One must say here that the way denialism is peddled is frightening:

First, there are the sheer DENIALISTS.

Second, come the DOUBTERS.

Third, there are those, like LOMBORD, who appear to accept global warming but do everything to disprove it by deceit, using unscientific "data" by the truck load. They are the DECEIVERS.

Fourth, there are those who accept climate change but humans are not responsible for it: the NOT-MY-FAULTERS

Fifth, there are those who accept global warming but have decided nothing can be done or nothing should be done about it: the TOO-LATE MOBSTERS

Then there those who don't care: the I-DON'T GIVE A SHITTERS...

Overall, the theme and the counterpoints of denial are orchestrated to suit pollies like Turdy Abbott himself who without flinching will say: "coal is good for humanity", so they can favour their mates — the rich — while condemning the surface of this planet to more destruction.

Australia is emerging as “public enemy number one” of the United Nations climate change negotiations to be held in Paris in December, according to a Nobel laureate of medicine speaking from a sustainability symposium in Hong Kong.

Prof Peter Doherty is representing Australia at the symposium, held every three years and which is being attended by 11 other laureates from around the world, who will sign a memorandum detailing their recommendations for making major cities sustainable.

The four-day symposium ends on Saturday afternoon, and Doherty said a clear message had emerged from his peers, who hold expertise across specialities including climate, economics and business.

“People are saying informally that Australia and Canada are emerging as public enemy number one for the Paris talks on climate,” Doherty said.

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/apr/25/australia-public-enemy-number-one-of-un-climate-talks-says-nobel-laureate

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Meanwhile after having had a couple of mega storms, Sydney had another mega-hail storm today (25 April 2015)

There has been hail across Sydney this afternoon, from Newtown to Mt Druitt, with State Emergency Services responding to 145 calls for assistance since 4pm.

The Bureau of Meteorology has issued a severe thunderstorm warning for most of south eastern NSW, including Sydney and the ACT.

The hail is expected to subside this evening, according to SES spokeswoman Tanya Arginovsky.

The heaviest hit area so far has been Mt Druitt, which accounted for 82 of the state's 145 emergency calls. Approximately 11 calls came out of Blacktown, according to Ms Arginovsky.

SES have advised that people secure loose items that could be blown away by strong winds and move cars away from trees and powerlines.

Blackheath experienced about one to two centimetres of hail this afternoon and is on the threshold of "severe hail", defined by the Bureau as two or more centimetres. 

Most of Sydney is expected to experience heavy rainfall this evening.

Although the storm is supposed to move offshore by the end of the day, there is a risk of continued hail and potential flash flooding, according to Bureau of Meteorology forecaster Zach Berry-Porter.

read more: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/hail-and-severe-thunderstorms-across-sydney-20150425-1mt59z.html

Meanwhile our Turd parades at a beach in Turkey, reminiscing about the past and forgetting the future.

Keep it in the Ground

The editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger calls the team to arms and challenges them: can they find a new way to report on climate change? He outlines why this is the most important story in the world and why most of the fossil fuels we already know about need to be kept in the ground. Given six months, can they succeed to engage readers in a new way?

Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2015/mar/16/the-biggest-story-in-the-world

Senior academics at an Australian university are asking their bosses to pull the plug on a $4 million taxpayer funded research centre fronted by climate science contrarian Bjorn Lomborg, writes Graham Readfearn from DeSmogBlog.

The University of Western Australia (UWA) was given $4 million to establish the Australia Consensus Centre — a new arm of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, the U.S.-registered think tank headed by Lomborg.

The cash grant came after more than $400 million was slashed for science funding in the Government’s 2014 budget.

Bjorn Lomborg, a favourite among conservatives and climate science deniers for his contrarian views on climate change, has claimed that while global warming is a problem, it should be placed well down a list of global priorities for aid and development spending.

DeSmogBlog investigations have found that Lomborg’s U.S. arm has received funding from foundations with links to the billionaire Koch brothers and to billionaire “vulture capitalist” and major Republican donor Paul Singer.

