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<DIV>Dear MPWG members, please excuse an off-topic counter-posting to an off-topic posting. Just offering a credible alternative viewpoint, in the spirit of Duggan's Law, "for every PhD there is an equal and opposite PhD..." </DIV>
<DIV>J. Chesworth</DIV>
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<DIV>Science, Vol 304, Issue 5676, 1429 , 4 June 2004<BR>Economists Rate Greenhouse Gas Curbs a Poor Investment </DIV>
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<DIV><snip>...The stated premise was that the industrialized world has limited funds--about $50 billion a year--for aid to developing countries and no objective way to set priorities. According to Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist--a 2001 book that sought to discredit a host of environmental concerns (Science, 2 January, p. 28 <<A href='http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/303/5654/28b>)--"eco-myths'>http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/303/5654/28b>)--"eco-myths</A>" such as global warming "prevent us from acting rationally" when committing resources to improving the world. It would be better, he argues, to base spending on cost-benefit ratios. Measures to stem climate change should compete for development aid, Lomborg suggests, because according to predictions "the developing world will suffer most of the damage from climate change." <BR>With backing from the prime minister of the right-leaning Danish government, Lomborg invited the nine economists who attended --including Nobelists Robert Fogel of the University of Chicago, Douglas North of Washington University in St. Louis, Misouri, and Vernon Smith of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia--to rank solutions to pressing problems according to their likely return on investment. Experts, chosen by Lomborg, argued for and against each of 10 "challenges".... <BR></DIV></BODY></HTML>