Seeking reliable, objective sources on economics, foreign-policy and energy-policy issues.
…and nothing on the other 72% of the planet?
Why does NASA spend every year 1,600 times as much as NOAA spends in ocean research? Is it because heaven is up there?
Don’t miss geophysicist and ocean explorer Robert Ballard’s TED Talk “Exploring the ocean’s hidden worlds”
Something else to worry about…
…Donald K. Yeomans, who manages the jet propulsion lab’s Near-Earth Object Program, said the Earth’s atmosphere is continually streaked by space stuff, ranging from the basketball-size (several a day) to the Volkswagen-size (twice a year). Almost everything burns up, though some may explode in the air, a phenomenon known as an airburst, with the potential of causing damage below. And then there are objects, like the meteorite that dug a 60-foot-wide crater in Peru last September. Perhaps no bigger than a basketball, the meteorite was a reminder of the destructive power of what is lurking out there.
“In fact, there was a daylight fireball event widely observed near Los Angeles two days ago,” Dr. Yeomans said in an e-mail message last Thursday. “I take these events as Mother Nature’s little reminders that we need to pay attention, find and track the large ones and then deflect the very few that threaten us. Tunguska was another reminder. Until recently, we humans did not pay heed to these shots across the bow but now, I think, there is more of a recognition of this low probability — but high consequence — type of event.”
For deflecting an incoming object, I like the “gravity tractor” concept promoted by Rusty Schweickart’s B612 Foundation [I’m not certain that B612 still considers the gravity tractor to be the best design].
On May 30, the Copenhagen Consensus panel will produce a prioritized list showing the best and worst investments the world could make to tackle major challenges.
Bjorn Lomborg is doing a bit of PR for the 2008 Copenhagen Consensus — results due out May 30th. If you are not familiar with the Copenhagen Consensus, here’s a series of my earlier posts. Here’s Bjorn on the food crisis:
More…The pain caused by the global food crisis has led many people to belatedly realize that we have prioritized growing crops to feed cars instead of people. That is only a small part of the real problem.
This crisis demonstrates what happens when we focus doggedly on one specific – and inefficient – solution to one particular global challenge. A reduction in carbon emissions has become an end in itself. The fortune spent on this exercise could achieve an astounding amount of good in areas that we hear a lot less about.
Research for the Copenhagen Consensus, in which Nobel laureate economists analyze new research about the costs and benefits of different solutions to world problems, shows that just $60 million spent on providing Vitamin A capsules and therapeutic Zinc supplements for under-2-year-olds would reach 80% of the infants in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, with annual economic benefits (from lower mortality and improved health) of more than $1 billion. That means doing $17 worth of good for each dollar spent. Spending $1 billion on tuberculosis would avert an astonishing one million deaths, with annual benefits adding up to $30 billion. This gives $30 back on the dollar.
…Next week, some of the world’s top economists, including five Nobel laureates, will consider new research outlining the costs and benefits of nearly 50 solutions to world problems – from building dams in Africa to providing micronutrient supplements to combating climate change. On May 30, the Copenhagen Consensus panel will produce a prioritized list showing the best and worst investments the world could make to tackle major challenges.
The research and the list will encourage greater transparency and a more informed debate.
Acknowledging that some investments shouldn’t be our top priority isn’t the same as saying that the challenges don’t exist. It simply means working out how to do the most good with our limited resources. It will send a signal, too, to research communities about areas that need more study.
The global food crisis has sadly underlined the danger of continuing on our current path of fixating on poor solutions to high-profile problems instead of focusing on the best investments we could make to help the planet.
Posted: Thu May 22, 2008 3:42 am Post subject: Re: How to Think About the World’s Problems
If the tag-team wrestling match to set global policy is Al Gore & Hollywood v. Egghead Economist (any will do) & the Copenhagen Consensus, I’ll put my money on Gore & Hollywood every time. The reason is simple: Politics.