UWA announced on April 2 that Lomborg would be given an adjunct Professor role at the university, but did not disclose the $4 million of taxpayer funding.

While Lomborg told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that he had worked with UWA to prepare a proposal for the government, it has been reported that the idea came from the office of Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who said last year:

“Coal is good for humanity."

read more: https://independentaustralia.net/environment/environment-display/academics-want-uwa-to-pull-plug-bjorn-lomborgs-4-million-australian-consensus-centre,7632

The Abbott government will spend up to $11 million of taxpayers' money on its controversial Intergenerational Report advertising campaign starring science broadcaster Karl Kruszelnicki​.

Fairfax Media can reveal that the government has budgeted $8.8 million for the advertising spend for the campaign, which has run prominently across commercial television stations, newspapers, bus shelters and on social media over recent weeks.

The Treasury department's tender notice with media buying agency Mitchell & Partners Australia for the campaign was published this week.

...

Dr Kruszelnicki - widely known as Dr Karl - embarrassed the government by describing the report as "flawed", admitting to fears it was not apolitical and saying he felt "deep regret" that he had participated in the campaign without reading the full document.

While he praised some aspects of the report - such as its focus on science and innovation - Dr Kruszelnicki has criticised the lack of attention given to climate change. 

After a backlash from fans, Dr Kruszelnicki said he would donate any income he receives for fronting the campaign to government schools.

read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/abbott-government-bill-for-controversial-dr-karl-ad-campaign-set-to-hit-11m-20150430-1mx2s3.html

The OTHER flaw is that while praising "science" in the report, the Abbott regime has done everything possible to scuttle sciences in this country...

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.

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.

read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-08/bjorn-lomborg-uwa-consensus-centre-contract-cancelled/6456708

But our minuster fer educashun wants to poosh um...:

Australia’s education minister, Christopher Pyne, has vowed to find another university to host the Bjorn Lomborg “consensus centre” and is seeking legal advice about a decision by the University of Western Australia (UWA) to hand back $4m in federal government funding awarded for it.

UWA handed back the funding and dropped its connection with Lomborg, saying that lack of support among its academics made the centre untenable.

In a statement emailed to UWA staff and then published online late on Friday, UWA vice chancellor, Paul Johnson, said that strong opposition to the centre had put the university in a difficult position.

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/may/08/climate-contrarian-bjrn-lomborgs-centre-dropped-by-wa-university

From the Climate Council:

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.

Lomborg does not deny the existence of human caused climate change, but he has consistently misrepresented the basic climate science. For example:

• Lomborg has challenged the link between climate change and an increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events. The message from the peer-reviewed scientific literature, as assessed both in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Assessment Report (2013) and the IPCC Special Report on Extreme Events (2012), is clear: climate change is already increasing the intensity and frequency of many extreme weather events and record-breaking weather is becoming more common around the world. For example, we know that climate change is already driving up bushfire risk in Australia, it is increasing the intensity and frequency of heatwaves and is exacerbating coastal flooding as storm surges now ride on higher sea level. And thanks to new groundbreaking scientific research in 2014, we can even identify how much of an influence climate change has had on a single extreme heat event; the record hot year of 2013 in Australia was virtually impossible without climate change.
• Lomborg believes that global warming has ‘dramatically slowed or entirely stopped’ over the last 12 years. This is a common myth that we've busted already. The Earth continues to warm strongly. Over 90% of the additional heat trapped by greenhouse gases is stored in the ocean, and the heat content of the ocean has continued to rise strongly over the past 12 years with no easing of the rate of increase. In terms of air temperature NASA, NOAA, BoM, CSIRO, the IPCC and a long list of other trusted organizations have confirmed that yearly global average air temperature continues to climb. 2014 marked the 38th year in a row that the yearly global air temperature was hotter than the 20th century average. 13 of the 14 hottest years on record have occurred this century.And let’s not forget that the overall global annual temperature has increased at an average rate of 0.16°C per decade since 1970, with each decade since the 1970s warmer than the previous decade. This is neither a “dramatic slowing” or “entire stoppage”.
• When Lomborg does acknowledge the impacts of climate change, he inaccurately downplays them. For example, Lomborg argues that more heatwaves mean fewer ‘coldwaves’ and as more people die from excessive cold than excessive heat, there will be fewer deaths in the future. Statements like these just don’t stack up. As the World Meterological Organisation outline in the graph (see article at Climate Council) (which is based on global data), there has been a significant increase in deaths from extreme heat and a smaller increase in deaths from extreme cold as the climate continues to destabilise.

