Monckton Lecture, Melbourne Feb 1, 2010

U.S. looks for a ‘critical mass’ climate deal

What is new is that the so-called BASIC countries—giant, rapidly growing but poor economies—have become the necessary interlocutors of the USA and, perforce, for Europe, Japan and the rest of the twenty-something countries that have committed to sign the 'pledge' on emissions cuts by 31 January this year.

Lamy’s assessment of Copenhagen

The Director-General of WTO goes on to claim that "…in the end, it is only through a multilateral process that we can achieve results which are legitimate and credible." But this is an argument seems to stand only when propped-up by jargon. Processes? What are they? Agreements to a coherent single-framework for action? Only a weak…

Rahmstorf rebuffed

At the time of the publication of Garnaut's interim report, several well-qualified sceptics disputed Rahmstorf's projetions, including David Stockwell, Lucia Liljegren and Steve McIntyre with strong support from former Australian statistician Ian Castles. Ian also kindly supported my request to the Statistical Society of Australia to evaluate the Rahmstorf methodology in the interests of better informed…

Discounting the Intergenerational Report

Why do we need an IGR that merely regurgitates what the Government has already claimed about its own policies? An inter-generational report must be an independent and rigorous review of the evidence about policy outcomes to be of any use in the necessary debates about growing our wealth or maximising our opportunities. The current edition is…