Happy New Year
Reply
Monthly Archives: December 2009
How Do Innovators Think? – HBR Editors Blog – Harvard Business Review
Fryer: Which of these skills do you think is the most important?
Dyer: Weve found that questioning turbo-charges observing, experimenting, and networking, but questioning on its own doesnt have a direct effect without the others. Overall, associating is the key skill because new ideas arent created without connecting problems or ideas in ways that they havent been connected before. The other behaviors are inputs that trigger associating — so they are a means of getting to a creative end.
Gregersen: You might summarize all of the skills weve noted in one word: “inquisitiveness.” I spent 20 years studying great global leaders, and that was the big common denominator. Its the same kind of inquisitiveness you see in small children.
via How Do Innovators Think? – HBR Editors Blog – Harvard Business Review.
Via Rajesh Jain
Global Warming Is Manageable — if we are Smart
Why is it that what you are saying about global warming is so contradictory to everything else that most people read, see and hear in the media?
Well, there are several reasons. It is partly because they dont read the U.N. reports, which on many of these issues confirm what I am saying very clearly. And since the sensational always goes over better than the merely sensible, stories in the media play into the stereotype of global warming. There is much more sizzle in saying the world is going to come to an end than there is to saying, it is a bit of a problem and we need to fix it smartly, but that is it. The scary stories also appeal to the visceral hatred of materialism harbored by many, even when they are materialist in their own habits.
It is much easier to find a real person who died in the heat wave in 2003 in Paris, and tell that story. It is much harder to tell a compelling story about a person who didnt die from cold in Paris in the winter of 2003. So it is often much easier to show all the problems from global warming, and very much harder to show all the distributed benefits from pursuing more sensible policies.
Finally, politicians obviously garner a lot of support by saying we want to save the planet much more than they garner support if they talk about making smart, simple policies that might also be politically difficult to get through. Essentially, they get to promise they are going to cut emissions in 2020 or 2050 — when they are not going to be politicians any longer.
Al Gore talks about global warming as our generational mission. He asks how we want to be remembered by our kids and grandkids. Well, why would anyone want to be remembered for having spent $180 billion to do virtually no good a hundred years from now, when less than half that sum could fix virtually all major problems today? With better information, most of us would have no difficulty choosing how we want to be remembered.
via Global Warming Is Manageable — if Were Smart – Barrons.com.
It’s the poor who will pay for Copenhagen’s circus
Not that it should be a surprise. By comparison to the 21,000 Copenhagen observers,last week’s comparable World Trade Organisation Ministerial Conference in Geneva only attracted 500 observers who were broadly committed to securing an inter-national trade deal to promote poverty-alleviating free trade.
The irony is that if there were as many people who cared about cutting poverty, the world’s poor would be better able to adapt to the consequences of climate change and there’d also be the economic resources to cut emissions and deliver a binding agreement at Copenhagen.
via It’s the poor who will pay for Copenhagen’s circus | The Australian.
Lorn Turnbull from the UK Praliament on Climate Change
From Wattsupwiththat:
My Lords, on first reading the Committee on Climate Change’s latest progress report, I found it an impressive document. It was broad in scope and very detailed. But the more I dug into it the more troubled I became. Below the surface there are serious questions about the foundations on which it has been constructed. There are questions in four areas-the framework created by the Climate Change Act 2008, the policy responses at EU and UK level, the estimate of costs and finally the scientific basis on which the whole scheme of things rests. I will consider each in turn.
Unlike many of those involved in the climate change field, I have no pecuniary interest to declare, but I am a founder trustee of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, which seeks to bring rationality, objectivity and, above all, tolerance to the debate.
I have long been in the camp of what might be called the semi-sceptics. I have taken the science on trust, while becoming increasingly critical of the policy responses being made to achieve a given CO2 or global warming constraint. First, let us look at the Climate Change Act, which has been highly praised, even today, as the most comprehensive and ambitious framework anywhere in the world-a real pioneering first for the UK. However, it has serious flaws. It starts by imposing a completely unworkable duty on the Secretary of State to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent by 2050, even though many of the actions required lie outside his control. It would have been better, as the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, and I argued, for the duty to be connected to what the Secretary of State can control, such as his own actions and policies, and not the outcome, which he cannot.
[...]
Thirdly, there is the issue of cost. All we had to go on at the time when the target was set more ambitiously was the estimate by the noble Lord, Lord Stern, of 1 per cent of GDP. Many people were sceptical at the time and probably even more are now, including, it seems, the noble Lord, Lord Stern, himself. It was reported in the press last week that he now thinks that it might be 2 per cent, but could rise to 5 per cent. I hope he will clarify this when he speaks to us shortly.
In the document that we have before us, the committee says that it previously estimated that costs in 2020 would be about 1 per cent of GDP. That is consistent with its view that it might get to 2 per cent by 2050. In the new report it simply reaffirms the 1 per cent figure in just one paragraph in 250 pages.
[...]
The noble Lords, Lord Krebs and Lord May, and their eminent colleagues on the CCC have a choice. They can take the policy framework as given, the policy responses as given, the costs as given, and the science as given, and then proceed to churn out more and more sophisticated projections, or-as I hope-they can apply the formidable intellectual firepower they command and start to find answers to many of the unsolved questions.
Copenhagen climate conference: Who will dare mention population growth?
The problem is that Copenhagen is so highly orchestrated that any such inconvenient information will be buried: such as a recent report, Economic Impacts from the Promotion of Renewable Energies: the German Experience.
This thorough study of German electricity production found that its promotion of renewable energy is “a tale of a massively expensive environmental and energy policy that is devoid of economic and environmental benefits”.
