Today Australian Environment Minister Greg Hunt told assembled Antarctic scientists, that they need to find a way of broadening their funding base – they will have to raise charitable and commercial funding, to supplement funds provided by the government.
According to Greg Hunt;
“Whether it’s in relation to the walrus population, whether it’s in relation to penguins, you can have iconic species which can attract community interest,”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-10-10/more-funding-icebreaker-flagged-in-antarctica-strategy/5804654
Hunt announced that the Australian government is putting up a lot of funding – paying for a new Icebreaker, and several other projects – but not all the funding which was promised by the previous government.
According to Hunt, “Along with the Bureau of Meteorology super computer, the investment will approach $500 million, … that wasn’t funded. The cupboard was bare. The cupboard was empty when we opened the doors and came into Government.”
The new icebreaker could come in handy – next time Chris Turney mounts an expedition to the Antarctic, to measure ice loss (or not) around the site of the 1910 Mawson landing, he will be able to hire a real icebreaker, to ensure his party is not stuck in the global warming.
The Ship of Fools fiasco in Antarctica might have hasd something to do with this:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/02/newsbytes-ship-of-fools-rescued-at-last/
Instead of worrying about ISIS, they have worried about where the Ice Is….plain as the nose on their faces, the account is overdrawn.
Reblogged this on Flying Tiger Comics and commented:
Climate moochers: live within your means like we productive people have to!
No more eiwigen blumnekraftwerk for the climate scammers!
For Greg Hunt, a lightweight dork who needs some geography lessons. My apologies to Walruses who live in the Arctic Circle.
I am a viral immunologist by training, I trained and concentrated on common human viruses and their interactions with human T cell based immunologic control. But I have often thought of what the consequences would be if we cured a wild animal population of its parasites through some pharmacologic intervention. The results would probably end up being cruel as the population would temporarily expand, exhaust (decimate) a finite resource (fish or whatever they eat) and then crash in a famine of horrible starvation by the millions.
Man has big brain that allows us to reshape our environment and through agriculture and animal husbandry expand the food stock available to us to enable a much larger population size than a hunter gathering roots would allow.
We have the robust immunologic system, innate and adaptive, not inspite of, but because of our continued interaction with parasites throughout a co-evolved history. Man is now losing that evolved robust immunologic control system due to technology (antibiotics, vaccines, anti-helmintic drugs, advanced care), and we will become weaker as a result. That is the fate of our technology. That is, if our robots don’t kill us first.
Surely, immunologic advantage is gained by a species as a whole at the expense of individuals within that species.
Antibiotics etc. have not been around long enough to be a discernible factor in natural selection.
The left always demands that the government be completely secular and in no way influenced by religion or spirituality – it seems to me that removing government funding for renewables, green research and climate change theology is exactly what they would be happy to see happen.
I like the idea of removing government financing and allowing the NGO to use donated funds to buy up land for habitat for flora and fauna…no problem with me.
NGOs that are pro abortion or pro life should use donations to fund health clinics that give away birth control supplies and services.
NGOs should support hatcheries and breeding farms to have a fresh supply of endangered species or maybe raise other food sources then releasing them for feeding the life cycle.
How would that work?
To mebbe
“Antibiotics etc. have not been around long enough to be a discernible factor in natural selection.”
Depends on your definition of ‘natural selection’. One would assume that it includes the environment. If the environment includes ‘anti-biotics’ and disinfectants then these antibiotics and disinfectants definitely have been around long emough. Just ask hospitals about “golden staph” and many other horrors.
Every time a housewife kills off 99.90% of the ‘nasty’ bacteria, she leaves 0.10% of the bacteria to survive. These are the ones who may be weakened, but they survive. And so does their offspring, each more likely to survive the next onslaught of whatever disinfectant or anti-biotic is the ‘flavour’ of the month. And in a few generations, (a couple of days at the rate that bacteria replicate) you have produced a new strain of resistant bacteria.
“Woe is me!”
I’d be happy to contribute some money for a proper High Quality version of Australian temperature records. It looks to me that actual warming rates were around half of those claimed, via the ACORN-SAT data, and since the latter was derived from “standard peer-reviewed techniques”, the worldwide implications are big.
Maybe a crowdfunding raise could find enough like-minded people to fund it?
Crowdfunding, after all, isn’t all about raising for-profit funds. It can be to raise funds for anything, according to any criteria, using any financial model by any legal organisational form.
@ur momisugly Lewis @ur momisugly10.02, re: letting your kids play! Thanks, we did the same with ours it works just fine. Did you know they are now trying to ban swings on playgrounds in the US! I am speechless. I am so glad my kids and grand kids are still following yours and our families standards and traditions one of them actually scraped a knee! ( and tackled the sister that did it with the usual results More laughter in the pile of leaves!)
This story should be linked together with the “scared scientists” article from August (link below). Those scared scientists were Aussies who were really scared because their government funding had ceased. Just send money!!! Keep a previously government-funded scientist from being scared! Help mammologist Tim Flannery study all those Antarctic walruses!
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/08/24/newest-scam-donate-money-to-help-alleviate-the-fears-of-scared-scientists/
@Taphomonic, read your comment just after Admad’s vid I wonder what would have happened if the funding ran out right there?
The scientists simply have to choose what pre-defined narrative they are required to find evidence to support……
Our ever changing climate continues to perplex and worry us.
You say
TimTheToolMan
October 11, 2014 at 3:15 pm
Probably not a good thing for science actually. Commercially funded science is more likely to have biased findings.
This is not true as any privately funded science has to be able to counter the accusation that it is biassed so it at least has to stand reasonable scrutiny.
Secondly privately funded science used for projects has to have an infinitely more severe grilling before it is used to justify any expensive project. Peer review is fine for scientific curiosity projects but any real world project based on commercial science has to have real world testing for quality that is several orders of magnitude more severe than any peer reviews.