a wake up call. Gates and Buffett are redistributing wealth from the richest to the poorest far more effectively than any Government progressive tax scheme could ever dream to do, and they are applying their substantial abilities to solving the world's most significant problems.

I'd suggest that Governments and taxation plans tend to redistribute from wealthy and moderatly weathly to the middle and lower middle classes – ie it shifts wealth a few notches down, rather than the far more desirable type of redistribution which moves money from the richest to the poorest as this type of philanthropy tends to do.

Melinda Gates explains that the gift is "unprecedented" and that the new funding will allow the foundation to expand their priority list of diseases so they can fight more than just the "big three diseases" Malaria, Tuberculosis, and HIV / AIDS.

Buffett said he's always expected his billions to go to charity but originally thought it would be his wife who would distribute his wealth after he died. However his wife died first, and his friendship with and respect for Bill and Melinda Gates has inspired him to start giving away his money during his lifetime, feeling that they, and a few other foundations his money will support, have created great mechanisms for distributing his wealth where it will do huge social good.

Bravo Warren Buffett, Bravo!

Warren Buffett gives away almost all he has to charity. Bravo!

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Warren Buffett will give almost all of his fortune – one of the greatest in history – to charity.  Most most will go to the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation to accelerate its fantastic efforts towards global health and education.   Buffett, the Sage of Omaha and arguably one of the world's sharpest businessmen, will join the Gates' on the board of a foundation already credited with saving over a *million* lives.

I'd guess that this amazing convergence of wealth and entrepreneurial style development will go down as a pivotal moment in history, and it is wonderful and inspiring to see the mega rich turn to mega philanthropy.

Dr. Schneider! Just say NO to alarmism. Alarmism misdirects resources.

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Later …. Wait, I think I'm being too hard on Schneider who later qualified the quote below to apply only to soundbite decisions when getting interviewed… ]

He apparently did not mean it to be as broad and sweeping as it sounds below]. However, I do think the quote reflects the current behavior of many scientists who are choosing to accept alarmism because it suits their needs.

My initial post:

A great intellectual frustration for me is trying to understand why super bright, well informed people who all subscribe to the idea of rational, scientific inquiry often disagree – sometimes violently – about the interpretation of well studied phenomena. I now think the answer can be found by noting how our pesky human intellectual inadequacies combine with our "tribal" tendency to agree with our friends and challenge our enemies, especially when we are under personal attack. This in turn focuses attention on a "too narrow" spectrum of information and people, which in turn leads to faulty analysis or suspect statements – even by very competent intellects.

Stephen Schnieder is an internationally respected Stanford climatologist and biologist and a key author of the IPCC report which is the key Global Warming reference work. He's also one of the harshest critics of Bjorn Lomborg and his book "The Skeptical Environmentalist". Back in 1996 Schnieder got to the heart of the challenge of mixing science and politics in the statement below and his answer to critics who often accuse him of alarmism based on the following statement he made in an interview:

"On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but – which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we'd like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broadbased support, to capture the public's imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This 'double ethical bind' we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both. [bolding added]

Yikes Dr. Schneider – please JUST SAY NO to effectiveness if it is going to compromise your honesty – that should not be an ethical bind for a scientists who should be held to a higher standard of honesty.

I sure don't like his idea that "offering up scary scenarios" somehow serves the long term best interests of the public. It sure looks like Schneider would support Al Gore's alarmism as an important part of getting the public to act on an issue many hold very dear (reduction of greenhouse gases in the hopes of stopping global warming), but I think a more functional view is that the role of science should be to offer the unvarnished truth, and to *challenge* alarmists and political or economic vested interests when they report facts selectively or inaccurately. Only with accurate analyses can we allocated resources most effectively to the myriad problems of earth.

The irony of it all is that global warming alarmists cite potential human death catastrophes from global warming, yet simply ignore the *fact* that there are many human catastrophes going on *right now* in many parts of the globe. Before you ask me to focus my attention and hundreds of billions of dollars of tax money on the (slight) possibility that global warming will rise sea levels 20 feet, I ask you to focus your precious attention, and a few dozen billion, on the easy to solve problems of the world like clean water, intestinal disease, and malaria. Deal?

Lomborg is too scientific for his own good?

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After reading "The Skeptical Environmentalist" I was astonished at how effectively Lomborg challenged many of the ideas about the environment I'd been holding dear for so long. I was especially impressed by the case he makes for allocating resources based on analysis of the lives saved and a cost benefit approach rather than the often irrational, politically motivated spending that saves only a few but costs a lot.

This led me to a fascinating email exchange with the editor of Scientific American, which had blasted Lomborg in a very long critique of the book. The SA critique was written by four internationally recognized experts, but in my view they'd done little more than attack Lomborg personally and suggest – speciously – that his objective was to disparage a scientific approach to problem solving.

What consistently impresses me the most about Lomborg is his willingness to take on his critics point by point, addressing their concerns with citations and what only appear to be legitimate personal criticisms. (Such as noting that climatologist Schneider used to warn about potentially catastrophic global cooling but now warns of potentially catastrophic global warming).

I suggest that Lomborg is thinking very clearly and applying science appropriately, but has challenged his critics effectively and aggresssively enough that they've responded in an emotional fashion rather than a scientific one.

The enthusiasm many scientists seem to show for Al Gore's excellent but misguided propaganda film "An Inconvenient Truth" reflects poorly on the state of scientific thinking. I think it reveals the limitations we primates, even those primates high on the scientific food chain, have with mathematical constructs and allocation of risks, costs, and benefits.

Later: Wadard does NOT agree with me or Lomborg – the debate continues over at Global Warming Watch:

Here's a clear thinking piece by Lomborg

Gates Foundation trumped by IKEA’s tax avoidance “Charity” as number ONE?

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Apparently  IKEA, more as tax avoidance than altruism, is technically the world's largest charitable foundation, though clearly Gates foundation, at 29 billion, is the world'd largest "real" charitable endeavor. Gates reported yesterday that he's leaving Microsoft over the next 2 years to devote full time to Gates Foundation activities.

One of my greatest disappointments is to hear far too many technology people absurdly suggest that Gates' motivations are other than the obvious – spearheading one of the greatest philanthropic efforts of all time that primarily serve the two most significant challenges of humanity – health and education.  

Bill Gates to become full time philanthropist and leave Microsoft management over next 2 years

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Bill Gates' passion has become his outstanding philanthropic work, mostly relating to global health initiatives, and today he said he'd leave his day to day management of MS over the next two years.

Although the future of Microsoft may be in question thanks to the rapidly changing online, open source and competitor environments, this is a great day for international development efforts.  

In addition to saving over a *million* people from tragic deaths due to disease, the Gates Foundation has brought an entrepreneurial, innovative approach to the development of global health solutions.   I'm thrilled that Gates – still a young whippersnapper – will devote his substantial intellectual and monetary resources to the world's greatest challenges.  Bravo Bill!