Mark Lawson

China’s bullying backfires: Australia ahead in trade spat

1 February 2021 4:00 am

The events might come from a Hollywood script. School bully (China), annoyed over being left out of games (lucrative overseas…

Knowing Thomas Cromwell’s fate only increases the tension: The Mirror & the Light, by Hilary Mantel, reviewed

7 March 2020 9:00 am

In 1540, he, himself, Lord Cromwell fell victim to the king’s caprice. His execution brings to a close one of English literature’s great trilogies, says Mark Lawson

Blacklisting sceptics

21 February 2020 10:00 pm

The shunning of alternative scientific opinions

Countering disasters

18 January 2020 9:00 am

The near hysterical insistence by green groups that Australia’s undoubtedly very bad bushfire season is the result of man-made climate…

Hydrogen’s all hot air

30 November 2019 9:00 am

Faced with evidence that the Paris Agreement on limiting emissions is being ignored, including news that China is building or…

Energy notes

7 September 2019 9:00 am

LNG is the new coal With the media spotlight focussed on activists, the Greens and even Pacific nations complaining about…

Green notes

20 July 2019 9:00 am

Renewables fail to pay their way The problem with continued calls for ‘sense’ in the Australian energy market including a…

It’s China, not climate

15 June 2019 9:00 am

Despite constant doom-saying over climate and commentators wringing their hands over floods in Queensland and droughts in NSW and Victoria,…

Emissions Notes

1 June 2019 9:00 am

We’ll never leave Paris

Electric fantasies

6 April 2019 9:00 am

A looming Australian federal election and the increasingly bitter carbon wars have resulted in a series of campaign promises that…

Tipping point of hysteria

23 February 2019 9:00 am

Since the dawn of the climate debate in the late 1980s, any number of tipping points for the earth’s ecosystem…

Slippery oil industry

8 December 2018 9:00 am

When oil prices spiked to $US140 ($A193.85) a barrel in 2008, veteran analysts declared that prices would reach $US200 or…

No real pain in Paris

29 September 2018 9:00 am

When the infighting over the Liberal leadership raised the possibility that Australia might join the United States in exiting the…

Renewables becalmed

7 July 2018 9:00 am

As Australia’s electricity grids strain to cope with demand and government efforts to foist yet more renewable energy on them,…

Patchwork power

21 April 2018 9:00 am

The Australian summer has passed with only the occasional blackout, although a possibly grim winter, once unseasonably warm weather in…

Paying for steel jobs

24 February 2018 9:00 am

Indian billionaire Sanjeev Gupta is now in the same category as American entrepreneur Elon Musk in that any absurd idea…

The unacceptable cost of renewables

9 December 2017 9:00 am

Parts of Europe may be tearing themselves apart politically over the vast costs of adopting renewable energy, but Australian voters…

No charge in electric cars

28 October 2017 9:00 am

Imagine ordering a population to evacuate from the path of a hurricane if they only had electric cars to drive.…

Climate excuses

21 October 2017 9:00 am

Tony Abbott may have annoyed the climate change mob with his speech in London (see Diary), but a far more…

In space, no one can hear you screaming for cash

7 October 2017 9:00 am

Such is the mystique of Elon Musk that he is able to make the absurd declarations that he will launch…

Hype is renewable

26 August 2017 9:00 am

The announcement of a $650 million solar power plant near the South Australian town of Port Augusta brought forth the…

Batteries fail to spark

22 July 2017 9:00 am

Elon Musk is such a good salesman that, despite formidable and blindingly obvious problems, he has managed to convince everyone…

Reinventing energy policy

24 June 2017 9:00 am

While the Liberal party tears itself apart over whether a Clean Energy Target as proposed by the Finkel report delivered…

Green power fantasies

27 May 2017 9:00 am

The cool phrases among the proponents of green electricity are ‘distributed networks’ and ‘micro networks’ which, we are told, will…

How to ignite gas

22 April 2017 9:00 am

One of the major surprises of the energy debate in Australia is that both the South Australian Labor Premier, Jay…