Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The Sydney Morning Herald reports that 350 research jobs are to be cut at the government CSIRO.
Climate science to be gutted as CSIRO swings jobs axe
Fears that some of Australia’s most important climate research institutions will be gutted under a Turnbull government have been realised with deep job cuts for scientists to be announced to staff later today.
Fairfax Media has learnt that as many as 110 positions in the Oceans and Atmosphere division will go, with a similarly sharp reduction in the Land and Water division.
Total job cuts would be about 350 staff over two years, the CSIRO confirmed in an email to staff, with the Data61 and Manufacturing divisions also hit.
The cuts were flagged in November, just a week before the Paris climate summit began, with key divisions told to prepare lists of job cuts or to find new ways to raise revenue.
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“Climate will be all gone, basically,” one senior scientist said before the announcement.
The announcement seems to leave open the possibility that jobs will be retained, if scientists can convince private businesses to fund their research positions. Given intense hostility and accusations of bias directed towards some climate scientists who accept funding from private sources, it remains to be seen whether any CSIRO climate scientists will pursue this option.
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About ‘bloody’ time!
This make sence. Since the science is settled, what’s to study?
Spot on, Trebla! But I’ll wager that not one of the MSM journos will make a similar comment.
…. not to mention the fact that they came up with the solution for everything in Paris.
This has to be the stupidest
comment ive ever seen at
this blog site.
li = 51?
phil is in California. They struggle with / (slashes), making /sarc practically unviable in such an atmosphere . . .
Auto – yeah, OK – /Sarc.
makes sense
Hope they draw the Akademik Shokalskiy tab out of their budget before it all disapppears…
I can’t put this news in context. Is this cut in CSIRO budgets aimed specifically at the climate establishment or is there general cost cutting in Australian Govt positions as income from primary resources-such as coal- diminishes, due to lack of demand from places like China?
tonyb
@climatereason: The overall budget of CSIRO was cut in the last budget (May 2015). This is an internal reallocation of priorities in response to a smaller budget envelope. The CEO has flagged a shift of resources to things like adaptation and energy efficiency.
Can’t say this is bad news. Maybe it will be cause for some to become whistle blowers in retribution.
Interesting thought.
What if private industry coalitions were to fund both sides equally and present the entire picture to the public? The science could then be practiced unbiased without monetary influence.
Great thought markl. We sure could use a few dozen or more whistleblowers showing how and why the adjustments and homogenizations were done–good case for some legal action against some of the national climate data manglers and conspirators.
Very interesting food for thought indeed Markl. People “go with the flow” when their pay packet depends on their so doing.
Remove the financial incentive to “put up and shut up” and things could get very interesting indeed.
Maybe it will be cause for some to become whistle blowers in retribution.
Could be, you can’t burn a bridge that fell in the river.
Wow! All these job cuts…and they’re directly related to global warming.
It’s worse than we thought.
350 out of 4832 positions. It is a tiny start for Australia.
Next up, USA in about a year…
Hopefully the data and manufacturing departments can find some commercial sponsorship.
Of course the green industry should be able to fund all 200 odd climate scientists since the 3rd way is such a successful business model (along with the subsidies they recieve)
Shouldn’t that read:
Data manufacturing industry.
Wow, I didn’t think they’d actually have the guts to do this. Kudos!
And of course the climate guys from CSIRO won’t seek private partnerships, even though that’s supposedly one of the core tenets of that organisation – partly to ensure that their final research products are relevant and applicable to those sponsors who operate in the real world – doing so would expose their practices and products to the real world. And I doubt private companies would stump up money for products and ‘research’ consistently demonstrated wrong….
I am not sure . It could also mean that the government is the only mouthpiece for “Climate Change” and we know where that goes!
Odd, isn’t it, how people who shell out their own hard-earned coin expect a useful return on their investment?
“Given intense hostility and accusations of bias directed towards some climate scientists who accept funding from private sources, it remains to be seen whether any CSIRO climate scientists will pursue this option.”
I think it’s already been shown that most of these climate scientist will follow the money, wherever that leads them.
Mike, you are assuming, of course, that these “climate scientists” are capable of doing real science. Sans government subsidies, private industry usually requires its research people to really know what they are doing instead of getting by with BS.
Jobs in the fertilizer industry? Spreading fertilizer on the crop fields.
The first climate refugees? Maybe Canada will take them.
Nah, New Zealand
Nah, Tuvalu!
Frau Merkel’s Germany was in the market for refugees a few months ago.
