Global Warming May Finally Open Northwest Passage to Shipping

 

  "The Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker Amundsen met a plate of "new ice" on the Northwest Passage, but it was easily traversed."  Source of caption, and photo:  online version of the Washington Post article quoted and cited below.

 

ICEBREAKER CHANNEL, Northwest Passage — The Amundsen’s engines growl low, as if in warning.  The ship steals ahead; its powerful spotlights stab at fog thick with the lore of crushed ships and frozen voyagers.  Ice floes gleam from the void like the eyes of animals in the night.

The Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker Amundsen weaves in graceful slow motion through the ice pack, advancing through the legendary Northwest Passage well after the Arctic should be iced over and shuttered to ships for the winter.

The fearsome ice is weakened and failing, sapped by climate change.  Ultimately, this night’s ghostly procession through Icebreaker Channel will be the worst the ship faces on its late-season voyage.  Much of the trip, crossing North America from west to east through the Northwest Passage, will be in open water, with no ice in sight.

The Amundsen is here to challenge the ice that has long guarded the legendary Northwest Passage across the roof of the Earth, and to plumb the scientific mysteries of an Arctic thawing from global warming.

A relentless climb of temperature — 5 degrees in 30 years — is shrinking the Arctic ice and reawakening dreams of a 4,000-mile shortcut just shy of the North Pole, passing beside the Arctic’s beckoning oil and mineral riches.

"Shipping companies are going to think about this, and if they think it’s worth it, they are going to try it," says the captain of the Amundsen, Cmdr. Alain Gariepy, 43.  "The question is not if, but when."

 

For full story, see: 

Doug Struck.  "Melting Arctic Makes Way for Man; Researchers Aboard Icebreaker Say Shipping Could Add to Risks for Ecosystem."  Washington Post  (Sunday, November 5, 2006):  A01.

 

   Source of map:  online version of the Washington Post article quoted and cited above.

 

FDA Hurdles Block Widespread Use of Baby-Saving Drug

(p. A1)  BOSTON — Like thousands of children in the U.S., Maggie Leaver has short bowel syndrome.  These children can’t absorb enough nutrients from food, and some need intravenous feedings to survive.

A baby’s digestive system can adapt over time, but that may take months or years.  Many of these babies can’t wait.  For reasons not fully understood, children put on intravenous nutrition may suffer liver damage.  Some require liver and small bowel transplants, risky procedures that don’t always work.  Others die waiting for a transplant.

In July, in a paper in the scientific journal Pediatrics, researchers at Children’s Hospital Boston reported on a small study that suggested a promising treatment.  They found that by switching from the standard intravenous formula to a different kind — called Omegaven — babies weren’t progressing to liver failure.  Omegaven, used in Europe for adults, isn’t approved in the U.S. and is considered experimental treatment.

"The kids aren’t dying anymore," says Mark Puder, a pediatric surgeon who was lead investigator on the study.  "We think we have a good treatment."

But Dr. Puder’s effort to get Omegaven widely used in babies has put him in an unusual conflict with the German company that developed the drug.  Fresenius Kabi AG, which makes Omegaven, says it isn’t interested in bringing the drug to the U.S. market.  The company says it doesn’t agree that Omegaven is the best drug for these babies and has a new product that it believes is better.

In 28 of 29 babies treated with Omegaven so far at Children’s Hospital, Dr. Puder says they were able to stop further liver damage — and damage that children already incurred seemed to improve.  Some babies who were switched to Omegaven rebounded enough that they were taken off the waiting list for an organ transplant.  At one point, Maggie Leaver’s condition deteriorated so much that her surgeon thought she was going to die.  Now the 18-month-old is thriving at home in Hingham, Mass.

. . .

Mr. Ducker says the company’s new product, called SMOFlipid, "presents a better option for pediatric feeding."  The company believes the new product does contain all the essential fatty acids babies need and can be used on its own.

Fresenius Kabi says it doesn’t want to invest the resources required to test both products for approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.  It hopes to eventually sell the new product in the U.S., Mr. Ducker says, although no timetable has been set and no trials are under way.

. . .

Because Omegaven is considered experimental in the U.S., if hospitals want to try it, they have to ask permission from the FDA for each individual patient.  The FDA has regulations that enable doctors to use experimental drugs in certain (p. A15) emergency situations.

