Chandra

What was your opinion on my stance with respect to overseas aid? If I was wrong there in your view I would like to know please.

A

Ahh, sorry Chandra...I posted as you posted your most recent comment.

A

Chandra

I will absolutely agree with Martin that India is not a worthy recipient of aid if it continues to see fit to lavish money on a space programme (as an example only Chandra, an example).

Ref your comment on corruption...corruption is absolutely everywhere in the World so that, per se, is not necessarily a condition to with-hold aid.

I will apologise to you Chandra for you feeling the offence you feel I caused I should have used a different form of words but please try to shy away from a tendency to not directly answer a question also put to you.

Going slightly off again at a tangent I would still be interested in Martins view on donating to charity?

Have you read the EU regulations pertaining to the Somerset flood plain Chandra please?

Andy

Geronimo

Sorry, late back.

There is more to the problem than just CO2. The environmentalists in your lecture audience would also be aware of other problems. Limited quantities of resources is the largest, whether you think of metals, fossil fuels, potash or agricultural land. Your lecturer's magic wand would only deplete them faster.
Also CO2 is not the only pollutant, think of aerosols, PM10s, sulphur, mercury, nitrogen oxides, ozone, CFCs. The magic wand would ease the CO2 problem while making others worse.

There is a temptation to look at climate change in isolation. In fact it is one of three interacting problems. Resource depletion, climate change and feeding 10 billion people will make it difficult to operate a viable world civilisation in the latter 2100s.

Coming back to cycles, I see signs of three possible cycles in the GISS data.

The red 5 year average shows a roughly decadal cycle varying +/-0.05C. That looks like the solar cycle.

The second is the 60-65 year AMO, with maxima around 1880, 1940, and 2000.
The minima are around 1910 and 1972.

There's also a possible half 200 year cycle, minimum in 1910 and peak 2010.

Any thoughts so far?

Martin A, Chandra, jones

I am interested in this curious implication that India should not be given aid because it have nuclear weapons and a space programme. No one seems to have thought to ask why.

India is stuck in a MAD standoff with Pakistan on one side and China on the other. Its nuclear weapons are not a luxury.

Neither is its space programme. What it launches are resource satellites to monitor i and assist its agriculture and communications satellites. The latter bypass the need for our ground communications infrastructure, phone lines, televiaion transmitters etc, at lower cost.

Why do it themselves? The cost is lower than paying foreigners to do it. The money remains within their own economy, paying their own citizens and developing their own skills base.

Ultimately India is a third world country with a large economy but a very low per capita income. It still needs foreign aid for projects it cannot afford to fund for itself.

EM, you say,

"Why do it themselves? The cost is lower than paying foreigners to do it. The money remains within their own economy, paying their own citizens and developing their own skills base."

Indian jobs for Indian people.

I very much approve of the principle.

and..

"Neither is its space programme. What it launches are resource satellites to monitor i and assist its agriculture and communications satellites. The latter bypass the need for our ground communications infrastructure, phone lines, televiaion transmitters etc, at lower cost."

They also do lunar and Mars trips as well.

Manned too.

Very good luck to them too I truly say. Easy to get the wrong impression of ones view if one misreads.

A

P.S. The aid principles I gave should also apply to the others too.

With respect to Pakistan, the level of military corruption there is eye-watering to add to the mix.

They will have to sort out their own MAD issue.Or not as the case may be.

I see no reason why adaptation work couldn't still be provided to these countries but keeping all the funding for western companies to do the work with western employess?.

What do you think of that EM? It might cost a bit more financially but wouldn't the end justify the means?

Andy

Jones

A lot of foreign aid is given on the understanding that the resulting contracts are signed with companies in the donating country. Trade by another name. One of the most extreme examples was the rebuilding of Iraq.

Many countries pay their public servants so poorly that corruption becomes a necessary supplement to income. In the third world governments are often stuck between the rock of insufficient funds to pay officials a living wage and the hard place of corruption. They also lack the moral pressure which keeps our officials and politicians (mostly) honest.