Lomborg’s Copenhagen Consensus Centre has consistently claimed that targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions are expensive and that the money should be spent elsewhere. For example, he suggests that to stop deaths from heatwaves it is better to invest the money in building water features and reducing asphalt in cities, instead of committing to significant cuts to our carbon emissions. This argument is flawed because:

• Solutions to curb our carbon emissions are becoming increasingly cheaper. Renewable technologies are costing less and providing consumers with cost benefits too. The trend towards distributed power generation technologies like solar PV, wind and batteries is likely to accelerate globally as the cost of these technologies continues to fall.There are also cost benefits of renewable technology for the consumer, and Australia serves as a great example. Over 1.4 million Australian households have solar on their rooftops and surveys indicate that 70.4% of Australian households installed solar PV systems to save money on their power bills. Over each full year renewables are reducing wholesale electricity prices, not only in Australian states where wind and solar PV penetration is high, but in many overseas markets (you can read more about that here).By 2030, 65% of Australia’s coal-fired power stations will be over 40 years old. The nation’s older power stations cannot be made more efficient without vast expense, so replacing them over time with renewable energy technologies makes economic sense.Finally, in Australia it is estimated that the health impacts of coal-fired electricity generation costs A$ 2.6 billion annually, whilst solar and wind remain sources of clean energy that produce no emissions whilst generating significant amounts of power.
• We need to address the cause of the problem not just the symptoms. Take Australia’s bushfire threat. Climate change is increasing the risk of bushfires in parts of Australia and lengthening the fire season. Fire severity and intensity is expected to increase substantially in coming decades. It is certainly important to better equip our firefighters and design buildings to reduce flammability, but ultimately if we don’t cut our emissions and stabilise the planet’s climate, extreme fire weather will continue to increase beyond our ability to adapt to it. Climate change has already triggered a new category of bushfire – catastrophic – that is so severe that such fires cannot be contained, even with more and better equipped firefighters. We need to invest in mitigating climate change now, so that future generations of Australians don’t have to live in a country of increasingly dangerous extremes, ones that they cannot adapt to.

Lomborg’s Copenhagen Consensus Centre has asserted that other issues need to be prioritised before considering climate change, like tackling infectious disease, poverty and malnutrition. Of course these issues are important and, in fact, climate change makes a lot of these existing problems worse. On the other hand, solutions to climate change can be integrated with tackling poverty and disease (for example, through the provision of solar energy systems to remote communities to provide electricity, instead of building centralised fossil fuel plants and expensive transmission systems). A healthy environment and healthy people are not mutually exclusive, in fact healthy and productive people depend on a healthy environment.

As Ban Ki Moon, UN Secretary General, states: “Saving our planet, lifting people out of poverty, advancing economic growth ... these are one and the same fight. We must connect the dots between climate change, water scarcity, energy shortages, global health, food security and women's empowerment. Solutions to one problem must be solutions for all".

