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Turnbull axes Lomborg Centre. No one who questions the holy power of Wind and Solar allowed in Australian academia.

Bjorn Lomborg, UWA, Bullying, Reason, Logic, UniversitiesThe Turnbull government has announced that that the offer of funding has now been withdrawn for the The Lomborg Consensus Centre in Australia. The bullies, and emotional hysterics win this round. At UWA he was called “dangerous”. At Flinders Uni people were “repulsed” by Lomborg . But the irrational emotional language means the fear of the freeloaders is on display. They are very very scared of critical press releases from any credible sources. No one who questions the holy power of the Wind and Solar Gods can be employed in Australian academia. Can wind-farms stop the storms? Thou shalt not ask!

We’ll spend $10 billion on “Clean Energy” but not even $4 million to analyze whether that money was well spent. Did it change the global climate? Anyone?

Lomborg accepts the establishment science, but even with a $4 million sweetener he is too threatening to the monoculture of Australian universities. Turnbull must know that Lomborg’s economic analysis would have awful news for the renewables industry and would show up the emissions trading scheme for the pointless waste of money that it is. This tells us exactly how much Turnbull cares about academic freedom, the Australian taxpayer and the environment.

Should we purge Australian universities of people with academic credentials lower than Lomborg?

Albert Parker writes to me to point out that Lomborg has 36 papers on scopus (not to mention bestselling books, and countless influential articles in places like The Wall St Journal).  If he’s not good enough for Australian academia nor are most of the the people who opposed him and questioned his credentials:

Dr. Frank Jotzo, climate economist at the Australian National University, claimed in The Guardian that the Copenhagen Consensus Center methodology “has no academic credibility” and pointed to fundamental flaws in the way the CCC assessed the impacts of climate change. On Scopus he’s published about same  papers of Lomborg (Jotzo,  Author ID: 6603207810, Documents: 38).

Professor Stuart Bunt, of the School of Anatomy, Physiology and Human Biology, and vice president of the UWA Academic Staff Association, that told DeSmogBlog “Some very young applicants, for example to our own school, have better publication records than Lomborg”. But he himself has only published half as many papers as Lomborg. (Bunt, Stuart, UWA Author ID: 6603083320, Documents: 18).

Dr David Glance, the director of the Centre for Software Practice, told DeSmogBlog that “some academics wanted to know if it was too late to cancel the centre entirely”.  But Lomborg has published three times as many papers as he has.  (Glance, David George, UWA, Author ID: 36709716800, Documents: 11).

Amanda McKenzie, the CEO of the Climate Council, who said federal funding cuts to existing scientific bodies like the CSIRO made Dr Lomborg’s centre unjustifiable adding “This is about where taxpayer dollars go to” and “I would rather see taxpayer dollars go to the Bureau of Meteorology or the CSIRO, that has really authoritative science on climate change, rather than a snake oil salesman like Bjorn Lomborg.” McKenzie, Amanda is basically unknown on Scopus.  

Lizzy O’Shea, president of the UWA Students Guild, which led the fight against Dr Lomborg, warned other universities to also keep their distance. “I wouldn’t touch it,” she said. “I think the backlash that I’ve seen hasn’t just been from UWA staff and students, its been from people in the community who don’t want to see it anywhere.” Obviously, she is also unknown on Scopus.

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