Monday, January 23, 2012

The Danish gravy train stops


Bjorn is getting kicked off the gravy train

Denmark's general election last year ushered in a new administration less keen to support his views. Earlier this month, the Danish government confirmed that it had cut more than £1 million in funding for Lomborg's centre. As a result, he only has funding in place until the end of June.
Of course, wingnut welfare will ride to the rescue, but it will not be quite the same, and Lomborg will not have access to the government. Perhaps he will get a nice pen from Santa Klaus and take a room in Lumo's house of crazy colors.

12 comments:

EWI said...

And Richard Tol has removed himself from the teat of the Irish taxpayer (albeit to go to University of Sussex in the UK, poor bastards).

David B. Benson said...

Maybe the Koch bros. will fund him.

Martin Vermeer said...

David,

Richard Tol is a bit of an eccentric, and has said silly things, but please don't suggest he would be open to such offers without hard evidence. It's not a nice thing to say. I have no reason to think so -- he is really himself like that, all on his own ;-)

J Bowers said...

Austrian School of Economics, free market neoliberal theorists get to put theory into practice.

EliRabett said...

FWIW, Tol has been on soft money much longer than the Bunny would expect and he moves frequently, which implies

a. He is as disagreeable as he seems

and

b. He is not as good as he thinks.

Neven said...

Tol recently stood up to Curry's BS propaganda platform. He got a lot +1s from me for that.

All in all he's one of the better skeptics, and those should be cherished. Because there are very few of them.

EliRabett said...

Neven, that was after he tossed his co-author and former colleague Klein under the bus at Judy's. From what Eli can see Tol benefited significantly from Klein's expertise. NTBT

a_ray_in_dilbert_space said...

In my experience, being agreeable company is not a prerequisite, nor even a contributing factor, to academic success.

In my experience, both Tol and Lomborg are contrarians. Both at times care more about going against the grain than about being right. This is often the sign of a person who has realized their intellect is not up to producing anything particularly innovative, and so they simply hope everyone else is wrong about something and that by going against them, they will be shown in a memorable way to be right.

Tol, however has some standards. I've never seen any scruples in Lomborg. And Judy...well, the less said the better. Let's just go all Southern and say, "Bless her little heart!"

David B. Benson said...

Martin Vermeer --- I was tinking of Lomborg.

Martin Vermeer said...

David, oops -- yes, then not an unreasonable speculation.

John said...

Check out Lomborg's entry on Wikipedia. Lomborg wrote or edited 3 books from 2001 to 2007, all denying that global warming was a big problem. In the process Lomborg became a celebrity whose opinions were discussed around the world.
Why? Did Lomborg have detailed knowledge of global warming?
No. Plenty of powerful forces in the media wanted someone to voice the opinions that Lomborg did.
Then in 2010, Lomborg reversed field, at least in part, and supported a carbon tax.

He has been wrong enough for long enough that climate scientists are justified in holding Lomborg in low regard.

Former Skeptic said...

Apologies, John, for the following edit:

Check out RPjr's entry on Wikipedia. RPJr. wrote or edited 5 books from 2001 to 2010, all denying that global warming mitigation was effective. In the process RPJr. became a celebrity whose opinions were discussed around the world.
Why? Did RPJr. have detailed knowledge of global warming?
No. Plenty of powerful forces in the media wanted someone to voice the opinions that RPJr. did.
Then in 2010, RPJr. reversed field, at least in part, and supported a carbon tax.

He has been wrong enough for long enough that climate scientists are justified in holding RPJr. in low regard.


Lomborg and RPJr. - separated at birth?