• According to the IPCC: throughout the 21st century, climate change is expected to lead to increases in ill-health in many regions, especially in developing countries.Examples include increased risks from food, water-borne diseases and vector-borne diseases (e.g. malaria). There is also high confidence that there will be an increased likelihood of under-nutrition resulting from diminished food produced in poor regions. An essential part of addressing the spread of disease and malnutrition therefore involves tackling climate change.
• Climate change will hit the poorest the hardest. Climate change will compound existing poverty for a whole range of reasons. For example, the geographical and climatic conditions of developing nations (e.g. low lying nations such as Bangladesh are more susceptible to coastal flooding during cyclone season as sea level rises), the higher dependence of developing nations on natural resources and their limited capacity to adapt. Tackling poverty demands that we also tackle climate change, the two issues can’t be addressed in isolation. This makes Lomborg’s arguments that ‘the poor need cheap fossil fuels’ and that ‘renewables pave the path to poverty’ particularly puzzling.
• Countries on the frontline of climate change can’t afford to wait. Delaying our response to climate change to prioritise other issues increases the risk for nations on the frontline of climate change, like the Small Island States in the Pacific. As the IPCC points out, because of low elevation and small size, many Small Island States are threatened with partial or virtually total inundation by future rises in sea level. The considerable momentum of the climate system cannot be ignored. Only immediate action can hope to stabilise the climate system in the second half of the century, averting the worst of the projected impacts but still leaving the next generation to cope with much more severe impacts than we face today.
• You can address more than one problem at once. Contrary to Lomborg’s suggestions, we don’t have to assume that committing to reducing our emissions means that we can’t also focus money and research on tackling issues like the spread of disease and malnutrition. We can and must do both.

Lomborg is a statistician and political scientist by training, and a self-proclaimed climate contrarian whose views have no credibility in the research community.

As Dr. Frank Jotzo, Director of the Centre for Climate Economics and Policy at ANU explains:

Within the research community, particularly within the economics community, the Bjørn Lomborg enterprise has no academic credibility. It is seen as an outreach activity that is driven by a specific set of objectives in terms of bringing particular messages into the public debate and in some cases making relatively extreme positions seem more acceptable in the public debate.

Lomborg’s message hasn’t varied at all in the last decade. For example, he has continued to argue that most greenhouse-related funding needs to be spent on the research and development (R&D) of alternative energy systems to fossil fuels before this alternative is deployed. If we took this approach to R&D we would still only be using land-lines, as mobile phone technology hasn’t been perfected yet! When it comes to renewables, whilst research and development are important, so too is large-scale deployment and increasing the proportion of electricity supplied by renewable energy. Renewable energy technologies such as solar PV and wind are already well established and installed capacity is growing significantly every year, and costs are coming down. For example, rooftop solar electricity is now fully competitive at a retail level in many places, including in most Australian cities.Currently there is over 4GW or small-scale solar installed in Australia and installation averages around 15% of houses, and up to 25% in South Australia.It is clear that renewable energy technologies like solar and wind have galloped rapidly through the research and development phase and onto commercialisation, way faster than Lomborg’s tired argument suggests.

When someone is unwilling to adapt their view on the basis of new science or information, it's usually a sign those views are ideologically motivated.

read all at: http://www.climatecouncil.org.au/the-low-down-on-lomborg

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Gus: Note that deaths from storms and floods are reduced from "previous" years, mostly due to better advance warming. People are able to take preventative measures such as leaving areas that could be devastated or take shelters in cyclone-proof refuges. Most recent deaths in Australia from floods have been due to people not paying attention to warnings.

Global warming is real. Like the Arctic is melting, the Antarctic is melting faster than previously thought. This gigantic loss of ice is impacting on the weather patterns in southern latitudes up to 30 degrees south. Cold winds in Melbourne and Sydney seem like a "reversing" warming into cooling, but the sum-total with Antarctica's "heating up" — thus loosing ice — is a dramatic increase in warming.

As I tell people when the weather is atrocious in Sydney: "Antarctica is melting" — and this is no joke. Though it is not as "cold' as was the past winter polar vortex in the USA, during which northerly and westerly temperatures were WARMER than average, similar warming conditions do more than counter-balance the cold. The sum-total trend is WARMING UP.

Lomborg is a climate contrarian and a deliberate falsifier of scientific information. He should not be allow to meddle in Australia's future — nor this planet's future.

