Earlier this week, Commenter Jill, the proprietress at Writes Like She Talks, asked me to expand on some points I made in the comments at this post about Ellen Goodman calling those who doubt globaloney as forward-looking equivalents of Holocaust deniers.

In the interest of giving the exchange further exposure (and getting a weekend post done with minimal effort :–>), here goes –

I’ll pick it up here, part of the way through this comment of mine:

What is very tiresome is that there is a litany of thousands of climatologists and scientists who are not buying into the globaloney, yet we have constantly been insulted for months by people like Gore and others who tell us the debate is over. Horse manure. Despite my stridency, if someone came forward with solid evidence, I would be listening.

What is frustrating is that aggressive capitalism is showing signs of being able to lift most of the world out of grinding poverty in 50-75 years, while adopting the globalarmist agenda will lock in those who are in dire poverty permanently. Where is the compassion in that?

Specifically, Jill wondered:

Tom, you wrote: “if someone came forward with solid evidence, I would be listening.” I am not being facecious here - what would you consider “solid evidence”?

Then you wrote: “What is frustrating is that aggressive capitalism is showing signs of being able to lift most of the world out of grinding poverty in 50-75 years, while adopting the globalarmist agenda will lock in those who are in dire poverty permanently. Where is the compassion in that?”

Tom - what are you talking about “aggressive capitalism” lifting “most of the world out of grinding poverty”? I do believe that you know what you’re talking about, or believe you believe what you’re talking about. But you and I know that it’s not my forte and again, without making you give me primer on your idea here, you know I’m a studious questioner - what do you have in mind specifically when you say this kind of thing?

Last - why do you feel that concern for climate change - regardless of why it’s happening - will “lock in those who are in dire poverty permanently”?

My response back was this:

Jill …..

- “Solid evidence” would require proof that warming is occurring (it seems a bit likely that it is), and that peer-reviewed and peer-replicated research show a definitive link of human-produced gases, by-products, etc. to that warming. Right now the logic, in essence, is that “it’s happening, so it must be our fault.”

- I don’t think the science will ever get past the previous hurdle (I would suggest a daily e-mail from Benny Peiser in England that I receive, but it gets a little overbearing at times, not in content, but in sheer volume; I can’t even get past the headlines). Even then, the next hurdle would have to be to prove that warming, if proven to be human-induced, is a bad thing, or that it is even dangerous. You could make a case that increasing arable land and other benefits might outweigh the negatives. Recall that Greenland got its name for a reason — it was a perfectly hospitable place when settled by Erik the Red and the Icelanders (good name for a band, eh?). Over the next several hundred years it became insufferably cold and uninhabitable (see Wiki). Greenland’s condition today is evidence that the earth hasn’t yet re-warmed to the point it was at during the Medieval Warm Period. So it would seem we have a warming cushion to work with.

- As to the potential for aggressive capitalism lifting the world out of poverty, I have this post from the past:

http://www.bizzyblog.com/?p=3985

This is a Positivity post that mostly regurgitates what the World Bank is predicting over the next 25 years. Here’s one money quote:

A new middle class will be created in the developing nations. Today 400 million people in the poorer nations are consider(ed) to be in the “global middle class” with a purchasing power parity of between $4000 and $17,000 per capita. By 2030 there will be 1.2 billion.

That would mean that the percentage of the world living in poverty will have deceased by about 12% in 25 years. Replicate that a couple of times, and accelerate it by helping countries move to market-based approaches, and the idea that world poverty (which appears to be roughly 30%-40% of the world, depending on source, definitions, etc.) could be mostly conquered in 50-75 years is not off the wall at all.

This post also refers to an article noting that 170-plus million Chinese escaped poverty between 1990 and 2002, and which in essence credits Wal-Mart and other outsourcers for most of that improvement:

http://www.bizzyblog.com/?p=2879

- That leaves what happens if “climate change” proponents get a stranglehold on the world economy, which is clearly what they want. Even if you don’t believe, as I do, that the progess described above would be stopped dead in its tracks, you’d have to acknowledge that it would be slowed down considerably. Mandated reductions in energy use would cause cuts in output, (and) slow new construction to a crawl. At a minimum they would reduce economic growth considerably, but I think what would actually happen is a worldwide recession with the potential of bringing a lot of instability to places once thought to be under control.

