Tony Thomas writes at Quandrant Online:
My next foray into credentialism involved everyone’s favorite guru, Dr Clive Hamilton AM FRSA.
Dr Clive AM FRSA is an Australian public intellectual, according to his own website and a host of other sources, including his publisher Allen & Unwin.
As a global warming alarmist, he is part of the Weber-barbecue-like tripod of Australian public intellectuals, the other two kettle legs being of course Dr Tim Flannery and Professor Robert Manne. I wondered, re Clive, who ‘public intellectuals’ were. I guess Jean Paul Sartre’s definition, “the moral conscience of their age” seems the best fit. After all, Clive stood for the Greens in 2009 and his “AM” is a clear-cut 2009 honor for his service to the Left on climate-change policy, sustainability and societal trends.
But what’s with that “FRSA”? It looks a bit like that top science gong, “Fellow of the Royal Society” but actually stands for “Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts”, a different UK body. Being an FRSA seems like something special, since it always seems to be tagged to Clive’s profiles.
However, FRSA is a title you can actually buy on-line. About 27,000 people, plus Clive, have done this, the current fee being $A123 as a one-off and $A255 a year.
Last March I put in a test application for an FRSA, for convenience using the name Kim Jong Un, of Pyongyang. The RSA website promised a confirmation within 12 working days.
[h/t Climate Depot]