Year: 2010

Tenure

This case is an embarrassment for DCU. But I was particularly taken by the following:

He [Mr Justice Geoghegan] said he was not entering into discussion of the other two grounds, as this would have required analysis of section 25(6) of the Universities Act 1997, dealing with the dismissal of employees by universities.

Given the unusual circumstances of this case, it was not advisable that the court should give a precise meaning to that subsection, Mr Justice Geoghegan said.

“Furthermore, any such analysis would lead to a judgment as to the meaning of the word ‘tenure’,” he added. “I am satisfied that the word ‘tenure’ has different meanings and connotations partly depending on its context and partly depending on the particular understanding as usually given to it within the country in which it is used.”

He added that it did not necessarily have the same meaning in this jurisdiction as it did in the US, where it meant permanency in a university post.

If this is not what tenure means in Ireland, then perhaps someone might want to inform the academics?

More trouble in climate land

Dr Rajendra K Pachauri has been the chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) since 2002. The IPCC is a United Nations body charged with summarising the academic literature on climate change. The IPCC is not allowed to give policy advice. Dr Pachauri has freely advised all and sundry about climate policy, as is his right as the citizen of a democratic country. The media has often reported Pachauri’s personal views as the scientific findings of the IPCC. Pachauri has done too little against that.

Pachauri made a fool of himself in the wake of climategate, first saying that nothing is wrong, then announcing an investigation, and then returning to the original line: Nothing is wrong.

The Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC reported a number on glaciers on the Himalayas that was wrong. This has now come to light. Instead of admitting error (and a minor one), Pachauri again declared that the IPCC is infallible and even denounced (in no uncertain terms) a recent study on Himalayan glaciers for disagreeing with the IPCC. UPDATE: OUCH

Such blunders reveal why the Bush administration so keenly supported Pachauri. It does not stop there.

Since he was appointed IPCC chair, Pachauri has taken up a raft of advisory positions, almost exclusively with companies that stand to benefit from climate policy. This is against the conflict of interest policies of the two mother organisations of the IPCC (which, astonishingly, does not have such a policy itself). Pachauri’s mother organisation, TERI, also appears to have benefitted from Pachauri’s side jobs. [UPDATE: Forgot to include this link, which suggests that Pachauri has made a habit of these things.]

To top it all off, Pachauri is a director of a charity, TERI Europe, whose accounts are being revisited after Richard North uncovered irregularities.

All this is blowing another major hole in the credibility of climate research.

Adding this to the failed negotations at Copenhagen, I doubt that Europe will strenghten its emissions targets. As the Netherlands has now joined the queue of countries that report difficulties in meeting the renewables target, we may even see less stringent climate policy.

UPDATE: The Irish Times was quick to publish my op-ed on this and related matters.

New Statesman on Ireland

An ‘interesting’ take on the Irish economy by the New Statesman is at http://www.newstatesman.com/economy/2010/01/ireland-irish-social-dublin

Martin Wolf on Iceland

Martin Wolf has an article on Iceland in today’s FT. The concluding paragraph is worth quoting in full:

they – and everybody else – must learn the really big lesson here. The combination of cross-border banking with generous guarantees to creditors is unsustainable. Taxpayers cannot be expected to write open-ended insurance on the foreign activities of their banks. It is bad enough to have to do so at home.

Ireland’s Competitiveness Challenge

You can read the latest NCC study on this topic here.