- The more strident proponents of “climate change” controls have even openly stated that they don’t mind global poverty continuing, and even construct tortured “noble savage” arguments to somehow paint their situations as superior to ours. Here’s an example of one such person, a leading light in the environmentalist community, quoted from Mark Steyn:

http://www.bizzyblog.com/?p=4505

“In Madagascar, the indicators of quality of life are not housing. They’re not nutrition, specifically. They’re not health in a lot of cases. It’s not education. A lot of children in Fort Dauphin do not go to school because the parents don’t consider that to be important. . . . People have no jobs, but if I could put you with a family and you could count how many times in a day that that family smiles. Then I put you with a family well off, in New York or London, and you count how many times people smile. . . . You tell me who is rich and who is poor.”

So (back to me opining), it’s OK if they’re malnourished, unhealthy, ignorant, and unemployed. They smile a lot, which means they’re better off than we are — never mind (as noted later by Steyn) that they only have a life expectancy of 52.5 years.

I’m not okay with that. It appears that much of the worldwide environmental movement is. In fact, many of them have deluded themselves into thinking that perpetuating global poverty is the price we have to pay for “saving the planet” — which I think is demonstrably not in dire need of saving.

___________________________________

UPDATE: More news that contradicts the faux certainty of the globaloney crowd.

From an Investors Business Daily editorial last Monday (HT Anchoress):

Karl Marx once said the goal of communism was a system that extracted from each according to his ability to give to each according to his need. Come to think of it, Kyoto says the same thing.

This is one of those “weekenders,” i.e., a longer Positivity piece of the “read the whole thing” persuasion (reproduced in full for fair use and discussion purposes due to linked paper’s seven-day archive policy):

Miracle in Memphis
Sunday, February 4, 2007

A young boy sits in a wheelchair, a blue ballcap covering his head. A man, most likely his father, gently rubs the boy’s legs.

Just a few feet away, a woman lovingly strokes a girl’s back. The girl sits slumped over, her head in her hands.

The faces of these children, these families, show signs of stress, exhaustion, fear.

Yet in this place where they wait and worry — St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis — there also is hope.

Hope can be found in the hands of the doctors, nurses and other hospital workers who not only provide life-saving treatments, but also comfort in a simple touch or smile.

It can be found in the minds of the scientists who work tirelessly to find better treatments for the catastrophic diseases that bring hundreds of children to Memphis each day.

It can be found on the hospital’s walls, where the names of countless donors are engraved as a reminder that generosity can make a profound difference in people’s lives.

It can be found in the eyes of first-time visitors — including five from Quincy, Ill., — who are inspired to return home and convince as many people as they can to support the cause.

And, of course, it can be found in the hearts of the patients and their families.

Hope, indeed, can be found on this sprawling, 60-acre campus, in this place that the late entertainer Danny Thomas founded in 1962 because of his belief that “No child should die in the dawn of life.”

Fulfilling a promise

Danny Thomas was a struggling young entertainer when he knelt in a Detroit church before a statue of St. Jude Thaddeus — the patron saint of desperate cases and lost causes — and promised the saint he would build him a shrine if he would show him his way in life.

The prayer was answered and Thomas moved his family to Chicago to pursue a career in show business. He would go on to become a television and film star, and his most famous role was in “Make Room for Daddy.”

His promise to St. Jude was delivered in the form of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

In 1957, Thomas founded the American Lebanese Syrian Associated Charities (ALSAC), which became the fundraising arm of St. Jude. Five years later, the hospital opened its doors.

Since opening, St. Jude has treated children from all 50 states and more than 70 foreign countries. Its mission is to find cures for children with catastrophic diseases, mainly cancer, through research and treatment.

About 4,900 patients are seen yearly, and most are treated on an outpatient basis as part of ongoing research programs. The hospital maintains 60 inpatient beds and treats about 230 patients each day.

St. Jude is the only pediatric cancer research center where families never pay for treatments that are not covered by insurance, and families without insurance are never asked to pay.

The hospital also pays for lodging, food and travel for patients and their families.