Politicians don’t get credit for solving problems; politicians get credit for talking up unrealistic solutions to problems and blaming opponents for their failures. Their payday is earned by expending tons of hot air, not by actually reducing tons of carbon emissions. Change and Hope win votes, and neither of these divine agencies are limited in the slightest by opportunity costs. This isn’t cynicism; it’s an accurate description of how politics works.
I agree wholeheartedly with Mr. Lomborg, and he’d get my vote every day of the week, 52 weeks of the year. But we’ll never overcome Change and Hope by pointing out that there’s more good to be done than there’s money in the world, and to keep the ball rolling we need to do good that earns a high rate of return. This is not what voters want to hear, particularly when most voters believe that someone else will always foot the bills.
Roger A. Pielke Jr. new book gets a favorable review from biologist Robert T. Lackey:
The Honest Broker is a must-read for any scientist with even a modest interest in environmental policy or politics, and I recommend it especially to scientists unfamiliar with the continuing controversy over how scientists misuse science in environmental policy and politics. The book will also be of interest to political scientists and others well versed in the scholarly literature concerning science, scientists, and public policy, but Roger Pielke’s core analysis and message will not be surprising to these readers.
…Pielke makes the case that another, more helpful role for scientists to play is that of the honest broker. He describes how honest brokers of science are essential to a well-functioning democracy and for the overall, long-term health of the scientific enterprise. In short, he recommends that scientists play the role of honest brokers of policy alternatives. A scientist playing this role seeks to expand the scope of policy choices available to decisionmakers and describes as accurately as possible the consequences of each possible choice. This scientist presents the relevant scientific information to the public and policymakers in a very policyneutral manner.
…In summary, The Honest Broker is an important book, and it should be read by everyone. Healthy democracies need science and scientists to provide what only they can provide: relevant, policy-neutral, understandable science—not stealth policy advocacy. Offering policy advocacy masquerading as science hurts, over the long-term, both democracy and the scientific enterprise.
Roger has joined The Breakthrough Institute as a 2008 Senior Fellow, and will be contributing to the Breakthrough Blog. Don’t miss The Cloth of Science interview, which begins…
You call for greater emphasis on adaptation to protect the world’s poor from the effects of global warming. How do you create a politics on that?
Everyone experiences the impacts of climate no matter where they are, rich or poor. There’s an enormous gap between how well places are prepared and how well they might be prepared. Take a look around the world, and a lot of the things people are striving for — wealth, freedom, opportunities — are associated with being better prepared for the effects of climate.
Is it really true that rich and poor experience climate change equally? I thought the poor, living in substandard housing, living in countries without effective emergency systems and health infrastructure, would be far more vulnerable.
No, certainly not equally. It is true that most of the economic damage is in the rich world and most of the deaths are in the poor world. But not exclusively — Hurricane Mitch in Central America had relatively small economic damages in total dollars, but a huge impact in proportion to the size of national economies, in some cases as large as annual GDP. Similarly, large losses of life happen in rich countries, more than 1,000 in the US in Katrina, 30,000 in France in the 2003 heat wave, etc.
It’s hard to imagine the American people spending billions of dollars to help the people of Bangladesh prepare for rising sea levels or stronger hurricanes. Foreign aid is already fairly unpopular, isn’t it?
It can be unpopular, but I wouldn’t characterize adaptation as “aid.” Much as Ted and Michael have called for a positive message for environmental policies, we need a similar positive message for adaptation. One part of that message is that we help ourselves by helping others. In a globalized, connected world today’s poor are tomorrow’s rich, and therefore also our trading partners, suppliers, and customers. There are other parts of such a positive message, involving improving America’s relationship with poor countries that serve as havens for terrorism, making good on promises to help sustainable development in Africa, and so on. Adaptation is not charity; it is part of building the modern world.
How about creating a politics specifically here in the U.S.?
Look at Hurricane Katrina — even a very wealthy country can be impacted. We’ve been lucky in that we haven’t had many extreme disasters, but when we do have them, it reveals that we’re not as prepared as we thought we were. Hurricane Katrina wasn’t the story of a hurricane — it was the story of a community with poverty, with aging infrastructure, with inequity and a massive governmental failure. One of the disappointments of the tragedy is that Katrina became a story about climate change and not about all these other things. And there are other places in the U.S. with vulnerabilities that we should be playing attention to.