WE (humans) managed to prevent massive further damage to the ozone layer by being smart enough to understand the problem and find the solution. WE can minimise the increase of surface temperature on this planet, by reducing our EXTRA emissions of CO2 — on top of the natural carbon cycle — to ZERO. That is the only viable solution, until we find an efficient way to remove the present EXTRA CO2 from the atmosphere and prevent it from acidifying the oceans. WE (humans) can do it but people like Lomborg are a bloody hindrance.

Note that some of the "poorest" countries have been smart enough to lower their power bills by switching to renewable energy. This flies in the face of Lomborg's arguments.

Please donate to THE CLIMATE COUNCIL. 

See also above: the six stages of global warming denialism...

The official view: all eyes are on Paris, where negotiators will meet in December for a climate conference that will be described as “the most important diplomatic gathering ever” and “a last chance for humanity.” Heads of state will jet in, tense closed-door meetings will be held, newspapers will report that negotiations are near a breaking point, and at the last minute some kind of agreement will emerge, hailed as “a start for serious action”.

The actual story: what happens at Paris will be, at best, one small part of the climate story, one more skirmish in the long, hard-fought road to climate sanity. What comes before and after will count more. And to the extent Paris matters, its success will depend not on the character of our leaders but on how much a resurgent climate movement has softened up the fossil fuel industry, and how much pressure the politicians feel to deliver something.

The good news is, that pressure is growing. In fact, that relentless climate movement is starting to win big, unprecedented victories around the world, victories which are quickly reshaping the consensus view – including among investors – about how fast a clean energy future could come. It’s a movement grounded in the streets and reaching for the photovoltaic rooftops, and its thinking can be easily summarised in a mantra: Fossil freeze. Solar thaw. Keep it in the ground.

Triumph is not certain – in fact, as the steadily rising toll of floods and droughts and melting glaciers makes clear, major losses are guaranteed. But for the first time in the quarter-century since global warming became a major public issue the advantage in this struggle has begun to tilt away from the Exxons and the BPs and towards the ragtag and spread-out fossil fuel resistance, which is led by indigenous people, young people, people breathing the impossible air in front-line communities. The fight won’t wait for Paris – the fight is on every day, and on every continent.

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/mar/09/climate-fight-wont-wait-for-paris-vive-la-resistance

Rubbish from a free-thinking-free-market web outfit:

...

First, eco-intolerance, the use of medieval-echoing slurs like "Denier" to demonise those who doubt the gospel of climate-change alarmism, and the elbowing-out of polite society anyone who thinks climate change is not actually the end of the world.

And secondly, creeping campus conformism, a growing problem everywhere from America's Ivy League to Britain's dreaming spires to Australia's colleges. Whether students and academics are "No Platforming" offensive politicians, disinviting un-PC speakers, or giving "riotous applause" to the demand that a climate contrarian be denied university space, the one place you would expect intellectual tolerance to exist—the academy—is becoming more and more intolerant.

Smash together eco-correctness with the West's scarily cavalier attitude to the great modern ideal of academic freedom, and what do you have? A serious, valuable thinker like Lomborg being chased from a university by a passionate emotional mob. We need to make a fuss about this, before more people start getting the idea that they have the right to shout down and silence anyone who dares to be contrary.

http://reason.com/archives/2015/05/19/academic-orthodoxy-closes-ranks-against/1

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The simple answer to this RUBBISH by Brendan O'Neill is that Lomborg can say whatever he likes, BUT WE SHOULD NOT HAVE TO PAY FOR IT. 

CONtroversial Danish academic Bjorn Lomborg says he is CONfident he will find another Australian university to host his CONsensus Centre despite a fierce backlash in Western Australia.

A self-described "sceptical environmentalist", Dr Lomborg's planned Australian CONsensus Centre was allocated $4 million in this month's federal budget, but plans to host it at the University of Western Australia (UWA) were abandoned after protests from students and staff.

"I'm sure we'll find somewhere in Australia to do that but I'm not sure [where] just yet," Dr Lomborg said.

Dr Lomborg was speaking from Nairobi, Kenya, where he is addressing an aid CONference on new United Nations development goals.

read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-20/lomborg-confident-of-finding-australian-partner/6483934

ALTered new item by Gus... 

