(via Bishop Hill) Remember this just a couple of weeks ago?
The Australian media reports:
The University of Western Australia has cancelled the contract for a policy centre that was to be headed up by controversial academic Bjorn Lomborg after a “passionate emotional reaction” to the plan.
The Federal Government had pledged to contribute $4 million to the Consensus Centre, a think tank that was to use methods similar to those used by Dr Lomberg’s Copenhagen Centre.
If you are an academic, dissent on climate change or climate change policy will lead to a loss of your livelihood.
You have been warned.
From the UWA web page:
The University of Western Australia is committed to providing an environment of integrity and respect for all staff, students and community members.
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.
So, why are we not surprised that UWA couldn’t tolerate Lomborg’s presence?
I think this will backfire on them. Send your children to be educated elsewhere.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
The consensus ghettoizes itself. How pathetic can they be?
The trouble with “sending your children elsewhere” is that you’ve already paid for that education through your taxes. That applies to research as well. Anyone privately funding research has already been forced to pay those that will oppose it.
There should be a separation between University and state for the same reason there should be a separation between church and state.
Passionate disagreement? Poor Bjorn, like somebody commented earlier, it’s not like he disagrees heavily with the global warming crowd just that there are better ways to react than they have. Death to all the infidels! is apparently the environmentalist mode as the December summit gets closer.
I have to say it’s odd to write a comment like that and realize that as it is posted it will automatically be sorted out and sent through a number of NSA and homeland security filters and if something is amiss it will be kicked up to a more serious level of filters and be investigated by code as my browser history is fileted like a fish and compared to threat profiles. Living in the New World Order kind of just sneaks up on you!
As for the Photoshop modified UWA banner, I would have reversed the wording:
“Achieving Consensus through Intolerance”
Groupthink is the desired end, intolerance of dissent is the means.
Maybe it was just a labeling problem. Re-apply and call it the Fact Checker Project or the BEST BEST Project.
Small minds (UWA) are easily bullied.
“In Search of the Lost Chord” of Reason In Our Time
Not all Aussies are in with the scam .
Right on cue comes a statement from the PMs adviser that shows that some of them know what is going on .
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/11591193/Australia-PM-advisor-says-climate-change-a-UN-led-ruse.html
Every nail helps.
At least UWA is upfront that they are completely biased when it comes to climate science. Maybe they can create a new advertising slogan to induce students to come and study climate science at their institution, “None more biased that us at UWA. Come join us for further indoctrination into the study of Earth,s climate system.”.
The intolerance seems to be emanating from Oreskes’ intellectual trickery inspired by her ‘Merchants of Doubt’; now found in the intolerance at an academic sound chamber near you.
Harvard seems lacking circumspection these days in acquiring the ‘O’ from UCSD.
John
There is clearly only room for one consensus in the world.
Culture Club – Church Of The Poison Mind
I hope that things settle for Mr. Lomborg, and his position is reinstated. Meanwhile…. I don’t know if University of Melbourne has an appointed Chair in Conservative Studies, or any middle of the road think tanks, but maybe it should. It would only take a rich billionaire in the latter case – or millionaire in the former, with a sufficiently large endowment, to make an “offer too good to refuse”. Regents in some schools are elected, some are appointed, but they would all be deee-lighted to accept a cash infusion that would supports a larger student base, wealth(ier) parent-bases, and yes, even controversy. Lomborg would have brought a balanced view, but that, ironically, is the scariest notion in the AGW little shop of horrors. What they MIGHT accept on campus is an arch-enemy – an avowed conservative who bluntly supports skeptical views on the “Anthropogenic”, the “Global”, AND the “Warming”… among other things.
Colorado University endowed such a chair (don’t know what is AGW positions were), which is now in its third year. I heard him interviewed a few times, and he was a smart, buoyant, positive force. Stanford has its Hoover Institute on campus, and its … (er) thinkers are used as speakers in classrooms. Didn’t see one at Harvard, although it occurs that a school might try to slip by with appointing a “Chair for Conservative Armenian Studies”, or “Conservative Studies of the European Health Care System”. It just depends on what they can get away with, and who is presenting the grant.
