Posts tagged…Model
Let’s end WTO’s Doha agony
Thu, Apr 01 2010Just in … some old news from Geneva:
"The WTO's week-long "stocktaking" of the Doha Round trade talks ended on Friday with a whimper, not a bang. The much-touted goal of concluding the negotiations toward a global trade deal before the end of 2010 - an objective laid out by heads of state last year - was quietly set aside, as officials acknowledged that political hurdles continue to block…
Read more…Simple deductions about climate change
Fri, Mar 05 2010The UK Met Office (which has been unable to predict British weather recently) now claims to be certain about climate.
"The fingerprint of human influence has been detected in many different aspects of observed climate changes,” said Peter Stott, head of climate monitoring at the Met Office Hadley Centre for Climate Research. “Natural variability, from the sun, volcanic eruptions or natural…
Critical mass agreement vs the Doha Round
Thu, Jul 02 2009
We'll cut to the chase, shall we, in this fourth of my posts on modeling the impact of a 'critical mass' agreement in agriculture? Click on the tags at the left-side or at the bottom of this article to find the earlier posts.
A 'critical mass' agreement among 38 countries that account for 80 percent of world trade in the 30 top-traded agricultural products (all of them food) to eliminate import…
Opening food markets in a CM agreement
Wed, Jun 24 2009
The immediate net global gains from a 'Critical Mass' (CM) trade agreement to open markets for some 30 products in 38 of the world's largest markets would be about $10 billion. World trade in these products would expand by a third with most of the export gains won by developing countries.
This is the third post in a series of five intended to share with you the results of some simulations of an…
A Critical Mass Agreement on cereals trade
Wed, Jun 17 2009
In this post I'll describe the simulated impacts of a Critical Mass (CM) trade liberalization agreement on global trade in cereals. This is the second of five posts about some simulations I've created to investigate whether CM agreements could be an alternative to the standard WTO approach to opening up world markets for agriculture.
The bottom line: an improvement in global welfare of between…
Modeling ‘critical mass’ trade agreements
Mon, Jun 15 2009
In the past couple of weeks, I've been modeling the economic impacts of an alternative way to open up world agricultural markets using 'critical mass' trade agreements.
I thought I would share some of the results of the modeling with you, here on my website, over the next couple of weeks.
The simulations run inside the trade model suggest that there would be huge wins from adopting a new, more…
Plimer review: more from G Schmidt
Sat, May 23 2009Dr Gavin Schmidt has further criticisms of my review of Plimer (and of Plimer's book). I'm happy to reproduce them as emailed (presuming again that he has no objection). He has three main points concerning the Wegman 'cluster' analysis of the Mann authorial relationships; whether the Hockey Stick article was a 'fraud', and; whether Plimer's account of paleo-climate variability matters to current…
Evidence and muddling through
Wed, Apr 15 2009The difference is that 'muddling through' is a strategy bound to evidence, evaluation, and adaptation. In policy as in business entreprise, grand visions and definitive models, like 'settled science', call for commitment and resist new enquiry or contrary fact.
"Prof Lindblom contrasted what he called the ‘root’ method of decision-making with the ‘branch’ approach. The root method required…
Can the G20 get Doha done?
Fri, Mar 20 2009
The EC Commissioner for Trade, Catherine Ashton, gave a talk in the past couple of days to the Carnegie Endowment in Washington in which she urged, among other things, a G20 commitment to the quick resumption and completion of the Doha WTO negotiations.
"To truly deliver on our G20 commitment, we need to turn the rhetoric into reality and complete the Doha Round of world trade talks. This…
Naive forecasts outperform IPCC
Tue, Feb 17 2009![Mean and maximum errors in a naive forecast of temperature 1850-2008 [Green et. al.]](http://www.inquit.com/images/uploads/NaiveForecast.gif)
In a straightforward but important paper, Green, Armstrong and Soon demonstrate that there is no reason to develop elaborate 'forecasts' of temperature. The forecasts of the CGM models, they predict, will be no better over policy-relevant periods of 20, 50 or even 100 years than a naive forecast that assumes future temperatures will be the same as today's.
"Global mean temperatures were found…
You need a model?
Fri, Jul 04 2008I can't get a response out of the Garnaut Review website—probably overloaded—to download the Review report. But here's an extract from Prof Garnaut's address to the Press Club on a 'curious turn' in AGW 'dissent':
"The dissent took a curious turn in Australia in 2008, with much prominence being given to assertions that a warming trend had ended over the last decade. This is a question that is…
The net benefit of emissions controls
Tue, May 27 2008English mathematican Freeman Dyson, has reviewed Wm. Nordhaus' account of his economic models of emissions controls. Nordhaus claims that passive 'backstop' measures significantly outperform the catastrophists' preference for strangling carbon emissions. But, as Dyson points out, Nordahus has not considered the scientific merit of any of the controls he models and has not provided much detail of…