Universities can get tax-payer funding for a Bjorn Lomborg climate centre
Universities told to speak to Bjørn Lomborg if they want $4m in funding, Guardian, 4 June 15
Senate estimates told government funding for consensus centre is still on the table after UWA pulled out due to backlash from staff and students Universities approaching the Department of Education about the $4m in government funding available for hosting Bjørn Lomborg’s consensus centre have been told they should talk to Lomborg himself.
Since the University of Western Australia pulled out of a $4m deal with the federal government to host the centre, the department had “had some informal approaches from universities who might be interested and suggested to them and Dr Lomborg they might want to talk”, the associate secretary of the department, Robert Griew, told senate estimates on Wednesday night.
Labor senator Kim Carr asked “so if a university wants to take this up they should talk to Dr Lomborg?”
“Yes, but of course they could talk to us as well,” Dr Griew replied.
Carr, a long-term minister in Labor governments, said he had “never seen anything like this before where the government would hand over $4m … and hopefully find someone to take it up.”
The committee heard the $4m had been found from consolidated revenue in the May 2014 budget, but not announced at that time, and that the education department had first heard about it from the department of prime minister and cabinet.
The department had spoken to Dr Lomborg last July and he advised them “he was in discussion with a number of universities”. Dr Lomborg had been advised to “speak to vice chancellors directly” to find a host institution for the $4m centre.
After a backlash from staff and students when Guardian Australia revealed the $4m government deal to host the “Australia Consensus Centre” UWA handed back the funding and dropped its connection with Lomborg.
The education minister, Christopher Pyne, vowed to find another university to host the centre and said he was seeking legal advice about a decision by the university to renege on the funding agreement it had signed with the commonwealth.
Griew said legal advice had been provided to the minister but no legal action had been taken against UWA……..http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/jun/03/universities-told-to-speak-to-bjrn-lomborg-if-they-want-4m-in-funding?CMP=share_btn_tw
Effects of extreme heat in USA – and what about Australia?
Anthony M Horton: Extreme heat – ‘Business as usual’ life to end in less than 30 years in the U.S.
A new study projects that the United States will have a four to six-fold increase in extreme heat exposure by 2070 — and even earlier in the South. Unfortunately, no similar study has been conducted in Australia…
As a scientist, I am concerned that research into a range of climate related issues are seemingly not on the agenda in Australia and stellar pillars such as the world renowned Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) are suffering increasingly deep staff cuts at a time when they are needed the most.
It also appears that the long held “without fear or favour” bastion of these pillars has also seemingly ended. If this is really the case, it is a truly sad day for Australia-especially given the many world leading breakthroughs achieved by the former and the proud record of the latter. …
I fear for the future of Australia if this trend becomes entrenched as, by the time the Government realises they have made a tactical error, there won’t be enough trained people left to pick up the slack, as they will have retired, retrained or will be employed elsewhere in the world.
Australia’s public sector now losing its climate change experts
Canberra’s climate change brain drain becoming critical, The Mandarin 28 May 15 by David DonaldsonClimate change expertise is being lost from the public sector as the government fails to fill board vacancies and departments stop commissioning climate policy modelling from ABARES. Continue reading
The Bjorn Lomborg recipe for inaction on Climate Change
Bringing Lomborg’s work to Australia seems to have been the personal project of Prime Minister Tony Abbott who found $4 million in a budget that cannot afford to support other scientific work on climate change. Abbott is, of course, famous for dismissing climate science as “crap” and choosing as his chief business adviser a man, Maurice Newman, who believes climate science is being used by the UN to impose authoritarian rule over the world.
The Lomborg Ruse, Clive Hamilton 23 MAY 2015 No one in Australia has more relentlessly attacked environmentalists, climate science, carbon taxes and the aspirations of the United Nations than Murdoch columnist Andrew Bolt.
So what does it mean when Bolt sings the praises of a man who is a declared environmentalist, accepts the body of evidence for climate change, supports a carbon tax and is a strong supporter of the United Nations? Oh, and he’s also a gay vegetarian who’s never out of a trendy black T-shirt.
And what are we to make of it when Bolt, who has complained bitterly that the nation’s universities are stacked with leftists, is now up in arms because a man with admittedly left-leaning politics is sent packing from one of those universities.