Maybe less so today.
Maybe Moonbeam’s California will pay them megabucks for better adjustments of data . . .
Auto
Our DSIR was gutted years ago. NIWA has about 600 people all up; no way could they absorb all these people.
Well said ALF!
Happy days….
You sure can do your research – just find a sponsor.
Well done, Turnbull. I am amazed that this has happened after the vilification of Tony Abbott, but maybe their policies do not differ as much as we thought!
According to this report (http://www.windaction.org/posts/43612-malcolm-turnbull-refuses-to-back-clean-energy-finance-corporation#.VrLPneat9m1), Malcolm Turnbull “was forced to pledge to retain the current Direct Action climate plan in order to win support from conservative and climate-sceptic colleagues“. My suspicion is that in order to become Prime Minister he was forced to agree to maintain a lot more of Tony Abbott’s policies than just that one – but I have no proof.
The Direct Action Plan is a good one, but for the wrong reasons. It’s the first time since Telstra was privatized, that real environmental rehabilitation was funded and is ongoing. I am about to start the first rehab in the West Kimberley in a long time with Abbott’s Green Army program, a real rehabilitation.effort, http://pindanpost.com/2015/12/31/broomes-green-army-greening-the-kimberley-2/
Now we just need the rest of the Green subsidies to be returned for real environmental practices and not a non-existing global warming agenda.
MJ, I’d trust this sheep in wolf’s clothing about as far as I’d could kick him.
He’s a lawyer,banker, politician and a global warmist. I’m thinking along the lines he agreed to pull his head in till after the election so as not to panic those who voted Abbott in.
He and his sommersaulting amigo in Hunt have already returned funding to windmills and flagged an emissions trading scheme that millions of Australians rejected at the last election.
The headline here was “Turnbul guts CSIRO with 300 job cuts”.
300 out of over 5000 thousand is hardly “gutting” another over populated beureucrecy.
Leigh,
“…. The headline here was “Turnbul guts CSIRO with 300 job cuts”.
300 out of over 5000 thousand is hardly “gutting” another over populated beureucrecy…..”
Is he only eliminating the new comers that may be or are skeptics/realists? I’m not buying ‘moon cheese’ today.
Leigh;
bureaucracy
There’s actually 5,000,000. climate scientists in Australia?
One senior scientist said, “Climate will be gone …”
It wont be warmer, it wont be colder.
It will be gone. No climate at all!!!!!!
A genuine climate denier, then.
That may well be the first one I’ve ever heard of.
tooright
Be careful – they’ll have you in a Zoo – or the IPCC – if you aren’t careful.
Send me all your ID – including credit cards, with PINs – and you disappear up country for a decade or so – you’ll be safe if you avoid using your mobile phone, computers, email, bus passes, bleepers, and almost anything else invented after about 1850.
If you meet Lord Lucan – old geezer in his 80s, with a posh accent – don’t dob him in for the reward – they’ll catch you!
Auto
looking forward to living out your life, on your money.
Mods – Am I in Nigeria? No.
So -/Sarc. Purely for clarification, of course
This would appear to be inevitable.
Once the politicians accept that the ‘science is settled’ on AGW then there is no real reason to study it.
The scientists that promoted this false narrative have been hoisted on their own petard.
What is so sad is that climate changes are not understood.
Typically Fairfax blames ‘denialist dinosaurs’.
What is clear is that the least manipulable way of accessing data is via distance satellite.
Where the data is vulnerable to unrealistic data manipulation, the ground stations will become neglected and closed down.
I note that the Antarctic research vessel is shown in the op ed.
Is this a false flag?
Tragically for Australia, the old joke weather forecast ‘there is no weather today’ may come true.
We may have to rely on the US, Russians, Chinese and French for Australian raw data and analysis.
Perhaps next time funding is less scarce,Australians will study Climate as a science, rather than Models of climate as a science,when the CSIRO department can be re built.
Very perceptive.
From the email sent out by CSIRO’s chief executive Larry Marshall to inform staff
“Our climate models are among the best in the world and our measurements honed those models to prove global climate change. That question has been answered”
http://www.smh.com.au/cqstatic/gmlesz/csirojobcuts.docx
Still a fair waste of money though. Who didn’t realise that the climate changes….?
So they tortured their models until they got the answers they wanted?
“honed those models” … that’s a good joke that one!
thanks for that.