Lomborg can say whatever he likes, BUT WE SHOULD NOT HAVE TO PAY FOR IT. Our university experts, academics, doctors etc are all able to do a similar rigmarole in regard on how to deal with certain aspects of fighting poverty, WITHOUT HIM influencing the results.

Good bye Mr Lomborg... 

By Graham Readfearn 

As a way to sell your think tank’s ideas, get people to fund it or even just collaborate with it, there could be few more enticing prospects than being able to rub shoulders with seven Nobel prize winning economists.

In Australia, Danish climate change contrarian and head of the US-based Copenhagen Consensus Center (CCC) Bjorn Lomborg has been working overtime to respond to the fallout of the decision by one university to pull out of hosting an Australian arm of his project.

The University of Western Australia decided to hand back a $4 million taxpayer grant it was encouraged to take up by the Abbott government after students and academics complained abut Lomborg’s thin academic record and questionable methodologies.

The news has prompted a flood of media coverage, magazine spreads, television interviews and opinion columns. 

But in practically every story written about the saga, journalists — and Lomborg — have stressed how the CCC works with “seven Nobel laureates” in an effort to demostrate the credibility of the contrarian think tank.

In an interview with the ABC, Lomborg said: “I think it's a big shame in the sense of saying we work with more than 100 of the world's top economists, seven Nobel laureates, lots of interesting people.”

When I gave the CCC the chance to respond to criticisms ahead of a post in The Guardian, the think tank’s vice president Roland Matthiason told me: “We work with more than 100 of the world's top economists, 7 Nobel Laureates and Cambridge University Press.”

When the ABC’s Media Watch program made an enquiry to the CCC, its media manager David Lessman again stated that the centre “works with more than 100 of the world's top economists including seven Nobel Laureates”.

Beyond the grave

So who are these “seven Nobel laureates” waiting to collaborate with any other university willing to give the CCC think tank a home? 

As often turns out to be the case with matters of detail involving Bjorn Lomborg, not all is as it seems.

Firstly, it is highly unlikely that the CCC will be able to continue to work with these “seven Nobel laureates” because one of those laureates — Robert Fogel — died almost two years ago.

Fogel had only worked on one project with the CCC, its very first Copenhagen Consensus project carried out in 2004.

Putting aside the not minor oversight of the death of a Nobel laureate two years previously, what of the remaining six?

All six were awarded an economics Nobel, but the involvement of two of those laureates has been comparatively small.

Edward Prescott, who won the prize in 2004, only took part in one CCC exercise — the 2010 Rethink HIV project. Douglas North, who got his Nobel in 1993, was part of the “expert panel” on the first two major Consensus projects, the last being in 2008.

The four remaining Nobels to have worked with CCC are Finn Kydland, Robert Mundell, Thomas Schelling and Vernon Smith.

On the CCC’s 2009 “Fix the Climate” project, Kydland, Smith and Schelling delivered a final report that attempted to argue that the “smartest” investments to combat climate change were in carbon capture, technology research and geoengineering research. 

The highly controversial, unproven and ethically questionable geoengineering techniques of solar radiation management (cloud whitening and injecting the stratosphere with aerosols such as sulphur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide) were given particularly glowing endorsements for their supposed value for money.

The CCC’s latest project, the Post 2015 Consensus, had an expert panel that included only two Nobel laureates, Kydland and Schelling. This participation is enough for the CCC to sell the results of that project as the “Nobel Laureates Guide To Smarter Global targets to 2030”. 

Since the first CCC project in 2004, the two Nobels who have worked most often with the CCC as part of their “expert panels” are Thomas Schelling and Vernon Smith.

Smith is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a free market libertarian think tank, but Smith appears not to do any work related to climate or energy issues there. This is fortunate, because over the years the Cato Institute has promoted fringe views on climate science, underplayed the impacts and dismissed the need to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

Merchants of Doubt

Schelling received his Nobel in 2005 for his work on game theory, and has participated on more CCC “expert panels” than any of the other CCC-lauded laureates. 