EM

To pay lip service to the title of the thread (the following rightly belongs to the "Fantasy China" thread I guess), Britain also has some fairly robust foreign aid to China too.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/10519964/UK-paid-more-than-27m-in-aid-to-China-last-year.html

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/448985/China-gets-millions-of-pounds-of-aid-from-UK-despite-affording-moon-mission

I dunno EM, geopolitics is a rather mysterious game to me. I'm just along for the ride.

Time will tell all mate.Always does.

Andy

Ah EM

Posted while you put up your last comment.

Yes, I would agree completely with what you say there mate. Honest. Cheers for that, I didn't perceive you were being at all "slippery" this time (whilst clearly noting that my "perception" may also be based on a false premise with previous readings of what you say...OK? .That fair of me?).

As for Iraq?.....Gaawwd, don't get me started.

All I would do is ask that you look at connections between Iraq, Halliburton, Kellog, Root and Brown and Dick Cheney (just a single example of doubtless very many).......All we have done in the west is elevate corruption to an art-form.

You get law in this world and justice in the next...or something similar. It really pays to just be a vaguely interested observer of affairs).

Look EM, the world is fu**ed on very many levels but carbon dioxide isn't one of the things doing the fu**ing (in my ignorant, lay view).

Andy

I have to say that as a geologist, I never came across the use of the word 'robust' in any sort of scientific context.

Robust has two meanings to a geologist:
1 - A hammer that can stand up to frequent, heavy-handed use without breaking
2 - The constitution of the last geologist to leave the bar...

I like the analytical chemistry definition - I work in a commercial testing laboratory, working mostly to British Standards, which are methods designed to be 'robust' by this definition (i.e. likely to give reliable answers when followed by different operators, often with diverging levels of skill).

Cli Sci use of the word? Mostly rhetorical padding.

Jones, Martin, people hide behind 'principles'. If you are face to face with a man dying of thirst, do you deny him water because his government builds nukes instead of reservoirs? The 'principles' you and Martin share might urge you to turn your back but I doubt that you would in practice. So your principles are worth little in a real world. If your principles are of no help when face to face, why should they apply just because from the other side of the world you cannot see the desperation in a person's eyes?

Questioning how aid is delivered, whether it reaches the right people, whether it is syphoned off by the corrupt, whether it displaces government spending etc is essential. Improving the effectiveness of our aid should be our preoccupation. Objecting to it 'in principle' is just dog-whistle politics aimed by populists at the gullible, the unthinking, the selfish and the compassionless.

Principles are useful for hiding behind. Martin has a principled objection to aid at least in part because of corruption but he apparently (on the basis that he wont answer) has no principled objection to petroleum products despite the corruption involved in their exploration and production. No news as to whether he would object to construction of a coal fired power plant in a corrupt country against the protestations of Drakes and Gueniers who will say it saves lives. Principles can be just a cynical mechanism for moulding the awkward realities of life into a preferred, simplistic, clean, world view.

Sorry, but you did ask.

Somerset plains and EU regulations - I have not read them. Give me a link and I will. But they are not relevant. I used the example of Somerset because Ridley did - object to both references or drop it.

Martin, you had plenty of time to answer and posted twice on other topics in that time. If you don't answer, I draw my own conclusions. You have still not answered, beyond penning a paean to the wonders of trade. Yet few question the benefits of trade, just like few question the benefits of education, health, clean water, healthy food and so on. But these are all, trade included, vulnerable to the scourge of corruption. Are you serious that the benefits of trade are such that any associated corruption can be ignored but that the benefits that can be provided by aid (education, health, clean water, healthy food) can be set to nothing if corruption occurs? You hold these things to rather differing standards.

You have a self proclaimed 'principled objection' to aid because of the corruption that can be involved and yet your principles hide under your coat tails when trade is involved. Honest 'principles' are independent of whether one stands to gain or loose from applying them. Your principles seem rather different.

Martin A

Countries such as India and Pakistan are effectively on a war footing. They feel obliged to maintain a nuclear deterrent, or be overrun. This soaks up a much larger proportion of their GDP than our own deterrent, money which they would no doubt prefer to spend improving their people's conditions. Even without their nuclear spending they have much less money to go round per head than we do.
Enjoy your riches. Pity your are too selfish to share them around.