I speak of course of Bjorn Lomborg and the University of Western Australia’s reversal of its decision to host his Consensus Centre and so reject the $4 million offered by the Federal Government.
Bolt is not Lomborg’s only unlikely defender. John Roskam of the Institute of Public Affairs writes that the opposition to Lomborg “demonstrates all that’s wrong with Australia’s universities”. The IPA, from the late 1990s the epicentre of the dissemination of climate science denial in Australia, now claims that the man who declares “I believe in global warming” has been “muzzled” and must be heard. (The IPA hosted a Lomborg visit to Australia in 2003, at the prompting of federal industry minister Ian Macfarlane.) Continue reading
Bjorn Lomborg’s USA operation seems to break many USA rules
It is unclear that Lomborg himself is a legitimate charity anywhere, but most of the money seems under his control. One might also wonder where income taxes are paid.
Perhaps with his new $4 million Australia Consensus Center (covered here, here, here) Bjorn Lomborg may pick a better site than a US shipping storefront, since he’ll receive much more taxpayer money, directly, courtesy of the Australian government. That does seem simpler
Bjorn Lomborg’s Copenhagen Consensus Center – Real Charity Or “Foreign Conduit”? DeSmogBlog By John Mashey • Sunday, April 26, 2015 Bjørn Lomborg is founder and president of the Copenhagen Consensus CenterUSA (CCC)), a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) “public charity” whose US physical presence is shown in the image: 262 Middlesex St, Lowell MA. Lomborg and the Copenhagen Consensus Center are known to DeSmog readers for efforts to downplay the importance of addressing climate change, a subset of climate science denialism that has infected the public debate across the English-speaking world.
Despite the name, it has not been based in Copenhagen since 2011. Continue reading
Bjorn Lomborg remains confident about his climate action delaying centre
CCC’s Bjorn Lomborg appears unfazed by criticisms and setbacks, The Age May 23, 2015 – Paul McGeough, Amidst uncertainty over his planned expansion into Australia, sponsored and part-funded by Canberra, Danish climate contrarian Bjorn Lomborg is unapologetic over secret donor funding and his own, at times, large salary as head of the Copenhagen Consensus Centre (CCC).
Defending the donations, Lomborg doubled-back on a position he took late last year when he volunteered, in a Freakonomics talk in the US, “almost all” CCC donors wished to remain anonymous……
Asked if the combination of past trenchant scientific and environmentalist criticism of his “bang-for-your-buck” analysis, which underpinned the outrage at UWA, and of his willingness to accept some anonymous funding risked the credibility of his proposed Australian operation, Lomborg countered: “CCC has been recognised repeatedly as a top global think-tank – it has a strong reputation because of the excellent research that it produces with more than 100 leading economists and seven Nobel laureates.”
Yet Lomborg baulked, when asked about the intellectual hinge in his relationship with Canberra – did the Abbott government enlist him in the Australian discourse because he had always believed humans cause global warming, or because he now spent most of his waking hours articulating arguments against controversial proposals to cut carbon emissions?….
n the 2013 filings, Lomborg’s salary was reveal to be $200, 484, but in the previous year it was more than three times that amount – $US775, 000.That figure caused a rolling of eyes in some scientific and environmental corners. But unabashed, Lomborg told Fairfax Media: “My salary is assessed by a compensation committee. My position is as leader of a globally recognised, top-ranked think-tank and research funder, interacting with hundreds of the world’s top economists, opinion-makers and leaders.”
Hoping to ride out the storm over his appointment, Lomborg said in April: “We want to have this conversation in the developing world, but Imagine having it in Australia too. In a democracy we talk about what can be done in three-year election cycles, but let’s ask what could Australia do in the lifetime of the next generation.”……http://www.theage.com.au/national/cccs-bjorn-lomborg-appears-unfazed-by-criticisms-and-setbacks-20150522-gh6h2g
Southern Antarctic Peninsula ice sheet now collapsing?
‘Stable’ Antarctic ice sheet may have started collapsing, scientists say, Guardian, Karl Mathiesen, 22 May 15 Southern Antarctic Peninsula ice sheet losing ice 8,500 times the mass of the Great Pyramid of Giza every year, satellite data shows A vast slab of Antarctic ice that was previously stable may have started to collapse, according to new analysis of satellite data.