Schelling’s long-standing position on climate change is that adaptation, research and geoengineering should be the preferred responses. This is opposed to the more obvious response, which would be to tackle the root cause of rising greenhouse gas emissions by restricting the pollution in the first place.

Schelling’s position on what to do about climate change appears to be very close to Lomborg’s.

While Schelling, pictured, no doubt deserves praise and admiration for his Nobel-winning contribution to economics, the 94-year-old has a controversial history when it comes to his thoughts and advice on climate change, offered at the highest levels in the United States.

Schelling is featured in the 2010 book Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming by Harvard science historian Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway.

Schelling, currently at the University of Maryland, is heavily criticised for his role in offering policy advice through scientific reviews on climate change in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

As the book recounts, Schelling, then working at Harvard University, chaired a 1980 National Academy of Sciences (NAS) group asked to write a “letter report” on the potential impacts of climate change. The book states:

Climate change wouldn’t produce new kinds of climate, Schelling argued. But would simply change the distribution of climate zones on Earth. This suggested an idea that climate skeptics would echo for the next three decades: that we could continue to burn fossil fuels without restriction and deal with the consequences through migration and adaptation.

The book adds that Schelling had argued that fossil fuel use from 1980 onwards would probably slow anyway, making adaptation to climate change easier.

Considering all the other uncertainties that Schelling emphasized, his faith in the free market could have been viewed as surprising, and his predictions have turned out to be entirely wrong: fossil fuel use has risen dramatically over the past three decades even as global warming has accelerated.

In a 1983 NAS report, Changing Climate: Report of the Carbon Dioxide Assessment Committee, Schelling wrote the final chapter where he focused largely on the uncertainties ahead. 

Schelling suggested that while climate change in the future might have grave consequences for poorer nations (singling out Bangladesh), he wrote that too much was not known back then. “It would be wrong to commit ourselves to the principle that if fossil fuels and carbon dioxide are where the problem arises, that must be where the solution lies,” he wrote.

But in Merchants of Doubt, the authors point out:

Schelling’s attempt to ignore the cause of global warming was pretty peculiar. It was equivalent to arguing that medical researchers shouldn’t try to cure cancer, because that would be too expensive, and in any case people in the future might decide that dying from cancer is not so bad.

Bjorn Lomborg continues to push the case for his think tank’s methodology to be given a $4 million taxpayer funded home somewhere in Australia. So does the government, the ministers and the conservative commentators who support him.

But as with many claims related to Lomborg’s think tank — including using the Nobel name as a form of marketing — it pays to look at the details. Unless, for example, you believe in working with Nobel laureates from beyond the grave.

read more: http://www.desmogblog.com/2015/05/26/seven-nobel-laureates-behind-climate-contrarian-bjorn-lomborg

read from top

see also: http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/27224

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.

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/jun/03/universities-told-to-speak-to-bjrn-lomborg-if-they-want-4m-in-funding

Me thinks that in the end it would cost far more than $4 million to host this ill-advised caper in a university... By the time you buy the deck chairs of this Titanic of rubbish, and organise some violin musak for PR, you'd be in the depth of 20,000 feet. Idiots. See toon at top.

A research centre linked to controversial Danish academic Bjørn Lomborg was earmarked for the University of Western Australia through a “corrupt” process initiated by the prime minister’s office, parliament has been told.

The university backed out of the proposal, which was to have been funded by the federal government, after protests by staff and students.

The West Australian Labor MP Alannah MacTiernan said on Tuesday that science has been the big loser under the Abbott government.

She said it was curious that the government had found $4m for the Australian Consensus Centre, a think tank which had at its heart a commitment to cherry-pick the scientific evidence which argued against urgent action on climate change.

MacTiernan said the education minister Christopher Pyne says the decision to fund the centre at UWA followed a proposal put forward by the university and Lomborg, but vice-chancellor Paul Johnson said the proposal was not initiated by the university.