…What is the appropriate role for scientists in political matters?
My sense is that in a lot of areas, not just environmental science, experts have taken on the role of being advocates. Advocacy groups love to wrap themselves in the cloth of science. Right, left, and everything in between likes to wave around a scientific study as the basis for why their moral claims are the right ones. They use science as an argument for reducing the scope of options available to decision makers. This turns science into politics. So instead of battles over morals or politics, we battle over science. In my book The Honest Broker, I argue that scientists have a range of choices in relating to decision makers. And one of the most important roles in helping to expand, or at least clarify, the scope of options available.
…How is the discussion around climate change changing?
It has undergone what might be called a Christmas tree effect; people come to climate change and hang their ornaments on it, using it as a vehicle for whatever topic they happen to be interested in. If you’re interested in growing corn, all of a sudden biofuels become an interest to you. And so on. Climate change is becoming a political vehicle for all sorts of issues. It makes politics very complicated, and it makes it more difficult for new ideas and approaches to be considered. We’re fully into the 100 percent politicized world of climate change now and there’s no going back, making it more important for people to have the ability to introduce new and innovative options.
It’s good to see a bit of vision — of looking beyond the next two to four year election cycle. The U.S. National Academy of Engineering [NAE] just put out a press release from their Boston annual meeting, announcing the grand challenges for engineering in the 21st century.
“Tremendous advances in quality of life have come from improved technology in areas such as farming and manufacturing,” said committee member and Google co-founder Larry Page. “If we focus our effort on the important grand challenges of our age, we can hugely improve the future.”
The panel, some of the most accomplished engineers and scientists of their generation, was established in 2006 and met several times to discuss and develop the list of challenges. Through an interactive Web site, the effort received worldwide input from prominent engineers and scientists, as well as from the general public, over a one-year period. The panel’s conclusions were reviewed by more than 50 subject-matter experts.
The final choices fall into four themes that are essential for humanity to flourish — sustainability, health, reducing vulnerability, and joy of living. The committee did not attempt to include every important challenge, nor did it endorse particular approaches to meeting those selected. Rather than focusing on predictions or gee-whiz gadgets, the goal was to identify what needs to be done to help people and the planet thrive.
…The Grand Challenges site features a five-minute video overview of the project along with committee member interview excerpts. A podcast of the news conference announcing the challenges will also be available on the site starting next week.
“Meeting these challenges would be ‘game changing,’” said NAE president Charles M. Vest. “Success with any one of them could dramatically improve life for everyone.”
The NAE has set up a special website to anchor a worldwide community of people interested in advancing any of the challenges. Most of the site sections I have examined include a public comments capability. These are fully-moderated comments, so let us hope that these remain useful [it is an enormous challenge to the site administrators to do this].
Included is a short 6.5 minute video, produced to promote the challenge concept to non-technical audiences.
Here are the fourteen challenges, NOT in priority order [you can assign your own priorities and defend same in the comments]. I’ll just note that #3 which I interpret as meaning “PROVE sequestration methods at industrial scale”, is absolutely essential if we are to have any impact by 2050 on carbon emissions. This was also the conclusion of MIT’s “Future of Coal” report — see this earlier post:
The committee is comprised of eighteen very-seriously-sparkly scientists and engineers — including some I respect enormously. E.g.,
W. DANIEL HILLIS, chairman and co-founder, Applied Minds Inc.
DEAN KAMEN, founder and president, DEKA Research and Development Corp.
RAYMOND KURZWEIL, chairman and chief executive officer, Kurzweil Technologies Inc.
JAIME LERNER, architect and urban planner, Instituto Jaime Lerner
LARRY PAGE, co-founder and president of products, Google Inc.
ROBERT SOCOLOW, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, Princeton University Environmental Institute
J. CRAIG VENTER, president, The J. Craig Venter Institute
I recommend that you bookmark the website, then revisit regularly for updates on the project.
