Meet the controversial author who just received millions in education funding from the coalition for a new research centre.

The government has confirmed it will contribute $4 million over four years to set up a think-tank run by prominent Danish "climate policy skeptic" Bjorn Lomborg at the University of Western Australia.

The prominent political scientist is best known for his bestselling 2001 book The Skeptical Environmentalist , in which he argues that the problems of global warming and declining energy resources are overblown.

Lomborg was accused of scientific dishonesty by a group of environmental scientists after its publication, and he was called a "performance artist disguised as an academic" by author Howard Friel, who fact-checked the book.

In 2006, Lomborg established the Copenhagen Consensus Center with funding from the Danish government, but they withdrew funding in 2012, and Lomborg was forced to set up the institute as a non-profit organisation in the United States.

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A spokesperson for education minister Christopher Pyne told The Guardian the government was contributing a third of the total funding to "bring the Copenhagen Consensus Center methodology to Australia".

The newspaper reports the establishment of the Australia Consensus Centre surprised senior staff in the university's business school, who didn't know about it until the announcement this month.

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Mr Lomborg says the centre will "help inform the national and international conversation on setting the most effective priorities."

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