The total cost of German subsidies for wind power, which produces 6.8 per cent of the nation’s electricity, is estimated at 20.5 billion euros between 2000 and 2010. But that is peanuts compared to solar power, which will have swallowed 53.3 billion euros while producing only 0.6 per cent of Germany’s power. Colossal amounts have been wasted, without much benefit to the environment or the country’s energy security.
The real “elephant at the summit”, however, is population growth. In spite of it being the core cause of climate change, everyone is running a mile from having a serious, frank discussion on how it can be halted. True, it’s a sensitive subject, but it will be impossible to feed an expanding population while reducing the impact on the environment. And if this problem is not confronted, all those hours spent agonising over reducing greenhouse gases and setting carbon emission levels will have been superfluous.
via Copenhagen climate conference: Who will dare mention population growth? – Telegraph.
The Aussie climate change Beaurocracy
THE Australian delegation to the Copenhagen climate change conference could number 114, official documents reveal.That number dwarfs the 71-strong British delegation. Such is the size of the delegation, it includes a dedicated “baggage liaison officer”.The carbon footprint for 114 people travelling to Copenhagen and back business class amounts to 1817 tonnes of emissions — the equivalent to the annual output of 2500 people in Malawi. The list appears to contradict assurances from Kevin Rudds office last weekend that fewer than 50 federal officials would attend.
via Aussie footprint 1817 tonnes, and counting | The Australian.
Carbon emissions and basic algebra
When the countries around the world announced emission reductions, cuts, plans the media cheered. However, if we all did some basic algebra it would be different.
For example, the US announced its plans based on 2005 rather than the 1990 conventional numbers used in Kyoto. Why? Because US emissions grew a lot from 1990 to 2005 and reductions from a large base is easier. Australia is using 2000. China uses 2005 and India another number. So every country is talking a different benchmark. So, we cannot actually compare.
May be we should GDP per capita as a benchmark.
On the second set of numbers. US announced reduction in carbon emissions and China, India announced carbon intensity reductions. Both are as different as apples to oranges. But the press misses this. For an example check out the Ny Times. Just to clarify, I support the carbon intensity focus of the developing countries. My gripe is with media reporting.
Some good analysis from Matthew Khan,
I am happy to hear that China has pledged to reduce its carbon intensity by 40% by 2020 but does this guarantee a smaller global carbon footprint? Recall that carbon intensity = tons of CO2/GNP. China’s economy has been growing by 8% per year. Make the big assumption that this average growth rate will continue until 2020 and ignore compounding. So, in ten years their economy will be 80% bigger and their carbon intensity will be 40% lower than it is now. So, according to my logic relative to today, China’s total carbon emissions will be .6*80% or 48% higher. From Al Gore’s standpoint, is that progress? At the same time that President Obama is pledging a 20% reducing in CO2 emissions (under these growth assumptions), China’s government is pledging that their emissions will be 48% higher.
Carbon models and economic models
Don’t count on the economists to have a good “Computable General Equilibrium” model to yield valid estimates of how each nation’s economy will evolve in the presence of a carbon tax. If we introduced uncertainty into our models the confidence intervals would be huge. But today a group of economists are getting rich peddling their “scientific” models as truth in predicting very difficult policy counter-factuals.
The modern economics profession has made great progress estimating partial equilibrium relationships. See almost any NBER applied micro paper to get a taste of this. We have made much less progress on multi-sector dynamic general equilibrium models with endogenous innovation, irreversibilities, learning and uncertainty. Introduce all of these bells and whistles and you have the issue of climate change. Now economists like to be quoted and we are self confident but if we currently do not have good answers to policy questions should we follow the Nobel Laureate Robert Lucas and modestly say; “I don’t know”? If we follow this path, we are well aware that some bozo out there will fill our place offering the politicians an even sillier answer. So, we must pick our poison.
via Environmental and Urban Economics: Copenhagen and International Carbon Politics.
After the Nano, TATA releases the cheapest water purifier in the world at Rs.1000.
Pure water is one of the world’s most precious natural resources. With much of India’s population denied access to safe drinking water, the delivery of safe, convenient and affordable water purification is one of the biggest social and technological challenges in the country today.
Responding to this challenge, Tata Chemicals today unveils ‘Tata Swach’ – a unique and innovative water purifier. Requiring no energy or running water to operate, an early version of the product first saw the light of day as part of the Tsunami relief efforts. Today, the replaceable filter-based product, which is entirely portable and based on low-cost natural ingredients, delivers safe drinking water at a new market benchmark of Rs30 per month for a family of five.
Speaking at the launch, Ratan Tata, Chairman, Tata Sons, said: “Safe drinking water is the most basic of human needs. The social cost of water contamination is already enormous and increases every year. Although today’s announcement is about giving millions more people affordable access to safe water, it is an important step in the long-term strategy to find a solution to provide affordable access to safe water for all.”
Tata Swach is the result of years of collaboration between several Tata companies, including TCS, Tata Chemicals and Titan Industries. Based on an innovative concept developed by the TCS Innovation Labs – TRDDC, the Swach technology combines low-cost ingredients such as rice husk ash with superior nanotechnology. The efficiency of the product has been rigorously tested to meet internationally accepted water purification standards.
Water-borne disease is the single greatest threat to global health, with diarrhoea, jaundice, typhoid, cholera, polio, and gastroenteritis spread by contaminated water. According to a 2007 United Nations report, half of the world’s hospital beds are occupied by patients suffering from water-borne diseases. In India, such diseases cause more than 1.5 times the deaths caused by Aids and double the deaths caused by road accidents.
via Tata group | Tata Chemicals | Media releases | Tata Chemicals launches ‘Tata Swach’.