“The work being done here is just remarkable,” said Donna Young, who works for ALSAC. “And we never ask a penny from the patient’s family.”

Young recently served as a tour guide for a group of people who are involved in St. Jude Runs, a major fundraising effort for the hospital.

Each August, runners participate in a unique, 465-mile event, the St. Jude Memphis to Peoria Run, which takes them from the Memphis hospital to its Midwest Affiliate in Peoria, Ill. In addition, auxiliary runs take off from various Illinois and Missouri communities, including Quincy.

For the first time, run co-founder Mike McCoy and other St. Jude Run officials were able to coordinate a bus trip to Memphis for run coordinators, runners and volunteers.

McCoy, of Peoria, said it was a way to say thank you for their fundraising efforts, and to show them where the money goes.

“You can’t really imagine, unless you see the facility, what everybody’s hard work and fundraising goes to,” said Rick Meehan, run coordinator for the St. Jude Quincy to Peoria Run. “It makes you realize how fortunate you area and it makes you strive to raise more money.”

In addition to Meehan, the Quincy contingent on the bus trip included Meehan’s wife, Becky, volunteers Mildred Becks and Rebecca Stump and Herald-Whig reporter Kelly Wilson, as well as volunteers from Bloomington/Normal, LaSalle/Peru, Springfield, Lincoln, Champaign/Urbana, Galesburg, Pekin, Peoria, St. Louis and the Tri-County area.

“It’s overwhelming to be there,” Stump said. “It becomes so much more real to be there, to see the kids. You’re left in awe in how the whole process works.”

Stump, who was a runner/fundraiser in the first two years of the Quincy run, says she initially got involved because she thought it was for a good cause.

Now, she knows for sure.

“You become so much more passionate about it,” she said. “It makes you go the extra mile.”

Becks, who will take part in the event for the first time this year, left Memphis with a strong incentive to raise funds.

“I can’t imagine going through that with one of my children,” said Becks, who has three daughters. She was impressed with how much support the patients and families receive, from housing and food to multiple activities that bring some fun into the children’s lives while they’re fighting cancer or other diseases.

“Everything was just so well thought out,” Becks said. “It’s amazing the love and care they give to these families to make sure they’re comfortable.”

Meehan, after walking through the Target House, a residential facility that gives long-term patients and families a home-like place to stay, shook his head in amazement.

“And all of this from one man’s dream.”

***********

Dr. Joe Mirro, chief medical officer at St. Jude, says the hospital’s major focus is pediatric cancer.

“We try to focus on the diseases where we can make the most significant impact,” he said.

“We’re not competing with children’s hospitals,” Mirro added. “We’re focused on one thing, finding the biological reason for catastrophic diseases, mostly cancer.”

Mirro says St. Jude employs about 3,200 people, with a little more than a third providing clinical care. “We have 96 employed physicians and 100 additional consultants,” he said.

One-third of employees are involved in laboratory research and the remainder are support staff.

St. Jude pioneered a combination of chemotherapy, radiation and, when necessary, surgery to treat childhood cancers. About 80 percent of St. Jude patients have a cancer diagnosis.

The hospital continues to expand the use of bone marrow transplantation as a treatment for pediatric cancers and genetic diseases. It was the first institution to cure sickle cell disease with a bone marrow transplant, and is the first to receive government approval for a unique transplant procedure that makes it possible for parents who are not exact matches to be donors for the children.

The bone marrow transplant program enables doctors to perform about 185 transplants per year.

In addition to pediatric cancer research, St. Jude focuses on some acquired and inherited immunodeficiencies, infectious diseases and genetic disorders.

Mirro says St. Jude currently has 400 open research protocols.

Current research includes work in gene therapy, bone marrow transplantation, chemotherapy, the biochemistry of normal and cancerous cells, radiation treatment, blood diseases, resistance to therapy, viruses, hereditary diseases, influenza, pediatric AIDS and psychological effects of catastrophic illnesses.

St. Jude also conducts long-term biostatistical investigations on its patients and is the only pediatric research hospital that has been awarded a National Cancer Institute cancer center support grant.

Research efforts since the hospital’s inception have brought survival rates for childhood cancers from less than 20 percent to more than 70 percent overall.