If hospitals obtain the required permissions, they must then find a way to buy the drug on their own, since insurers typically won’t cover Omegaven because it’s experimental.  The cost can run from $50 to $100 a day per patient.  At Children’s Hospital Boston, the surgical department has already spent close to $100,000 to buy Omegaven for babies.

. . .

Dr. Mooney says he wrestled almost from the beginning about whether to put Maggie on Omegaven. He knew about Dr. Puder’s results, which he calls "amazingly great," but the number of children treated was still small.  He worried about adverse effects.  "It is so easy to get caught in the hype of new things," Dr. Mooney says.  Maggie was already fragile.  What if he put her on Omegaven, he says, "and there was a horrible side effect that could tip her over the edge?"

But when standard therapies failed, he felt "there was nothing else to do."  Given that the treatment is experimental, Dr. Mooney says he believes it was right to wait.  But he also feels Omegaven has made a difference.  "Five years ago, every single one of the kids taking Omegaven would be dead by now, Maggie included," he says.

 

For the full story, see:

MARCUS, AMY DOCKSER.  "Different Rx; A Doctor’s Push For Drug Pits Him Against Its Maker; Dr. Puder Thinks Omegaven Is Best Option for Sick Babies; Company Prefers New Product Turnaround for Little Maggie."  Wall Street Journal  (Mon., November 13, 2006):  A1 & A15.

Cheap, Easy, Transparent Property Rights Institutions Are Key to Developing Long Tail

Chris Anderson points out that the main thing currently holding back the long tail, are legal restrictions in the form of clearing copyrights.  This is somewhat analogous to how the legal restrictions to starting up a small business, end up protecting the larger incumbent companies, a la Hernando de Soto’s The Other Path. 

Figuring out how to quickly and cheaply process small intellectual property rights claims is the key.  The assumption that this could and would be done was an underpinning of Bill Gates’ prediction of the key importance of content in his The Road Ahead.

If Gates’ vision could be realized, it would provide the consumer much greater variety (and much closer matches between what is sought and what is found); and it would provide many more producers of content, the opportunity to support themselves through their productive activities.  (As opposed to the current situation where most such producers must produce as a part-time, labor-of-love, while they support themselves by their unrelated ‘day job.’)

 

Books mentioned:

Anderson, Chris. The Long Tail. New York: Hyperion, 2006.

Gates, Bill. The Road Ahead. New York: Viking Penguin, 1995.

Soto, Hernando de. The Other Path. New York: Harper and Row, 1989.

 

Microsoft’s VX-6000 LifeCam Really Stinks

  Microsoft’s VX-6000 LifeCam.  Source of image:  http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/images/gallery/hardware/WC6_Angle_Silver_lg.jpg

 

I posted this to Amazon.com, late on Thurs., Nov. 30, 2006:

I have spent a frustrating afternoon and evening trying to install the VX-6000 on a fully updated MS XP pro system. The install took forever, because every couple of minutes the install program couldn’t find a needed file (if they need it, why not put it on the install CD?). So I had to browse my system and point them to where the file was (why couldn’t they design the install program to search for the file instead of making me do it?). Finally I got a successful install, and then I was informed there was an updated version, and I needed to install that. So I went through the whole time-consuming process all over again, including the schtick about searching for the location of several files. Finally it again said I had installed the program successfully. So I rebooted my PC, and clicked on the Microsoft LifeCam icon. After cranking for awhile I get "initialization error". I try rebooting again—same error. So I type in "initialization error" in the search bar of the "help" section, and I get back "no topics found." So they sell me an expensive camera, run me ragged installing it, send me a repeated error message, and provide me no clue on what to do about it. (I guess now that Bill Gates is saving the world through philanthropy, nobody’s left minding the shop?)

 

The final comment is probably a bit too snide or harsh.  Microsoft has always had the deserved reputation of letting some products out the door before they are ready.  E.g., the first couple of versions of Windows paled in comparison to the graphical-user-interface operating system that Apple was offering at the time.  And the CD that accompanied Bill Gates’ The Road Ahead would not work on what was then Microsoft’s premier operating system:  Windows NT.