Research published in the journal Science on Thursday found the Southern Antarctic Peninsula (SAP) ice sheet is losing ice into the ocean at a rate of 56 gigatons each year – about 8,500 times the mass of the Great Pyramid of Giza. This adds around 0.16mm per year to the global sea level.
The sheet’s thickness has remained stable since satellite observations began in 1992. But Professor Jonathan Bamber of Bristol university, who co-authored the study, said that around 2009 it very suddenly began to thin by an average of 42cm each year. Some areas had fallen by up to 4m.
“It hasn’t been going up, it hasn’t been going down – until 2009. Then it just seemed to pass some kind of critical threshold and went over a cliff and it’s been losing mass at a pretty much constant, rather large, rate,” said Bamber……http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/may/21/stable-antarctic-ice-sheet-may-have-started-collapsing-scientists-say
Why Tony Abbott and Christopher Pyne want Bjørn Lomborg’s Consensus Centre
Why the Abbott government wants Bjørn Lomborg’s Consensus Centre, The Saturday Paper , 16 May 15 MIKE SECCOMBECovert negotiations, whispered announcements and an awkward about-face reveal a political agenda behind reaching consensus. Mazzarol, Winthrop professor in the business school of the University of Western Australia, is reciting the long list of hoops a proponent must jump through to gain approval for a research centre at the university.
“Normally they have to demonstrate they will contribute to research output of the university and the reputation of the university,” he says. “They must have at least six full-time equivalent academic staff engaged in research at the university, a viable plan for the growth of the centre, the capacity to be self-sustaining. They must have an academic and a business plan, a clear indication of the resources, facilities, funding, negotiated targets for research, training, publication volume, output quality and how that will all be measured.”
He continues, citing the criteria listed on the UWA website: “It must also have the approval of the academic council, normally has to have an interdisciplinary role, and to have demonstrated consultation with other parts of the faculty that might be involved.”
The list of requirements and processes is detailed, but Mazzarol’s point is simple. “This one didn’t go through any of those steps.”
He is referring to an entity proposed by Danish climate change contrarian Bjørn Lomborg, ironically named the Australia Consensus Centre (ACC), whose establishment was secretively negotiated over six months, quietly revealed six weeks ago, and then abandoned after an ugly collision between academe and politics. Continue reading
Bjorn Lomborg’s Climate Change Agenda
Why the Abbott government wants Bjørn Lomborg’s Consensus Centre, The Saturday Paper , 16 May 15 “…….Lomborg’s agenda
Bjørn Lomborg is not a climate change denier. He accepts the overwhelming scientific consensus that it is happening and that human activity is responsible. His argument is that there are other more pressing issues facing humanity. And this is what makes him useful to the political right.
Simple denialism is not politically tenable anymore. But Lomborg provides cover for those reluctant to take strong action to limit the emission of greenhouse gases, by suggesting we should work on other things first, and that stronger action on climate change might actually impede those other endeavours.
His method is to apply economic cost-benefit analysis to these various problems, to try to determine priorities. His results tend to give comfort to conservatives in general and climate change do-nothing-ists in particular.
By his formulation, for example, freer global trade returns a benefit of $2011 for every dollar spent, making it 45 times more worthwhile than reducing child malnutrition. Cutting people’s salt intake is deemed roughly 10 times as financially beneficial as spending more on health for the world’s 2.5 billion poorest people. It’s a sort of grand cost-benefit theory of everything.
So when Tony Abbott says coal is good for humanity, it is defensible on Lomborg numbers, which hold that bringing electricity to everyone in the world returns $5 for every dollar spent, while limiting global warming to less than 2 degrees returns a benefit of less than $1.
To say his methods are unorthodox and controversial is to be very understated indeed. Lomborg himself is neither a climate scientist nor an economist. His qualifications are in political science. Rather than rely on primary research, his theories are based on meta-analysis – that is, the harvesting of data produced by others, which is then weighted and modelled to determine relative values.
This has led to numerous complaints from other academics that their work has been either misinterpreted or misrepresented. The detail is too extensive and arcane to go into – suffice to say, books have been written and formal complaints made in his native Denmark and elsewhere.