Current survival rates for selected childhood cancers are:

* 94 percent for acute lymphoblastic leukemia;
* 90 percent for Hodgkin disease;
* 85 percent for medulloblastoma (brain tumor); and
* 90 percent for Wilms tumor (kidney tumor).

The 94 percent survival rate for ALL, the most common form of childhood cancer, compares to a 4 percent survival rate in 1962.

Mirro stresses that research findings at St. Jude are shared with doctors and scientists all over the world.

“The benefits are communal benefits,” he said. “If you give your money in Quincy, it is benefiting Quincy.”

Mirro, who has participated in two Memphis to Peoria runs, says fundraising is vital to the hospital’s operations. It takes $1.2 million to operate the hospital for just one day, and that comes mostly from public contributions.

“If we didn’t have the support of people like you, we couldn’t do it,” Mirro told those on the bus trip. “Without you, we close off 70 percent of the operations. It’s critical we have your support.”

Dave Selzer, ALSAC regional director in Peoria, also thanked the volunteers for their fundraising efforts.

“Without the money you’ve raised, we couldn’t do the job our families need us to do,” he said. “But it’s not about the money. It’s about the lives that you’ve saved and the hope you’ve raised.”

While science and technology are the driving forces behind St. Jude’s success, the compassion shown to patients and their families also makes an impact.

“They really care about people,” said Josh Smith of Winchester, Ill., whose 13-year-old son, Jake, is being treated for a brain tumor at St. Jude — for the second time.

“Not only do they give you first-class treatment, they have so many activities,” Smith said. “Jake likes playing putt putt, and they had a place to go play.”

When Jake was at St. Jude the first time, at age 5, the family lived at the Target House.

The Target Corp. partnered with St. Jude to open the facility in 1999. Since then, 510 families from 38 states and 26 countries have lived there — at no cost.

Target House is for patients and their families who have to stay in Memphis for treatment long-term, which is three months or more. A St. Jude tour guide said some families have stayed for up to five years.

It can accommodate up to 96 families at a time in apartment guest suites that feature separate bedrooms, kitchens and living rooms.

Target House features lavish common areas where families can relax and spend time with their children. There’s the Tiger Woods library and pavilion, the Amy Grant music room, indoor and outdoor play areas, a teen room and a garden patio.

Figure skater Scott Hamilton donated a family fitness center and spa, as well as an arts and crafts room where patients can use their imagination to create artwork, some of which is displayed in a hall gallery.

One piece by a patient was an image of the Target House titled, “Close to Home.”

Target House is just one part of St. Jude’s housing program. The NBA’s Memphis Grizzlies partnered with the hospital to open the Memphis Grizzlies House in 2004, a hotel-like environment for patients undergoing treatment from one to seven days.

The five-story Grizzlies House can accommodate up to 100 families at a time. An enclosed playground and basketball half-court are located outside the facility.

Selzer says St. Jude patients have a third housing option, the Ronald McDonald House, for medium-length stays.

The focus on comfort also can be seen in the hospital itself. Brightly-colored murals cover the walls to give children a cheery environment. Waiting rooms have play areas.

Young, the hospital tour guide, says St. Jude staff go to great lengths to ensure that “the children can be children.”

Patients play a role in the hospital’s decor. Their artwork hangs on walls. One striking, memorable part of the hospital is the “ABCs of Cancer” wall, which was created about seven or eight years ago.

The wall features 26 posters, one for each letter of the alphabet. Patients wrote down thoughts that coincided with each of the letters.

The poster with the letter “V” draws the most attention: “V is for vomet (sic) … I sit and wait but it’s just to late,” a patient writes.

Some are poignant: “T is for tears … we cry when we lose some one we love.”

Some are filled with hope: “L is for ‘Lil Miracles — small things that happen.”

Meehan personally knows two ‘lil miracles. Spencer Waters and Jacob Sorrill, both of Liberty, Ill., were treated at St. Jude for bilateral Wilms tumor — and both are healthy boys today.

“I always remember Nancy and Kathy (the boys’ mothers) saying St. Jude is awesome for the families,” Meehan said. “Now I know what they meant.”