Australia’s relationship to climate change continues to change as the University of Western Australia reneges on an agreement to host
…an Australia Consensus Centre to undertake detailed economic cost benefit analysis into many of Australia’s, and the world’s, biggest challenges.
The Centre is unique in that it’s to deliver robust, evidence-based knowledge and advice to the Australian Government on potential policy reforms and other interventions that will deliver the smartest, most cost-effective solutions in areas ranging from poverty, social justice and food sustainability. Many of these issues will form the basis of the United Nation’s post 2015 Development Goals.
It was to be run by Bjørn Lomborg, noted climate change skeptic (his web site is here). Why is the University reneging? The University’s President remarks:
However, the creation of the Australia Consensus Centre attracted a mixed reaction from staff, students and the general public. The scale of the strong and passionate emotional reaction was one that the University did not predict. …
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. …
Despite all this, there remains strong opposition to the Centre. Whilst I respect the right of staff to express their views on this matter, as all universities should be places for open and honest sharing and discussion of ideas, in this case, it has placed the University in a difficult position.
NewScientist (16 May 2015) notes that the government still wishes to establish the center, but
… the Royal Society of New South Wales, the country’s oldest science academy, has called on all universities not to accept.
This despite Lomborg’s association with Nobel prize winning economists. He seems to be an interesting chap; I’ve heard his name from time to time over the last 15 years, particularly in Libertarian circles. However, I’ve not followed his career or what he’s said. So I have to depend on his Wikipedia entry, which I think paints him as quite nuanced and probably makes a lot of people unhappy:
The Lomborg Deception, a book by Howard Friel, claims to offer a “careful analysis” of the ways in which Lomborg has “selectively used (and sometimes distorted) the available evidence”,[29] and that the sources Lomborg provides in the footnotes do not support—and in some cases are in direct contradiction to—Lomborg’s assertions in the text of the book;[30] Lomborg has denied these claims in a public response.[31] Lomborg has provided a 27-page argument-by-argument response.[32] Friel has written a reply to this response,[33] in which he admits two errors, but otherwise in general rejects Lomborg’s arguments.
A group of scientists published an article in 2005 in the Journal of Information Ethics,[34] in which they concluded that most criticism against Lomborg was unjustified, and that the scientific community misused their authority to suppress Lomborg.
The claim that the accusations against Lomborg were unjustified was challenged in the next issue of Journal of Information Ethics[35] by Kåre Fog, one of the original plaintiffs. Fog reasserted his contention that, despite the ministry’s decision, most of the accusations against Lomborg were valid. He also rejected what he called “the Galileo hypothesis”, which he describes as the conception that Lomborg is just a brave young man confronting old-fashioned opposition.
In April 2015 Lomborg gained further attention as a climate contrarian when he issued a call for all subsidies to be removed from fossil fuels on the basis that “a disproportionate share of the subsidies goes to the middle class and the rich”…making fossil fuel so “inexpensive that consumption increases, thus exacerbating global warming”.[36]
It’s hard not to like someone who calls for removal of all fossil fuel subsidies. I wonder how many members of the University of Western Australia are aware of his positions in detail. Or how misleading the Wikipedia entry might be.
