The Australian Abbott government has granted Bjørn Lomborg $4 million, to set up a “consensus centre” at the University of West Australia.
According to The Guardian;
The Abbott government found $4m for the climate contrarian Bjørn Lomborg to establish his “consensus centre” at an Australian university, even as it struggled to impose deep spending cuts on the higher education sector.
A spokesman for the education minister, Christopher Pyne, said the government was contributing $4m over four years to “bring the Copenhagen Consensus Center methodology to Australia” at a new centre in the University of Western Australia’s business school.
The spokesman said the “Australia Consensus Centre” was a proposal put forward by the “university and Dr Lomborg’s organisation”.
Sources have told Guardian Australia the establishment of the centre had come as a surprise even to senior staff in the business school, who were unaware that the centre was being established until shortly before it was announced this month.
The Guardian’s description of Bjørn Lomborg as a climate “contrarian” seems a little strong – in my opinion Lomborg is more of a lukewarmer. Lomborg is concerned about CO2, but he is highly critical of climate scaremongering, and regularly receives favourable coverage on WUWT for his moderate views.
The decision to site the new centre at the University of West Australia is interesting. Professor Lewandowsky was based in the University of West Australia, before he moved to Bristol in England. In 2014, Steve McIntyre accused the Vice Chancellor of UWA of violating the Australian Code of Conduct for the Responsible Practice of Research and the UWA’s own code of conduct, over a refusal to release some of Lewandowsky’s data.
Former chief commissioner of the defunct Climate Commission, Tim Flannery and his private climate council seem furious over the Lomborg grant, calling it:
“A $4 million dollar insult to the scientific community“
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The reason the alarmists so fear Lomborg despite the fact he is not a sceptic is because he believes in adaption to, not mitigation of climate change , the funding of alarmism and almost the entire gravey train is based on mitigation, no wonder Flannery is almost apoplectic
he believes in adaption
=============
is it belief?
Short of the US bombing coal fired power plants in the rest of the world, any CO2 cuts in the developed world will simply shift industry and jobs to the developing world. CO2 will continue to rise. Humans will either adapt or perish.
” the US bombing coal fired power plants in the rest of the world”
that is plan B
Aren’t adaptation and mitigation pretty much the same thing?
What Lomborg is not in favor of is spending huge amounts of money trying to prevent increased CO2.
NO. Adaptation is responding to changes in the environment. Mitigation is trying to prevent or lessen changes to the environment.
UWA re as alarmist as Vic Uni is Marxist, or Sydney Uni anti-Semitic.
This is really about
a) watching a uni say “no we don’t want $4m of research funding because we don’t want any scientific debate”
b) watching his research being censored
c) watching him end up like Murry, sacrificed
Will be interesting to watch the way they spin this. They can call him a d@n!@r but he’s better placed to defend himself than A666ott.
Andrew,
I replied to your comment at John Whitman on April 17, 2015 at 7:14 am.
John
Probably wise of the government to invest these funds. They have made a significant investment in the campus, which by the way is magnificent. The antics of unbalanced nutcases like Lewandowsky was putting the reputation of the whole place at risk.
Lomborg ‘crime’ for the those going ape shit at the Guardian is one of being a ‘heretic’ , it is not that he does not believe in CAGW it is not he does believe in ‘the right way and without question ‘ and so like most religions they attack him because heretics are seen has much bigger threat to the ‘the faith’ than those how do not believe at all.
By the way Aussie Government is not given $4 million to Bjørn Lomborg, most of the money will go to the university , indeed the university is free to turn it down and refuse to have this centre, and yet they do not . Now there is a question the Guardian and the CAGW ‘faithful’ have not asked .
I would have preferred No Money for any of this crap but if Mr Abbott has decided to bring people out of the Zombie Nightmare slowly and gently then I guess this is the way to do it.
Lomborg is a bit of a bedwetter but he is at least honest and rational.
He does appear to be rational, but its too bad he’s a luke warmer. Bob Carter and Murry Selby are looking for work.
Abbott will probably use Lomborg to push ahead with the government’s infrastructure strategy, a continental bullet train network would produce lower carbon emissions than copious plane journeys, apparently.
You don’t have to agree with someone to respect them.
Lomborg follows a reasonable method to argue his case. He should be heard.
Lomborg doesn’t do crap”. There’s a serious need for economists to study the economic value of government actions in different fields. Global warming is only one of the subjects under study. The serious need for such studies is reflected in the number of people being killed in wars, the emergence of dictatorships in countries such as Venezuela, the lack of water in São Paulo, the Ebola epidemic, and a host of other problems faced by humanity.
Congratulations to all involved!
Bah!! We’ve had to put up with the insult of ‘Flip Flop’ Flannery for a lot longer than that … I don’t know who Flannery thinks he is but he is ridiculed by all other than his socialist media bunnies.
This is the wanker that predicted massive sea level rises and then promptly bought a waterside home.
That’s going to make the usual cranks very very angry.
Yes. They seem to be angry almost all the time now. It’s quite entertaining to watch. You have to wonder how they keep it up and how it is going to affect their health.
Better still, have ALL the funding that goes to other climate groups, such as the UNSW fraudsters go to the new group. Still need non tainted staff for the unit as well as students willing to brave a blockade of picketers.
Not reported on TV based MSN news, not that I have seen anyway. On another note. AGL, an Aussie power supply company, is going to stop sourcing power from coal fired power stations. Good one AGL, good one. You’ve just lost me as a customer!
I would not pay too much attention to Flannery on science matters. His first degree level qualification was English lit! Fill a cup with concrete Flannery and harden the f&^k up…you had your time and you lost!
