With a whoop and a holler the Guardian reports that Bjorn Lomborg’s climate sceptic think tank is to close. Before anyone tells me, yes I know that “climate sceptic” is not a good description of Lomborg’s opinions. The article itself is more accurate.
It seems the Danish government cut off funding:
… 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.
Good news for the Danish taxpayer, one might think, but I suspect that the stream of kroner diverted away from Lomborg’s think tank is unlikely to be returning their way.
The Guardian commenters, mostly warmists in a much stronger sense than Lomborg, assume that this closure (if it happens) is a benefit for their cause. I doubt that is entirely true. They are living in the world before the internet. In that world, the major weapon in the battle of ideas was the catapult. The difficult bit was throwing your ideas hard enough and far enough. These days, though the loss of a big catapult is still a blow, anyone who cares to fight can find a little catapult and, er, my military metaphor has gone the way of the mangonel, but the new difficult bit is not projection but acceptance. Getting believed. If your problem is that the people are already half inclined to think that your opinion has a little too much of the pravda, the official line about it, the last thing you want to do is have it known that the opposition were silenced by anything other than argument.
The new Danish government will not fund anybody who they don’t agree with, accordingly to Danish politician Mette Gjerskov, who is a member of the ruling Social democratic party.
And no, they money will be spent on other more correct causes, plus the money they will get from all the new taxes, as the sugar tax, a glass of jam will soon cost 44 dkk (4.90£) up from 17 dkk (1.89£). As there is sugar in most foods, we Danish consumers will face massive price increases. I can hardly believe the price increases myself.
Life is sweet and therefore taxed.
Yes, but why should the taxpayer be funding any of these wretched think tanks and the lazy parasites who inhabit them?
Think tanks…what the **** is the point in a think tank?
Think tanks are worthless entities populated by preening ponces who live a life of Riley doing sod all of any worth.
Think tanks are just vanity projects for workshy dilletantes, propagandists and posers. A plague of ebola on all their houses.
Maybe the workshy Lomborg will go and get a proper job now.
The Danish will find reality, but it’ll probably be a case where:
So, inconvenient truths for thee but not for me, eh? Irony rocks.
While I agree with Mendicant Bias that no government should be subsidizing think tanks (and it’s rather naive to believe that any government would long subsidize one which opposed its objectives), I disagree with the rest of his comment. Some think tanks may indeed be “vanity projects for workshy dilletantes, propagandists and posers”, but not all. Some of them (Cato, for example) do exemplary work, and in a world where leftist cant is predominant (in the pronouncements of government apparatchiks, the writings of [subsidized] university professors, the reporting of the mainstream media, even the vapid opinions of celebrities) a counterweight is sorely needed. Think tanks fill that role.