The proposal arose out of discussions between Lomborg and the government, MacTiernan said.

“It seems the offer came directly from the prime minister’s office and came to UWA only after the Australian Catholic University had rejected it,” she said.

“Extraordinarily, this special research initiative didn’t come through the Australian Research Council or any peer review.”

It was a “corrupt process”, she said.

Academics at Flinders University have delivered a withering rejection of the university’s plan to host a Bjørn Lomborg-run research centre with $4m of federal government money, labelling the Dane “infamous” for his views on climate change.

The government is trying to find a university to run Lomborg’s centre, which would focus on international development. The University of Western Australia was set to host the centre, only to return the $4m following a revolt by its academics, who claimed the process was politically motivated and attacked Lomborg’s lack of scholarly standing.

Guardian Australia understands the Flinders University leadership has canvassed the opinion of staff at three schools – social and policy studies, international studies and environmental studies – and found a clear majority are opposed to hosting Lomborg’s “consensus” centre.

A letter sent by the school of social and policy studies to Flinders’ deputy vice-chancellor Andrew Parkin, who attempted to sell the benefits of the centre to staff, rejected Lomborg’s involvement.

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/28/bjrn-lomborgs-4m-centre-rejected-by-flinders-university-academics

Bjørn Lomborg’s “consensus centre” was to spend up to $800,000 of its $4m in government funding on promotion and marketing and up to $2m on high-profile “events” under the controversial and now-abandoned agreement with the University of Western Australia (UWA).

Lomborg is searching for a new university to host his government-funded thinktank after a backlash from staff and students forced UWA to abandon the deal.

But documents obtained by Guardian Australia after a freedom of information request reveal the agreement between the Abbott government and UWA budgeted for Lomborg to spend between 20% and 50% of the grant on “event costs” and between 10% and 20% on “promotion and marketing”. The budget leaves half, or less (between 20% and 50%) to be spent on “staff and professional fees”.

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/04/bjrn-lomborg-consensus-centre-was-to-have-800000-in-public-funds-for-marketing

read from top....

The federal government has withdrawn funding offered to Bjørn Lomborg for the creation of the Australia Consensus centre in any university, the education minister, Simon Birmingham, has announced.

Officials confirmed the decision was made by the former minister, Christopher Pyne, on 17 September, just days after Malcolm Turnbull ousted Tony Abbott as prime minister but before the ministerial reshuffle.

The education minister was asked in Senate estimates on Wednesday whether $4m Commonwealth funding for the project had been withdrawn.

“Correct, senator Carr,” Birmingham said.

The Greens senator Robert Simms pressed Birmingham on the matter.

“So the money is off the table?”

“Correct, senator Simms,” Birmingham said.

Birmingham took the reins as education minister from Pyne. “The previous minister, Mr Pyne, did make a determination that this proposal was unlikely to enjoy success, and that the funds could be better utilised elsewhere,” Birmingham told the committee.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/21/government-withdraws-funding-lomborg-centre-university

The Turnbull government signed an agreement to make a $640,000 grant to Bjørn Lomborg’s Copenhagen Consensus Centre nine months after plans to establish the centre had been abandoned. 

The education department may have been under no legal obligation to make the grant, documents suggest.

The funding was used to support the centre’s post-2015 UN development goals project that found limiting global temperature rises to 2C was a poor investment.

A breakdown of costs released on Thursday shows that $482,000 of the Australian funding was spent on professional fees and services including research, “outreach” and forums. 

About $146,000 was spent on travel in an ambitious global project convening seminars to discuss the UN development goals in Bangladesh, Brazil, Colombia, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, South Africa and New York.

read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/dec/23/federal-grant-to-...

In Australia, a person called Peter Foster has been declared a fraud and everything he tries to do will be deemed fraudulent. Meanwhile our stupid government has given moneys to this giant fraud Lomborg who has been talking shit forever. Turnbull? You're a dumb ass.

Foster "cons" a few people. Lomborg cons the entire planet.

See toon at top...