Don't let the consensus get in the way of government money, cash in the paw please ...

The pond these days likes to celebrate social media, and recycle memes and the twitterati, because social media irritates the reptiles so ...

Oh it's a cruel world and it's cruel and foolish to gloat, because we all hit a snake or two on the snakes and ladders of life, but hey, that's the way it goes ... and all we can do is enjoy the ride ...

Speaking of rides, the pond just has time to record the blubbering of a child who took too many turns on the climate science octopus at the showground, and now is irritated  whenever the climate science octopus is mentioned.

The nonagenarian readers out there who have faithfully followed the pond over the years - all none of you - will remember the pond's many faithful transcriptions of Bjørn Lomborg, in house domesticated pet of the reptiles of Oz, creating mischief and railing against deviant climate scientists, year in and year out, and explaining how the planet would be best served doing everything about anything other than the climate, until the pond fell into a sullen kind of disbelief. It was mischief making of the first water, dressed up as honest contrarianism ...

Worse, the reptiles rolled out the gold bar and routinely charged for this wayward presence, even though they were often picking up pieces by Lomborg published for free elsewhere on the internet, and everybody was happy, because Lomborg made a nice variant to the usual sort of tosh scribbled by the Moorices of the world, and Lomborg has never been short of the "look at me, me, me" factor ...

Now it seems, Lomborg is very displeased ...

Actually the pond disregards anything that comes with the fatuous nomenclature of "Consensus", all the more so because denialists routinely rail against the wickedness of the consensus, and Lomborg himself was wont to celebrate the work of the 3%.

And so to the tale of woe ...

Well indeed, it sounds wonderful. The question then is why the Australian government should fund it. Why not head off to the private sector to get backing for these excellent endeavours?

Why not approach Chairman Rupert himself? He's not short of a squillion, and he can recognise that it's nothing to do with climate, because climate science is well known to be a furphy.

Indeed, indeed. No doubt the old bugger is anxious to patch things up with his maker and is ready to listen to a decent Lomborgian pitch.

But meanwhile, while we await the outcome of your proposal, please, do go on ...

So let me get this wrong. The journalist used a draft budget, which was casually and poorly labelled, and it's her fault because she didn't properly fact check, because you can't trust anything that's issued by Western Australian academics ... unless of course she stole it or it fell off the back of a truck.

Oh wait, it had to be prised from their cold, clammy hands:

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. Bjørn Lomborg university funding tied to 'rational conversation' lectures.
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”. Documents previously released showed Lomborg was also required under the deal to conduct a series of seminars and speeches around the country titled “The Australian Rational Conversation”. (Graudian here)

And no one thought at any time in this furtive, dissembling exercise to provide the journalist with an addendum.

Well there you go, that's a new level of academic rigour and journalistic flair, and a covert, half-baked enterprise flinging things together and expecting no one to notice or pay attention to the details ...

And how wrong of David Holmes to actually note a quote that turned up in The Australian which mentioned climate, yet somehow the error is all his ...

Well for those that can be bothered, Holmes has done a bit of Lomborg watching, here in April 2015 as The Bjorn supremacy, and here in July 2015 as Still no consensus for Bjorn Lomborg, the climate change refugee ... and happily there are quite a few other pieces about Lomborg under his name tag at The Conversation here.

Meanwhile, the pond's certainly getting a good feel for the global consensus for accuracy ... so please, do go on with the special pleading and the explanation why Australian taxpayer money should be shovelled down the Lomborgian throat, as opposed to, say, the cash-stripped CSIRO:

Actually what's dispiriting is that a carpet bagger still thinks he can come in and loot the treasury here, a pious hope which reflects less on its critics than it does on the wretch organisation which uses as its title Copenhagen Consensus ...  resulting in all sorts of consensual puns in the coverage, perhaps because the only consensus it seems to produce is that it needs Australian government money, because there aren't any other discernible mug punters in the offing...

Put it another way, if you lie down with reptiles long enough, blathering on about climate science in a way that's music to their ears, you're likely to rise with more than a few of the mites that were lurking amongst the scales ...

UPDATE: It would be remiss of the pond not to include the Bolter's searing denunciation of the warmists to blame from all the fuss, though this sits a trifle oddly with Lomborg's claim he's moved on from climate science controversy and is now doing most excellent and wonderful work:

So it was all the fault of those demented deviant warmists, even though Lomborg apparently pays homage to the warmist faith.

'Nuff said, it's about time to return to a few of those memes which irritate the conservative commentariat so ...

And here's a Pryor, naturally sourced from Twitter, just to make the day complete, unless you happen to be one of the kids: