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Lomborg’s Centre cancelled: UWA caves in to bullies who use anger to silence debate

There is no saving our universities. The Lomborg Consensus Centre has been axed in response to pure emotional hysteria. The Abbott government should immediately set up the Centre anyway, make it independent from the universities, which don’t deserve another cent.

Bjorn Lomborg, who believes the IPCC science but disagrees with their economics, is too “dangerous” for UWA. Poor petals! He wants to get more environmental and human benefit from government spending — which is a disaster for the Green Gravy train.  Lomborg commits the unforgivable sin of failing to feed friends of big-government. So he had to be punished, nothing is more scary that “funding a skeptic”. (See Tim Flannery’s reaction). But ponder how they have overplayed their hand: Lomborg is not a skeptic of the science, the Consensus Centre wasn’t going to write on climate change, and yet, it was unthinkable?

ABC news:

UWA cancels contract for Consensus Centre headed by controversial academic Bjorn Lomborg

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.

There is no free speech in academia, only the illusion of it.

If UWA taught students what free speech is, and why it is needed, the petition would have been laughed out of town. But they reap what they sow — after years of politically correct propaganda, UWA is a victim of its own intellectual shallowness. The UWA students were merely doing as they had been taught.

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.

Dr Lomborg has attracted controversy for suggesting that the dangers of climate change are overstated, and that society faces other more pressing challenges such as global poverty.

In a statement, UWA Vice Chancellor Paul Johnson said the creation of the centre had attracted “mixed reactions” from staff, students and the general public.

Academia is lost. Let it go, and start again with real centres of higher education. New ones.

Look at how the VC of UWA defends the decision:

I have stated many times that it is not a centre to study climate change, that the University was not providing any direct funding to the Centre, and that that Bjorn Lomborg would not be involved in its day-to-day operations.

Obviously it would be a disaster if a rational economist studied climate change.

Therefore, it is with great regret and disappointment that I have formed the view that the events of the past few weeks places the Centre in an untenable position as it lacks the support needed across the University and the broader academic community to meet its contractual obligations and deliver value for money for Australian taxpayers.

By its very nature a centre of this sort requires co-operation of a wide range of people across many fields.

The academic staff of UWA have thrown a tanty, and frozen Lomborg out. That says everything you need to know about how intellectually weak they are.

The Australian budget is due next Tuesday. The Abbott government could get some real savings if it stops funding centres of Higher Propaganda.

h/t DonS, Stuart, Ian, BernieL, Timboss.

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