Maybe these kind of glitches result from a conscious operating strategy that gives employees a lot of freedom to make their own decisions.  The upside can be speedy decisions, and creativity.  The downside can be glitches such as the VX-6000 LifeCam.  Taking the broad, professorial view, maybe overall, the upside justifies the downside.  Tom Peters endorses companies accepting this trade-off rather than adopting layered, rule-bound, slow, bureaucratic decision-making.  (See his:  Re-imagine!)

(But did I mention that the VX-6000 LifeCam really stinks?) 

 

The reference to the Peters book is:

Peters, Tom. Re-Imagine! London: DK, 2003.

 

We Will Always Want More Income

Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes, and many others, have suggested that there is some level of income at which we will have enough, and want no more. 

David Friedman, in his price theory text, and others, have doubted this.  I am with the doubters.  I suspect that we sometimes think a certain amount of money would satiate us, because at some level way beyond our current income, it does not reward us to think too much about how we might spend so much money.

But if you are Rockefeller, and you see what good comes with founding universities, curing diseases, and the like, then you can easily imagine what good would come from even more money, even if, like Rockefeller, you are the richest person on the face of the earth.

In the discussion excerpted below, Robert Frank gives another argument for joining the doubters:  that as our income rises, so do our standards for quality.  (I think this argument is sound, but less important than the one sketched above.)  

 

When my wife and I were living in Paris a few years ago, we went out to dinner with well-to-do friends who were visiting from the United States.  The restaurant we chose had a good reputation and, by our standards, was not cheap.  But although my wife and I enjoyed our meals enormously, our friends found theirs disappointing.  I’m confident they were not trying to impress us or make us feel inferior.  By virtue of their substantially higher income, they had simply grown accustomed to a higher standard of cuisine.

. . .

By placing the desire to outdo others at the heart of his description of insatiable demands, Keynes relegated such demands to the periphery.  But the desire for higher quality has no natural limits.  Keynes and others were wrong to have imagined that a two-hour work week might someday enable us to buy everything we want.  That hasn’t happened and never will.

 

For the full commentary, see: 

ROBERT H. FRANK.  "ECONOMIC SCENE; The More We Make, the Better We Want."  The New York Times  (Thurs., September 28, 2006):  C3.

(Note:  ellipsis added.)

 

Copenhagen Consensus: Money Spent on Global Warming Would Do More Good Elsewhere


(p. A12) The report on climate change by Nicholas Stern and the U.K. government has sparked publicity and scary headlines around the world.  Much attention has been devoted to Mr. Stern’s core argument that the price of inaction would be extraordinary and the cost of action modest.

Unfortunately, this claim falls apart when one actually reads the 700-page tome.  Despite using many good references, the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change is selective and its conclusion flawed.  Its fear-mongering arguments have been sensationalized, which is ultimately only likely to make the world worse off. 

. . .  

Mr. Stern is also selective, often seeming to cherry-pick statistics to fit an argument.  This is demonstrated most clearly in the review’s examination of the social damage costs of CO2 — essentially the environmental cost of emitting each extra ton of CO2.  The most well-recognized climate economist in the world is probably Yale University’s William Nordhaus, whose "approach is perhaps closest in spirit to ours," according to the Stern review.  Mr. Nordhaus finds that the social cost of CO2 is $2.50 per ton.  Mr. Stern, however, uses a figure of $85 per ton.  Picking a rate even higher than the official U.K. estimates — that have themselves been criticized for being over the top — speaks volumes.

. . .  

Last weekend in New York, I asked 24 U.N. ambassadors — from nations including China, India and the U.S. — to prioritize the best solutions for the world’s greatest challenges, in a project known as Copenhagen Consensus.  They looked at what spending money to combat climate change and other major problems could achieve.  They found that the world should prioritize the need for better health, nutrition, water, sanitation and education, long before we turn our attention to the costly mitigation of global warning.

We all want a better world.  But we must not let ourselves be swept up in making a bad investment, simply because we have been scared by sensationalist headlines.

 

For the full story, see: 

BJORN LOMBORG.  "Stern Review."  Wall Street Journal (Thurs., November 2, 2006):  A12.

(Note:  the ellipses are added.)