Martin A. It is really strange that there are people who believe giving aid (other people's money of course) to poor countries will do anything to alleviate the poverty in the long term. To me it's clear if you want to take countries out of poverty then the first step is to create jobs. Then figure out how to improve education and health care. I believe India is currently turning out 450,000 engineering graduates a year (haven't checked for myself) but there are no jobs so they work in call centers. What India needs is inward investment not aid. It has the skills and the brainpower to become a global superstar (although some on this blog might find that odd if the only Indian they meet is the one on here). China is nearly there. What the world needs to eradicate poverty is consumerism not aid. Every country that's adopted regulated capitalism has prospered ( EM please don't try to prove me wrong by pointing out the failure of capitalism in Trista n da Cunha it's the big picture I'm alluding to). And what does consumerism need? Cheap energy.

Aid is simply a sticking plaster, frequently on a broken leg.

EM I've alluded to this before when you sent me a diatribe of insults, but I'll repeat it fo you. Most of us come onto this blog to share ideas with strangers in good faith using insulting language isn't sharing ideas. If you think aid will bring people out of poverty, which I believe Marin (and I) are saying it won't then explain the economics of how that will be achieved without hurling insults, they don't add anything to our knowledge and for all we know Martin could be a great philanthropist.

I'll come back another time.

I always thought the definition of overseas aid is "What poor people in rich countries give to rich people in poor countries"

Sorry, gentlemen. I've a lot of undirected anger built up and it is sparking in all directions. I'll come back when I'm fit company.

Martin you asked for some examples of successful aid but I have no real idea what you would consider successful. I'm pretty sure that you would consider an oil or other resource exploration project a 'success' as long as oil (or whatever) came out of the ground in sufficient quantities, even if the surrounding land was thus made uninhabitable, the local population was displaced, the resulting employment was largely of foreign contractors, the currency appreciated to a degree that made other exports impossible and the financial gains went to corrupt government officials. I'm sure your Cato Institute would trumpet that as trade successfully helping the country where aid had failed - look, GDP went up! And you and your friends would lap it up and quote it in support of your self serving ideas.

> "taking money from poor people in rich countries
> and giving it to rich people in poor countries"

Just a little thought might tell you that is untrue. How much money do poor people pay net into the tax system - that is after accounting for what they receive back in services such as education, health, police and welfare? I think you'll find it is close to zero. The net payers of tax are those who earn most - which is as it should be. So the money comes from the rich in the West - if it goes to the rich in poor countries that is a fault of the system of aid delivery, not of aid itself.

Your three Cato examples are just stupid, populist, talking points aimed at the ignorant. You are comparing a four year Marshall Plan aimed at reviving a war torn but still rich, educated European society with fourty years aid aimed at countries that were and are completely different socially and economically. You quote declines in GDP in sub-Saharan Africa over 25 years, seeming to say that this is down to aid, that war, the Cold War, dictatorship, communism, racism (S.Africa) and inter-tribal problems caused by colonial borders not matching traditional land ownership were not vastly more important. And Nigeria's dictators did not steal $500bn of aid money even though that is the impression your paragraph leaves. How much of that $500bn was oil money? Would you say oil was a curse for Nigeria as a result (quite possibly true) of that theft?

> If someone makes no reply to something you say
> the only inference you can draw with certainty
> is that they have not, so far, responded.
> Anything more is just your surmise.

I can and will draw conclusions from a lack of a reply, just as others do when EM or I fail to reply. And my conclusion is that you cannot justify your prejudice against aid - your stupid examples above bear that out. Your 'principled objection' to paying for aid on the basis that much of it is not done well is as valid as objecting to paying for our childrens educations because so much of that is not done well.

But you can still make your opinions clear. Do you think aid in the form of World Bank grants that pay for coal fired power stations is "harmful to everybody, especially the recipient countries"? Some of your friends here think that people like me are complicit in the deaths of people in poor countries because we oppose such infrastructure projects. But you are fortunate in having your 'principles' to guide you, so which is it?

Chandra

Perhaps you should read this wikipedia article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aid_effectiveness