Berkeley College
Center for Right Wing Studies
http://crws.berkeley.edu/people
(Note: the director is, in fact, smiling)
University of Colorado
http://artsandsciences.colorado.edu/ctp/
Would it become a lightning rod? Probably. So convince the regents to swallow this bitter pill: “When we (even pretend) to look balanced in our views, we look better in the world’s eyes.” Then find somebody with a thick skin, keep a watchful eye that their ideas aren’t being censored. Then turn them loose. They might just have a ball.
On a related note: Is there any information about Howard Friel who published “The Lomborg Deception” (Yale University Press 2010) aside from the fact that he is listed as an “independent scholar”? What are his qualifications?
UWA: Climate Cowards at their most blatant.
just to clarify. the Copenhagen Consensus Center is a Bjorn Lomborg project. it was not named by the University.
Wikipedia: Copenhagen Consensus Center
It was conceived and organized by Bjørn Lomborg, the author of The Skeptical Environmentalist and the then director of the Danish government’s Environmental Assessment Institute. The project is run by the Copenhagen Consensus Center, which is directed by Lomborg and was part of the Copenhagen Business School, but it is now an independent 501(c)(3) non-profit organisation registered in the USA…
The project has held conferences in 2004, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011 and 2012…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_Consensus
I suggest writing to Professor Paul Johnson, the Vice-Chancellor of UWA (politely) to express your disappointment that a desire to conform to the consensus has proven more important to staff and students of UWA than openness, research and engagement. His email is: paul.johnson@uwa.edu.au
My wife (a UWA alum) got this from Paul Johnson:
http://www.news.uwa.edu.au/201505087564/message-vice-chancellor-australian-consensus-centre
How can he remain in his post?
My wife has now severed all connections with UWA.
UWA is not held in high regard by Perth people. Its students just voted it 1 out 5 for teaching ability. So Lomberg might well thank his lucky stars for not going there.
UWA just shut down its centre for Water Studies or whatever it was called. Cost $4million. Lomberg,centre was going to bring in $4million.
Western Australia is big state in size and in mining, especially iron ore. The market for iron ore has fallen greatly.
So why the UWA would refuse new funding, seems a little crazy. It was only done to pacify some lecturers.
Considering the objectives of the now-cancelled Consensus Centre at UWA, I cannot understand what the fuss was all about. Surely those who didn’t like the output could have ignored it just like governments everywhere ignore well-researched advice. All the naysayers have done is further expose themselves to the charge of being of closed minds. The VC appears to understand but lacks strength and will watch from the sidelines as another witch is burnt in the main quad.
Send those academic pseudo-dignitaries responsible for that rash of incompetence and violation of the freedom of science down into the coals mines. They have to learn quite a lot not just about fossile fuels.
When will academics and the general public recognize there is a difference between climate and weather. So many variables control the weather and less so with seasons as that’s our orbit around the sun. Gee – the mind boggles how some can be conned so easily. There are other universities in Australia. Sydney and NSW are the biggest I think. And Bond university (private) and Queensland university. This was a test for UWA. They blew it!
Mind you I don’t think the UNE here in Armidale would be so ungrateful for 4 mill in funding.
The University of Western Australia is considered and ranked the best university in the state. Therefore, expect that most of those students who are admitted will in fact matriculate. That’s life. I can’t however agree with their decision. They have lost all objectivity on the climate change question.
This is a sad reflection on too many universities today … swallowing the flawed global warming doctrine, and implementing intolerance of freedom of speech and expression and ideas. Today, these universities prefer to drive those with opposing opinions and ideas into joblessness rather than be institutions that respect the fundamental principles of a democracy.
Along with freedom of expression there is denial of work in universities in Australian universities (remember what McQuarie Uni did to Murry Salby?) and we have or university systems going down the drain of brain constipation and goose-stepping to the tune of the UN/Greens.
Still I wish you wouldn’t pick on Steven Lewendowsky you have taken away our greatest entertainer in the climate change debate.
I contacted my MP’s (The Hon.Barnaby Joyce, Minister of Agriculture) but they knew about UWA rejecting the 4 mil grant and Bjorn. That was today and they were in Canberra awaiting the Federal budget. Monday 11 May 12 noon. The Fed budget is tomorrow. However, according to my source, it ain’t over yet. And it will be another few days before they start to look for another university to take up the offer, obviously not the Uni of Queensland. But – there are private universities. Rather exclusive ones mind you.