Money is too easy to come by.
Sorry, but I don’t trust Lomborg or his Copenhagen Consensus Center.
For him, the “global warming” issue is a means to an end. Follow the money.
I don’t trust any economist who fails to say “don’t bother wasting money on academic economists”.
as a aussie we have not heard or read anything in the news media about this good news ,the staff of the CSIRO and Tim Flannery mob will not be happy with Tony Abbott
Yes, but what does the Anglican church think about this blasphemy center?
the Anglican church has more to worry about then the so called blasphemy center ask Tim Flannery what he thinks
hmmm. Don’t give a rat’s patootie about consensusy sounding centers. Care more about a Natural Climate Variability Research Institute. Fund that.
Unfortunately not in the grants list. I have personally been involved in grant applications (In Australia). It’s a tough gig. Universities have a department just for that and so do the likes of CSIRO etc.. If you are not in the loop you don’t even know about the grants. I think that Bjørn Lomborg got a lot of help to get that. At this point I am happy that he got something. Small steps.
Thesis, Antithesis, and Synthesis! Normal process of logical reasoning.
THESIS of Catastrophic Human-Caused Global Warming. ANTITHESIS of Disbelievers in Atmospheric “Greenhouse” Effect. SYNTHESIS of Lukewarm Skepticism of Lomborg, much of WUWT, and ME!
You say:
“Former chief commissioner of the defunct Climate Commission, Tim Flannery and his private climate council seem furious over the Lomborg grant, calling it:
“A $4 million dollar insult to the scientific community“”
The quote is however incomplete, the actual quote gives the reason for the assumed insult:
“In the face of deep cuts to the CSIRO and other scientific research organisations, it’s an insult to Australia’s scientific community.
As the Climate Commission, we were abolished by the Abbott Government in 2013 on the basis that our $1.5 million annual operating costs were too expensive. We relaunched as the Climate Council after thousands of Australians chipped in to the nation’s biggest crowd-funding campaign – remember this video?”
$1.5 million annual * 4 that means 6 million has opposed to 4 million most of which is not going to Lomborg but to the university. Meanwhile for their 1.5 million a year apart for Flannery’s six figure salary for a part-time job , what did the country get out of Climate Commission, apart for bad advice ?
I am glad your rubbish is gone!
I disapprove of incomplete quotes. Flannery should have been quoted in full.
Then we all could have gleefully pointed out that there was no need for the Australian Government to keep funding Flannery, since just as Abbott foretold, he’s continued giving us his opinion for free.
Bjørn Lomborg should report to someone in the Abbott government, not the anti-science cretins managing the University of West Australia (UWA).
Bjørn should insist on a quarterly report structure including specifics on how the four million is spent/allocated from the UWA.
Hopefully that will prevent him from getting sandbagged by the despicable data with-holding back dating psychological misrepresenting messed up UWA staff.
Go Bjørn!
Remember, most of us are lukewarmers to varying extent.
Safety in numbers. Herd mentality.
ATheoK,
The term ‘lukewarmers’ is as intellectually and scientifically idiotic as ‘warmistas’ and ‘d*niers’.
I see only shorthand ‘pre-packaged and ready to eat’ (‘pre-spun’) stereotyping in use of those terms.
John
Consensus = conventional = Animal Farm.
Just another helping of “post-normal science”. No light at the end of the tunnel. You are all (still) doomed.
Bjørn ‘Tee shirt’ Lønbjerg spotted his chance to get his snout in the climate trough (as others one could mention) by setting himself up as a contrarian.
He has clearly been exposed as cooking the books to suit his own views with respect to climate change in his Copenhagen Consensus conclusions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_Consensus
If my memory serves, his approach to the AGW challenge is ‘let’s wait for things to start going off the rails, then we’ll do something about it because by then we’ll have the money, the new technology needed and all the worlds other problems will have been solved so we can concentrate on climate change. Oh, and sea level rise will stop in the year 2100’
As always, the warmistas have to lie about what others believe in order to make themselves feel relevant.
I find it interesting that while Australia tries to undo the damage and previous climate policy, Ontario Canada, is moving at speed to implement a new carbon tax. The parallels are striking as both policies were implemented by female leaders who did not include a carbon tax on their election platform. Monkey see – Monkey do, I guess. GK
In the interviews that I have seen with Lomborg he has expressed the opinion the warming that will be caused by CO2 will be a problem, but mitigation and adaptation are much cheaper than prevention.
One point he made in the past was that what Europe has spent so far subsidizing solar and wind energy could have provided clean drinking water for every poor person on the planet.
Lomborg is more than a lukewarmer. He is a warmwarmer.
He just doesn’t accept the ready made solutions that are usually presented at the same time as the arguments for cAGW. He has shouldered a lot of abuse as a result, and done so with dignity.
Consensus doesn’t seem such an unreasonable word to use when discussing potential solutions to a putative problem, because everyone would have to pay to some extent. (Except for the carbon traders and wind millers etc, who would like to be coining it if they’re not already.)
>>Lomborg is more than a lukewarmer. He is a warmwarmer.
Yes, but is he moderately warm simply to survive in a warm environment? If he had been a coldwarmer, he would have been forced to live on the streets long ago. That is the reality of modern life.
We see this all the time in UK politics and media, where the politically right take a position you know they do not agree with, just to survive in the modern smoke, mirrors and persecution world. You end up having to spot the key-words that demonstrate what the discussion is really about, but can be denied by the politician/newspaper at a later date. George Orwell must be smiling and gimacing, all at the same time.
R