The author of Voodoo Science has a great essay on questionable science flags. Here’s a quick summary:
…There is, alas, no scientific claim so preposterous that a scientist cannot be found to vouch for it. And many such claims end up in a court of law after they have cost some gullible person or corporation a lot of money. How are juries to evaluate them?…
1. The discoverer pitches the claim directly to the media.
2. The discoverer says that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress his or her work.
3. The scientific effect involved is always at the very limit of detection.
4. Evidence for a discovery is anecdotal.
5. The discoverer says a belief is credible because it has endured for centuries.
6. The discoverer has worked in isolation.
7. The discoverer must propose new laws of nature to explain an observation.
Robert L. Park is a professor of physics at the University of Maryland at College Park and the director of public information for the American Physical Society.
Pielke clearly has been through the wars on science policy issues and shows his experience and, by implication, his frustration with those scientists who advocate policies they argue are dictated by the scientific facts, without recognizing (or admitting) that their views are a result of their commitment to certain policy outcomes. He demonstrates a solid grasp of science and policy interactions, a sophisticated knowledge of U.S. science policy and institutions, and can write and express important ideas clearly and convincingly. For those reasons, the book is a valuable addition to the science and policy scene. –Eugene Skolnikoff
The review is here. Roger Pielke, Jr. responds to the issue Skolnikoff raised regarding scientists’ political advocacy. Excerpt:
…I actually do not assert that advocates are closed to alternative evidence nor do I cast advocacy in such a pejorative light. In fact, I make a strong case for the importance of advocacy in democratic politics. It is not “tarring” someone to identify them as participating in advocacy, which I define as working to reduce the scope of political choice. What I do take strong issue with is what I call “stealth issue advocacy” in which an expert claims to be focused only on science (or more generally, truth), while really working to advance a specific agenda. Unfortunately, Professor Skolnikoff does not discuss this distinction among advocacy activities.
There are some sharp people in the USDA Forest Service. One is Sharon Friedman, who wrote the following guest post on the science policy blog Prometheus [at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research, U of Colorado].
It is true that the calculus of environmental tradeoffs will be inevitably and irretrievably changed due to consideration of climate change. Ideas that were convenient (convenient untruths) like “the world worked fine without humans, if we remove their influence it will go back to what it should be” have continued to provide the implicit underpinning for much scientific effort. In short, people gravitated to the concept that “if we studied how things used to be” (pre- European settlement) we would know how they “should” be, with no need for discussions of values or involving non-scientists. This despite excellent work such as the book Discordant Harmonies by Dan Botkin, that displayed the scientific flaws in this reasoning (in 1992).
What’s interesting to me in the recent article, “The Preservation Predicament“, by Cornelia Dean in The New York Times is the implicit assumption that conservationists and biologists will be the ones who determine whether investing in conservation in the Everglades compared to somewhere else, given climate change, is a good idea - perhaps implying that sciences like decision science or economics have little to contribute to the dialog. Not to speak of communities and their elected officials.
I like to quote the IUCN (The World Conservation Union) governance principles:
Indigenous and local communities are rightful primary partners in the development and implementation of conservation strategies that affect their lands, waters, and other resources, and in particular in the establishment and management of protected areas.
Is it more important for scientists to “devise theoretical frameworks for deciding when, how or whether to act” (sounds like decision science) or for folks in a given community, or interested in a given species, to talk about what they think needs to be done and why? There are implicit assumptions about what sciences are the relevant ones and the relationship between science and democracy, which in my opinion need to be debated in the light of day rather than assumed.
Sharon Friedman
Director, Strategic Planning
Rocky Mountain Region
USDA Forest Service
Botkin’s Discordant Harmonies is priority = “highest” on our Amazon list.
Have you ever heard anyone make the argument that we must take a certain course of action because the experts tell us we must? The issue might be the threat of another country or an environmental risk, but increasingly we see appeals to authority used as the basis for arguing for this or that action.
In a new book, David Shearman and Joseph Wayne Smith take the appeal to experts somewhat further and argue that in order to deal with climate change we need to replace liberal democracy with an authoritarianism of scientific expertise. They write in a recent op-ed:
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