Perfect example of why you shouldn't listen to Lomborg, courtesy of Greg Laden.
Bjorn Lomborg plays the victim card hard in his
latest WSJ op-ed. In the piece, Lomborg complains of "being mugged by climate censors" who successfully convinced the University of Western Australia to reject the $4 million the Australian Government offered UWA to host a spin-off of Lomborg's Copenhagen Consensus Center. Lomborg accuses the opponents of "making up facts" and ignoring his non-climate research, which is ironic given that
there's a whole book detailing the ways Lomborg makes claims without citation and uses cherry-picked evidence.
Greg Laden has a great post recounting the story, and he provides ample evidence for UWA's decision to ditch Lomborg (though you can also just look at Laden's face-palm graphic to see exactly why no one should listen to Lomborg.)
That said, one thing Laden doesn't cover is Lomborg's brazen doublespeak, which Lomborg employs at the end of his piece. Given that the UWA Center was conceived and funded by the Australian government, it's hard not to laugh when Lomborg says the lesson of his censorship for young academics is to: "Avoid producing research that could produce politically difficult answers." What's more, when leaked documents reveal the Government was trying to use the University Center and your research to justify further policy inaction, it's a tad disingenuous to claim that your work is rejected because "it means upsetting the status quo."
Three things, Bjorn. First, the climate science indicating that we need to replace our entire fossil fuel infrastructure is what's upsetting the status quo. Your unwavering insistence that we don't need major efforts to tackle climate change reinforces the status quo.
Second, when you're writing your 36th op-ed in the largest newspaper in the US, complaints of censorship don't exactly ring true. (Not exaggerating here: Lomborg's had three dozen pieces in the WSJ since 2003.)
Finally, you know what else academia "censors"?
Phrenology.
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