A bunch of economists (including nobel laureates) are asked "if you had $85 billion bucks over four years, how would you spend it to get the best benefit for the world?"

The answers - published by the Copenhagen Concensus Center - are surprising. (If you don't want to download the pdf, see a synopsis here.)

Top of the list: for a cost of $60 million a year you can add Vitamin A and Zinc to the diets of children in the developing world - and get back $1 billion in health and cognitive improvement.

Many other solutions are similarly simple and unsexy - and a good reminder that while  we fret over flashy fears like terrorism, the developing world suffers daily from lack of basic health and nutrition needs.

One solution to global problems - lowering carbon emissions to stave off global warming - gets dissed again this year, as it has since the Copenhagen Consensus has gone into business.

That's not surprising. CC is Bjorn Lomborg's baby - the environmentalist/economist who is one of the biggest proponents for taking slow (or no) steps to combat global warming. The way the question is asked - to add up the costs and benefits of solutions to today's problems - is sure to make trying to combat climate change look silly. That's because the costs are so huge and the benefits are unknown; those benefits are only as big as the costs of not stopping global warming which could be anywhere between zilch and losing Bangladesh and southern Florida to the Ocean.