Radio blurb earlier today I heard the same idiotic statement
we have proven climate change…
wtf? almost spat my coffee!
and now we need to find means n tech to adapt.
if the climateconmen can prove they can fiddle figures in the IT dept instead..theyll relocate the jobs
so the overpaid useless gits can keep milking the public purse till retirement age.
So no matter if climate change is right or wrong CSIRO staff are headed to the door. Too bad it’s for the wrong reason – I would rather see them booted for compelling lack of merit in their deliverables.
dp
Exactly what “deliverables” would that be?
What’s wrong with just tossing them for lack of scientific ethics and scaring little kids (and more than a few underpowered adults)?
They thought they’d always have Paris.
It turns out Paris is their Copenhagen/Kyoto/ etc
Wait a minute!
“if [State, i.e. Government employed] scientists can convince private businesses to fund their research positions.
Why should a Government provide a “consultant” with an office, internet connection and telephone (and a toilet [not to forget that a “toilet” can with the right makeshift plumage can become a shower stall … ha ha] down the hall) payed by taxpayer monies?
Got’a lov Auz!
Ha ha
Ahhh, good ol’ Peter Garrett; one time Environment Minister under Rudd’s (first) Labor Government. Lassoed into politics but sort of betrayed his Green credentials. C’est la vie, non?
The Aussie citizen who rarely registered to vote and was never fined apparently.
Being fined for not voting is quite rare. “It is at the discretion of the Divisional Returning Officer for each electorate to determine what is a valid and sufficient reason for not voting.” A friend claimed that his excuse of being hungover on the day was accepted.
It’s probably a very good reason. One needs their faculties about them when voting for who will lead government. It’s not a trivial decision. I would have accepted it too.
“The Pompous Git
February 4, 2016 at 6:12 pm”
Issuing the fine isn’t rare. PAYING it IS rare. No matter, it’s still law. And the law in Aus is an ass.
Dommage.
Now that AGW has been proven by CSIRO scientists it makes sense to instead have them focus on science that will help us adapt to a warmer World where we will have to cope with heatwaves increasing in intensity and frequency and more high fire danger days.
Ha Ha Ha Ha
Can’t they just get a share of all the oil company funding the skeptics get?
With oil at $30 per barrel there isn’t much funding from oil companies around these days for anyone. Most of the people I know in the UK offices of BP are expecting to be laid off and they are useful development engineers.
Why don’t they just create some scare so that governments all agree to cut back oil production thus cutting supply and boosting the price – that will go straight to their bottom line!
@Scottish
Difficult, to say the least. Most of the overage is US fracking and Saudi Arabia and Russia going pedal-to-the-metal on production. Cranking down the North Sea tap won’t do squat.
Has Australia explored its own off-shore shallow waters for oil and gas deposits?
Or is that eco-illogically forbidden due to the Great Barrier Reef “completely encircling” the continent’s political mindset? 8<)
No problem, Canada’s new green dream team leader Justin Trudeau’s liberal government will hire them all +++++ green lunatics. Why not?
Canada sent 383 delegates to the Paris, more than ANY other nation on earth!!!
Including This Loon was also invited :Elizabeth May is an environmentalist, writer, activist, lawyer, leader of the … Hug a Tree Gang. Paid for by our tax money, thanks Justin.
Elizabeth May….and then again Elizabeth May not…it depends which way the wind is blowing !
Nice logo for CSIRO: Australia behind bars.
Well right….it did evolve from a penal colony…
The CSIRO started as a scientific and research body. Look at the tossers now.
The CSIRO was once called CSRO and in 1935 worked with a Brisbane sugar company and the Queensland state govn’t to introduce the cane toad to control pest beetles in cane plantations. At that time the CSRO wanted to import the European toad for another pest problem in other states. And look at what happened. One of the most notorious environmental disasters in the world.
“The CSIRO was once called CSRO and in 1935 worked with a Brisbane sugar company and the Queensland state govn’t to introduce the cane toad to control pest beetles in cane plantations.”
We’ve been through this before. Completely false, including the CSRO bit.
Exactly right Nick Stokes. It started out as CSIR (Council for scientific and industrial research) not CRSO. The “industrial” bit always underpinned their rationale for existence.
As to the cane toad- I have a dog, and live in paralysis tick country. I have picked up ticks in town, parks and suburbs, but never in the canefields. More power to the cane toad!
(I can’t help laughing at an animal that has so few natural enemies that it comes out for a look when I rumble by with the wheelbarrow, instead of ducking for cover.)
