Antinuclear

Bjorn Lomborg’s climate contrarianism: where his money comes from

many of the earlier donors to Lomborg’s US think tank have been linked to the conservative side of politics, some with links to the billionaire Koch brothers.

There’s nothing “smart” about spending $4 million of taxpayer cash on a highly questionable methodology that by design downgrades climate change.

Australian taxpayers funding climate contrarian’s methods with $4m Bjørn Lomborg centre Graham Readfearn, Guardian 23 Apr 15  Lomborg’s funding“………Exactly how and where Bjorn Lomborg’s think tank has gathered its cash over the years has been a tough story to get the bottom of.

When the Danish Government’s funding of the CCC ran out in 2012, Lomborg had already registered the US arm of the think tank four years earlier.

Since 2008, the US tax records of the Copenhagen Consensus Center show it has gathered about $5million in income, more than half of which had come in 2012 and 2013 (the most recent years for which records are available).

Lomborg himself was paid $975,000 via the think tank in those two years.

Yet much of the think tank’s income is not disclosed because, according to the think tank, “given how some parts of the blogosphere vilify Dr Lomborg” this is the sort of attention those donors can do without.

My own research on DeSmog has found that many of the earlier donors to Lomborg’s US think tank have been linked to the conservative side of politics, some with links to the billionaire Koch brothers.

I didn’t choose to make a big deal of those links to the oil billionaire Koch brothers, but others, such as prominent US climate commentator Joe Romm, did.

As I also reported on DeSmog, Lomborg’s think tank has attracted significant funding from so called “vulture capitalist” and major US Republican donor Paul Singer, the billionaire hedge fund manager

We at least know that Lomborg’s Australia Consensus Centre has been funded with $4million of cash from the Federal Government.

Curiously when UWA first announced the centre on April 2, there was no mention of government funding at all.

UWA has said it will be looking to raise further cash. A glance at the board of the business school or its list of corporate partners might offer clues as to whose doors the university will knock on first.

Origin of the Think Tank

There have been conflicting stories about just how the Australia Consensus Center came to get the government cash and find a home at UWA (which is likely to have a plusher office than the parcel service corner shop in Massachusetts that is currently the address for the US arm of CCC)………..

Last year, when Lomborg spoke to a coal company-sponsored event in Brisbane in the shadow of the G20 talks, Lomborg suggested that because the International Energy Agency (IEA) had developed one future scenario that saw growth in the burning of coal in poor countries, in particular in sub-Saharan Africa, that this somehow meant that fossil fuels were just what they needed.

Yet Lomborg ignored an important rejoinder to that assessment, which had come from the IEA itself, and which I pointed out at the time.

The IEA said its assessment for Africa was consistent with global warming of between 3C and 6C for the continent by the end of this century.

Lomborg’s approach is, as he (very) often states, an effort to come up with “smart solutions” to the world’s biggest problems working out what gets you the “most good” for every dollar spent.

There’s nothing “smart” about spending $4 million of taxpayer cash on a highly questionable methodology that by design downgrades climate change. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/planet-oz/2015/apr/23/australia-paying-4-million-for-bjrn-lomborgs-flawed-methods-that-downgrade-climate-change

April 25, 2015 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, climate change - global warming, politics