Development Roast Giving international development a proper roasting

By Raphael Jeronimo Calderon “Bolivia’s Evo Morales stands on the brink of a ruinous civil war in his attempts to refound the Andean nation as a socialist state” states British The Guardian (1). RIA Novosti, the Russian news agency, writes “Bolivia descends into chaos – Dead and wounded as a …

It is not easy to be worried about average temperature increases of a few degrees over the rest of your life if the temperatures you experience change ten times as much every single day. Consequently, much of the concern around global warming is focused on associated effects, such as the …

“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.“ Winston Churchill Last week, Fundación Milenio (FM) presented its Economic Report for the first semester of 2008. The numbers look great, with high economic growth (6.1% for the first trimester), booming exports (58.3% more …

Most humans have a preference for temperatures around 20°C. If the climate is hotter, they use air-conditioners to bring down the temperature, and if it is colder, they use heating systems to increase the temperature. Except the poor, who cannot afford air-conditioners and heating systems. They just have to accept …

By Gonzalo Forgues-Puccio “Very few established institutions, governments and constitutions…are ever destroyed by their enemies until they have been corrupted and weakened by their friends.” Walter Lippmann Assume that it is the middle of the summer and that you just bought your favourite ice cream from a shop. You remove …

Ants are among the most numerous and versatile animals on Earth. They prefer tropical rainforests, but they also manage to survive in scorching deserts, and they survive long, cold winters by hibernating and huddling together in the millions. They don’t have any problems with landscapes altered for human purposes. Indeed, …

By: Lykke E. Andersen*  “In the last 200 years the population of our planet has grown exponentially, at a rate of 1.9% per year. If it continued at this rate, with the population doubling every 40 years,by 2600 we would all be standing literally shoulder to shoulder.” Stephen Hawking To …

“Climate is what you expect, weather is what you get” Robert A. Heinlein Between 1905 and 2005, the average global air temperature near the Earth’s surface increased by somewhere between 0.5 and 1.0 degrees Celsius. Climate model projections summarized by the IPCC indicate that average global surface temperature will likely …

During the last 100 years, we have experienced four rounds of significant climate change. In 1912, when Titanic struck an iceberg and sunk, the New York Times reported that “Prof. Schmidt Warns Us of an Encroaching Ice Age.” Los Angeles Times the same year: “Fifth ice age is on the …

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Al Gore jointly won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change”. I am sure these enourmous …