Nick I may have got the name wrong, but when I find the link to the history, specifically in 1935 and the cane toad, I will post it. But, apart from the name, what I say is true.
Patrick,
To save you time, you’ve made the same untrue comment, including the CSRO assertion, at least seven times at WUWT. I challenged it here and here, but it seems to have no effect.
I said the CSRO (Or whatever) “worked” with the sugar company and the Queensland govn’t to introduce the cane toad. At the same time wanting to introduce the European toad. I am not making this stuff up! Reginald William was the main instigator.
Wow! Nick, that second link, which was accurate at the time I posted, is now “disappeared”. I wonder why?
Hmm… According to this article
http://theconversation.com/everyone-agreed-cane-toads-would-be-a-winner-for-australia-19881
it was Reg Mungomery, a Queensland government entomologist, who actually brought over the cane toads, but the move was endorsed by CSIR. I don’t see any mention of a Reginald William.
“the move was endorsed by CSIR”
Patrick says baldly:
“The CSIRO was once called CSRO and in 1935 worked with a Brisbane sugar company and the Queensland state govn’t to introduce the cane toad”
The article in the Conversation is written by Turvey, who also wrote a book about it, and seems to have a bee in his bonnet. But he doesn’t claim that CSIR even knew about the plan in advance. His claim of “endorsed” is based on a remark made by Rivett some time later, which he took to indicate approval. I think that remark is quite ambiguous, and he gives no context. But in any case, it is quite false to say that CSIR “worked with” anyone to introduce the Toad.
I can’t find the link for some reason but I am sure I have posted it here on WUWT before and I can’t find it here either.
The link Katherine says: February 4, 2016 at 4:26 pm is the only one I can find. The link to a doncument I posted before is more complete than that link where it lists all those who were involved in the introduction.
“Katherine
February 4, 2016 at 4:26 pm
…it was Reg Mungomery”
Reg W. Mungomery. W for William. In articles I have read he is refer to by both names (Rightly or wrongly).
“Nick Stokes
February 4, 2016 at 7:13 pm
But in any case, it is quite false to say that CSIR “worked with” anyone to introduce the Toad.”
Nick, as usual, you are wrong. When I find that document I will post it for you. The, now, CSIRO were involved in the cane toad fiasco.
Turnbull pumps 10m into rain making http://www.abc.net.au/news/2007-11-20/turnbull-pumps-10m-into-rainmaking-gamble/731004
CSRIO is not the first Govn’t agency to shed eomlpoyees. ServiceFirst (Albeit a NSW Govn’t agency) made most of it’s employees redundant and outsourced to UniSys.
The following is a trancript of the speech given by Art Raiche at a protest in Canberra against the Labor government’s 23% carbon tax. Rache had served the CSIRO for 35 years, the last 15 as Chief Research Scientist.
Sorry, unable to post URL. Raiche gave the CSIRO a fearsome pasting re politicisation and beauracracy.
This it?https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2011/09/the-fall-of-csiro/
Thanks AB, that’s the one,(this is my third attempt to acknowledge hope it gets thru)
In concession to Green blackmail, the Turnbull government just threw a Billion dollars at the UN cartel of 3rd world questionable characters – to save the earth, of course. Now, to pay for that political fluff, the same government will axe hundreds of Australians who were allegedly working.. to save the earth.
Bolt should love it!
I thought that amount would come from within Australia’s foreign aid budget?
And that it would stay in the ‘Indo-Pacific region’ (ie our near neighbours) to help with adaptation.
The way I remember reading about it a few weeks back, it actually seemed money not completely wasted for a change…
Thanks AB that’s it. Well done. Clive
I believe Bolt has had his program on Channel 10 axed, largely,over his sceptical views on climate change.
Turnbull has announced an election will be held within 6 months. I reckon he will hint at some kind of “proice ohn cahbon” to win swinging voters and appease the green shirts.
Reblogged this on Utopia – you are standing in it! and commented:
I did not realise that there are 350 jobs that one Australian agency alone dependent upon climate science research. There must be thousands of these jobs dependent upon climate alarmism.
Meaning, they weren’t earning their keep before.
“No climate”? Why are so many other ‘scientists’ earning their pay in private business and analyzing historical trends combined with satellite tracking and actually forecasting real weather?
Is it really so hard to us their alleged climate skills to produce products businesses and industry will pay for?
Also, can we suggest some cuts at several Australian Universities? These University quacks are climate trough feeders who are not honestly earning their keep.