 

Without Incentives, the Energetic become Lazy


Wise words from Frederick W. Taylor, who is known as the father of scientific management:


(p. B1) "When a naturally energetic man works for a few days beside a lazy one," Mr. Taylor wrote, "the logic of the situation is unanswerable.  ‘Why should I work hard when that lazy fellow gets the same pay I do and does only half the work?’ "



As quoted in: 

CYNTHIA CROSSEN.  "DEJA VU; Early Industry Expert Soon Realized a Staff Has Its Own Efficiency."  Wall Street Journal  (Mon., November 6, 2006):  B1.


Is Variety Good?

Chris Anderson has a stimulating and useful chapter in The Long Tail on why having variety and choice is good.

Not all agree.  My old Wabash economics professor, Ben Rogge, with wry amusement, used to refer us to Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock.  Toffler’s view was that choice was stressful—visualize the Robin Williams’ Russian émigré character in "Moscow on the Hudson," when he collapses in panic on not knowing how to choose amongst the variety of coffees in the Manhattan supermarket aisle.

What amused Rogge was the contrast between the old critics of capitalism, who criticized capitalism for providing too few goods for the proletariat, and the new critics, like Toffler, who criticized capitalism for providing too many goods for the proletariat. 

Although Toffler has recanted his earlier views, others, such as Barry Schwartz in The Paradox of Choice, have picked up the anti-choice banner.

Here’s my current two cents worth.  Sometimes we value variety for its own sake, and sometimes not.  I may find the variety of ethnic restaurants exciting, but not the variety of music on I-tunes.

But even when I don’t value variety for its own sake, I still may value it because it increases the odds that the product I can find matches the product I want.  Let me explain.

In the language of Clayton Christensen and co-author Raynor, in The Innovator’s Solution, generally what I want is a good that does well, a "job" that I want or need to get done.

Some critics of mass production descried the loss of the variety of products produced by pre-industrial craftsmen.  But what good did it do the peasants that no two chairs were quite alike, if all of them were too hard and misshapen for the job of comfortably sitting in them?

Mass production reduced variety, but increased quality, in the sense of bringing (cheaply) to market, products that were far better at doing the jobs that most people wanted/needed to get done. 

If the modern varieties of chairs are a response to differences in the jobs that different consumers need to get done, then I might generally, and accurately, presume that variety is usually good, not because I want to constantly sample a lot of different chairs (like I want to sample a lot of different ethnic foods), but rather because variety increases the odds that I will find the one or two particular chairs that allow me to do the job that I want a chair to do for me.  

Specifically, recently, we were looking for a chair that was firm, spill-resistant, would swivel to allow talking to someone in the kitchen, would recline for watching television, would be dog-chew resistant, and would have a color/fabric complementary to the rest of the furniture.  We shopped at Nebraska Furniture Mart, which is the largest furniture store in the U.S., with the greatest selection, because we hoped to find the one chair that would do all of these jobs.

We came close, but I wish there was a store with even greater selection.

   

People Want to Live (So There, Leon Kass)

  Source of edited screen capture:  http://www.nytimes.com/gst/mostemailed.html

 

In an earlier post, Leon Kass was quoted as opining that life is better when it is short. 

The table above is from the New York Times list of most emailed articles within the last 24 hour period.  The listing above was for the period ending at 1:00 PM CST on Thursday, November 2, 2006. 

Notice that of the top four articles, three of them have to do with the study showing that reversatrol may lengthen life.  

 

More Evidence that Reagan Was Much More than a “Genial Idiot”

   Source of book image:  http://ec2.images-amazon.com/images/P/0688146139.01._SS500_SCLZZZZZZZ_V1056466100_.jpg

 

Reagan was smart and disciplined.  That was one of the main messages of Mike Deaver’s book.  But in these pages, there is much additional evidence.  See, especially, the essay by Martin Anderson.

Also, Lee Edwards talks about one of his early encounters with the Reagans; he visited their home, and he was especially anxious to see Reagan’s library.  He saw a large library with dog-eared, heavily annotated books.  He also mentions quizing the GE manager (CEO?) who used to travel by train with Reagan to visit GE plants.  Edwards asked what Reagan did during the train trips.  The GE manager reported that Reagan devoured books, periodicals, and reports, taking extensive notes on his index cards.

(Sounds like Reagan could have used a computer, and would have made a great blogger?)

 

The reference for the book is: 

Hannaford, Peter, ed. Recollections of Reagan: A Portrait of Ronald Reagan: William Morrow & Company, 1997.