I am open to any reasonable opinion, ..

You are? I have my doubts on that somehow!

..and you and others who declare “case closed” remind me too much of what I have read of Stalin and his ilk.

So, do you think the case is closed on whether or not the world is flat or the value of pi is 3.1415926535? Do you doubt evolution or gravity or vaccines as well?

There are times and cases where scientific evidence is so overwhelming that you have to say, yeah, the case is really pretty much closed.

Unless you have extraordinary evidence to explain your extraordinary claim otherwise (Sagan’s Law) in which case your extraordinary evidence would be ..?? OH & your explanation for why the experts in the field who have spent their lives studying climatology (say) haven’t already realised your evidence shows X and beaten you to it is .. ???

“Eppur si muove” (And yet it does move.)

– After recanting his belief in the Copernican theory on threat of torture according to legend.
– Page 334, Ben Bova, ‘The Story of Light’, Sourcebooks Inc., 2001.

Wake up people: Science is not politics and politics is not science. One does not dictate to Nature what its Truths are.

It is not arrogance to assert the truth of what science teaches us, but it is arrogance to assume that “everyone is entitled to their own truths”. There lies the path to ruin… Beware.

then you have not understand of anything you’ve read about stalin and his ilk. Perhaps all the big words confused you.

“Mr. Desertphile, sir, what is it that makes you the expert on policy-making?”

Have you stopped beating your dog?

Lomborg left out a few salient points. The objections to Lomborg were far from a “small but loud group of opponents”. The criticisms came from an large group of academics, current students and alumni. Two large petitions were raised and the one on change.org had over 6000 signatories to include current students and alumni. Only two academics at the university, out of staff of hundreds, Professor David Pannell and Emeritus Associate Professor Greenway went on record to support Lomborg. The staff fora which showed academic staff raising their concerns with the Vice Chancellor (VC) Johnson were not clandestine as claimed by Lomborg but were open sessions that were videoed and placed on the University’s website.

The concerns raised interestingly, did query Lomborg’s scientific assertions but more of them centred on issues to do with party political interference in a publicly funded university, such as: 1. why a risk assessment had not been undertaken prior to the VC taking the money. 2. Why government funding could be found for this project when overall government funding to the university had been cut. 3. Highlighted that research cooperation with other universities would be placed in jeopardy. 4. Asked where the additional AUD$10m that would be necessary to run the ACC would be coming from and would this funding be transparent. 5. (As addressed above) How Lomborg could be considered for a Professorial level position at a Global 100 university without having an academic publication record. 6. Would such an appointment bring the university into disrepute and lower the universities highly prized global rankings. 7. Was there a possibility of the university setting up the centre without Lomborg as there were eminently qualified Professors already employed by the university well versed in Cost-Benefit analyses.

After the announcement that UWA’s association with Lomborg and the ACC would cancelled, the “Australian Financial Review” revealed that several wealthy alumni had threatened to pull sizeable bequests to the university in the order of AUD$3m should Lomborg be appointed. And it was intimated that further bequests would be withheld.

Then at the end of last week the Australian government revealed that the foreign aid budget would be slashed by 25% to a sixty year low virtually cancelling all aid to African countries. Mitigating any need for Australia to appoint Lomborg. As there was no new funds to require assistance with allocation aid as the remaining budget is made up almost entirely of tied aid projects. This from a country with the second highest GDP per capita. So all pretence of the ACC being anything other than a political stunt was exposed.

Finally, in citing Tim Wilson, Lomborg reveals himself not to be a man committed to open debate. Wilson is an openly political appointee to the Australian Human Rights Commission who is on record attempting to change the law in order to prevent gutter journalists’ being prosecuted for racially vilifying indigenous Australians. Wilson also failed to stand behind the President of the Australian Rights’ Commission when she was being bullied by the government for her report on Australia’s abysmal treatment of refugees. Eventually it was the ICC and UN who stepped in to support Prof Triggs.

So far from being an advocate for the poor and dispossessed, Lomborg stands fore square with one of the most morally and politically abject governments in the world. Small wonder that not a single university in the world will touch this man.

The new centre will focus on applying an economic lens to proposals to achieve good for Australia, the region and the world, prioritising those initiatives which produce the most social value per dollar spent.

The new Australia Consensus Centre will be based at UWA but have global reach. It will help frame the debate on aid, Australian prosperity, agriculture and regional issues and focus on smart, long-term priorities. The work of the ACC involves rigorous identification of issues and problems that require analysis, the generation of well-articulated solutions by key Australian and international economists, and assessment and ranking of the best solutions by an expert panel of economists including Nobel Laureates.

Further

The advice is to be developed using the methodology developed by the Copenhagen Consensus Center.

Later in the announcement it is stated that Lomborg will spend time in Perth and across Australia to “encourage a conversation on priorities for aid and development and the future prosperity of Australia” and that he had been made an adjunct faculty member of the university, with no (college) affiliation given. (Perhaps, by implication, with their school of business, since the center would have been affiliated with it.)