His original Copenhagen Consensus Centre was funded by a conservative government, then defunded by a successor progressive government. After he set up in the United States, his critics complained that he took funds from right-wing climate change denialist organisations……https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2015/05/16/why-the-abbott-government-wants-bjorn-lomborgs-consenus-centre
East Australian Current is changing with Climate Change
Going with the flow: scientists probe changes in the East Australian Current The Age May 15, 2015 –Peter Hannam Environment Editor, The Sydney Morning Herald The East Australian Current, a pivotal driver of climate for Australia’s eastern states, is changing as the planet warms but scientists know little about its dynamics.
That knowledge gap should start to close with CSIRO’s new research ship, the RV Investigator, soon to deploy an array of six sensors moored off Brisbane from 40 metres below the surface out to waters almost five kilometres deep……….
Without the East Australian Current, coastal regions would be much colder. Data on any changes will help climatologists better understand how much future climates may be affected by global warming.
Existing climate models “are quite good”, Dr Sloyan said. “These observations allow us to work with the modelling community on how to improve” those models, she said.
Pacific Ocean currents are affected by many factors, including El Nino, the climate pattern that results in the central and eastern Pacific warming faster than regions to the west. Easterly trade winds during El Nino events weaken or even reverse.
“If we are out there long enough, we will see changes” from the El Nino, Dr Sloyan said, noting the Bureau of Meteorology had declared such an event to be under way this week.
The US National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration said on Thursday that there is an 80 per cent chance that the El Nino will persist until the end of 2015.
A prolonged event could be bad news for Australia, with most such events linked to below-average rainfall for most of Eastern Australia, along with abnormally warm temperatures. http://www.theage.com.au/environment/climate-change/going-with-the-flow-scientists-probe-changes-in-the-east-australian-current-20150515-gh2fvj.html
Institute of Public Affairs uses Australian tax breaks to push Climate Sceptic agenda
IPA uses Australian tax breaks to help fund U.S. climate skeptic’s libel defence Independent Australia DeSmog Blog 16 May 2015 Environment charities like the ACF face having their Deductible Gift Recipient status stripped by the Abbott government, yet corporate mouthpiece, IPA, keep theirs to help fund U.S. climate skeptic Mark Steyn’s libel suit. Graham Readfearn fromDeSmogBlog reports.
WHEN THE facts on climate change become inconvenient or they start to rub your ideology or vested interest up the wrong way, then there are really only two options available.
Option one is to change your mind. Option two is to try and change, distort, misrepresent or just outright ignore the flood of scientific studies over decades showing the serious impacts of loading the biosphere with fossil fuel emissions.
Mark Steyn is a prominent conservative polemicist and writer in the United States and Canada who has chosen option two.
Australian “free market” think-tank The Institute of Public Affairs chose option two in the late 1980s and has stuck with it since.
Now a climate misinformation book produced by the IPA and paid for with the help of tax breaks in Australia is seemingly helping to finance Steyn in a high profile libel case.
So there are two stories to tell here – one about the libel case and the other about the book. The two meet up at the end……..
Changing Facts
The IPA keeps its funders a secret, although its supporters are known to include billionaire mining magnate Gina Rinehart and at least one major tobacco company.
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, the country’s Treasurer Joe Hockey, News Corporation head Rupert Murdoch are all big fans.
The IPA holds Deductible Gift Recipient status with Australia’s tax office, which means that anyone giving money to the think tank for certain prescribed activities, such as research, can claim a tax break on their donation.
Last year, the IPA started fundraising to produce a book called “Climate Change: The Facts” which, when you glance at the list of contributors, should have its semi-colon shifted forward to better reflect the contents. It should really be Climate: Change The Facts.
The IPA decided it would use its DGR status to encourage people to donate cash towards producing the book, which the IPA said would cost about $175,000.
As I wrote on DeSmog last year, this meant Australia’s tax revenue would be a tiny bit reduced so a bunch of climate science deniers could spout their usual conspiratorial mush.
Mark Steyn, who has previously toured Australia thanks to the IPA, was one contributor. He has said the book will help “push back against the climate mullahs”………
On sale
The book has been produced and is now on sale internationally.
