My Aon Talk and Australia Papers
THB Insider #25 - THB Australia Week Continues
THB Australia Week continues and will spill over into next week, when I’ll wrap things up with a close look at the decarbonization of the Australian economy in the context of new emissions reduction targets announced by the government last week.
Today, in response to multiple requests, I share my slides from my presentation earlier this week at the 2025 Aon Australia Hazards conference. My talk used the just-released Australian National Climate Risk Assessment (NCRA) as a case study in the challenges of knowing what is true and what is not in the context of the intense politicization of climate science and assessment.
Of note, no one has pushed back on the substance of my talk or the follow up here at THB — Critique is invited and welcome. As well, I’ve yet to hear any climate scientist publicly expressing concern that the NCRA has some obvious and undeniable problems (though I have heard from many in private). Compare that with the rush to critique the DOE CWG report. Selective concern about scientific integrity in climate science is a problem.
Formal scientific assessments are essential, but in 2025 the approach must be — Trust, but verify.
After the jump, I also provide downloads of our various papers on Australia’s disasters, bushfires, and decarbonization. Specifically:
Crompton, R. P., McAneney, K. J., Chen, K., Pielke Jr, R. A., & Haynes, K. (2010). Influence of location, population, and climate on building damage and fatalities due to Australian bushfire: 1925–2009. Weather, Climate, and Society, 2:300-310.
Pielke Jr, R. A. (2011). An evaluation of the targets and timetables of proposed Australian emissions reduction policies. Environmental Science & Policy, 14:20-27.
McAneney, J., Crompton, R., Musulin, R., Walker, G., McAneney, D., & Pielke Jr, R. (2014). Reflections on disaster loss trends, global climate change and insurance. Applied studies in climate adaptation, 26-33.
McAneney, J., Sandercock, B., Crompton, R., Mortlock, T., Musulin, R., Pielke Jr, R., & Gissing, A. (2019). Normalised insurance losses from Australian natural disasters: 1966–2017. Environmental Hazards, 18:414-433.
For easy access, here are the posts so far in THB Australia Week:
Stay tuned for one more Australia post coming next week updating and evaluating my 2011 paper on a previous version of Australia’s emissions reductions targets and timetable — Preview: that paper hit the mark.
Thanks for reading and have a great weekend!