But according to retailers Amazon and Kobo, the book’s publisher is not the IPA but “Stockade Books” – a venture that’s actually owned by Mark Steyn. ……..https://independentaustralia.net/environment/environment-display/ipa-uses-australian-tax-breaks-to-help-fund-us-climate-skeptics-libel-defense,7715
Sea level rise a serious consideration for Mid North Coast councils
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-13/mid-north-coast-councils-advised-to-take-sea-level-rise-serious/6465684 One of the authors of a new study into sea level rise is advising Mid North Coast councils not to cave-in to landholder concerns about property values.The study has found sea levels are rising faster than previously thought, and appear to be accelerating.Coastal councils, coastal planners, do need to take account of sea level rise in the 21st century – Dr John Church, CSIRO
It found seas have risen faster since 1993, compared to previous decades, and its observations are in line with projections from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
CSIRO Fellow, John Church, was among the authors and said the findings have major implications for coastal planning. Continue reading
Australia’s budget trashes action on climate change
There is hardly any mention of climate change in the budget documents, apart from the Coalition’s continued determination to remove the phrase from the government’s lexicon, and to dismantle the remaining initiatives of Labor’s clean energy package, presumably when (and if) it wins the election in late 2016/17.
spending for the $10 billion Clean Energy Finance Corporation and the Climate Change Authority will be halted in fiscal 2016/17.
The Australian Renewable Energy Agency…— will also be absorbed back into the department and defunded.
Budget losers: climate agencies up in smoke, Crikey GILES PARKINSON | MAY 13, 2015 Like true conservatives, the Coalition’s leadership team thinks the best environmental strategy is to defund every climate science body but boost spending for a bunch of people to pick up litter.
Just a few months ago, the newly constituted and Republican-dominated US Senate was asked to vote on a motion that “human activity significantly contributes to climate change”.
They voted against it. By a slim majority, 50-49, the senior conservative legislators in US Congress collectively declared that, well, climate science is crap.
In Australia’s ruling Coalition, that view is noisily shared by Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s closest advisers, such as Maurice “it’s all a UN plot” Newman and Dick “I’m not a climate sceptic, I just don’t accept the science”Warburton, and of course some rogue members of Parliament such as Barnaby“it’s cold down here” Joyce.
Abbott, the man who made the climate science “is absolute crap” phrase his own, doesn’t like to repeat it 
so much in public these days. Indeed, he has in environment minister Greg Hunt a man whose principal role seems to be Minister for Saying That The Coalition Really Takes Climate Change Seriously, despite its policies that suggest the opposite.
The budget handed down on Tuesday night by Treasurer Joe “I don’t like wind turbines” Hockey continues the recent trend of Coalition policy documents that sweeps the idea that Australia should be acting — urgently or otherwise — on climate action under the carpet.
As CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology warn on extreme weather, Budget ignores climate change
Budget 2015: An assault on Australia’s climate programs http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/business/oyster-creek-nuclear-plant-offline-for-fifth-straight-day/article_bff63088-f7e9-11e4-98a9-1bde50cc13e9.html JOHN CONNOR LAST NIGHT’S BUDGET IGNORES THE GLOBAL REALITY THAT CLIMATE CHANGE IS HAPPENING AND OTHER COUNTRIES ARE MOVING TO ADDRESS IT. IT’S A LIABILITY FOR OUR FUTURE.
AS THE TREASURER was finalising his Budget speech yesterday, the World Bank released a report onDecarbonising Development: Three Steps to a Zero Carbon Future (pdf) and our announced that El Nino was back — a big problem for Australia as global warming puts our already extreme weather on steroids.
These are hardly ‘radical’ organisations. Yet the Treasurer’s speech made no mention of policies to modernise and decarbonise our economy. There was no mention of climate costs and the physical impacts of climate change that CSIRO has now repeatedly warned are happening now, and will only grow. The Treasurer did laud the truly awesome power of our fossil fuel exports — sufficient to power Mumbai, Tokyo and Singapore, apparently.
Last night’s budget highlights a number of problems with the government’s approach to climate and economic policy. Continue reading
Climate Council exposes Bjorn Lomborg’s climate fallacies
The low down on Lomborg BY CLIMATE COUNCIL 13.05.2015 Last week’s announcement that the University of Western Australia would no longer house Bjorn Lomborg’s ‘Consensus Centre’ was a fantastic outcome for science. However, the fact that the Centre is still trying to establish itself in Australia is deeply troubling.Misinformation is harmful. Just as false information about the ‘benefits’ of tobacco misled the public and damaged health, so false information about climate change and its impacts can mislead the public and decision-makers, delaying much needed action to stabilise the climate system. Here are the top four reasons why Lomborg’s arguments about climate change are flawed. Continue reading
1 This month
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