Of course it makes sense to biff out all the old deadwood involved in climate science after all if the world is going to hell in a hand basket why bother about climate science?
Just get on with start-ups that will make plenty of money for entrepreneurs and keep the good times rolling.
As the temperature creeps up to the level where human (and all other) life is unsustainable, we ( the 1%) can cower in our bunkers and count all our money.
We do not need scientists to tell us how bad it is going to be, we would ignore them anyway.
I am sure that if enough scientist effort is put into it we can probably convert coal into food and water as well as using it to cool the planet down.

Hi Don,

0.8 degrees per century doesn't sound all that much. Is that what all this has been about ?

And surely we should be doing both - measuring, modelling. etc., and devising programs to ameliorate, or take advantage of, any changing conditions ? Well, all three - monitoring, innovating and reducing CO2 in the atmosphere. Massive tree-planting across the North would do at least two of those at once, as well as taking advantage of increased rainfall in the North. Not to mention, lucrative lifelong employment for Aboriginal able-bodied people from the Pilbara to central Queensland.

If I were a farmer, I would be asking what is the CSIRO doing to produce new strains of grains or bananas or paw-paws or whatever, ideally which both produce more crop AND suck CO2 out of the atmosphere; what applied research is the CSIRO doing to improve water quality, or irrigation efficiency, pest control, etc.

In other words, why can't both sorts of work be carried on, monitoring and applied innovation ? As my dear old grandmother would have said, surely we can walk and fart at the same time ?

Cheers,

Joe

well said Loudmouth.
Don you continue to demonstrate why it's good that your no longer on any funding committees.
Google has this wonderful feature that you can see who else is associated with people. Guess what, whenever you do a search on scientist skeptical about global warming, you get the same small bunch of people almost universally aligned to right wing think tanks in the US.
As someone said recently "Quoting John Christy On Climate Change Is Like Quoting Dick Cheney On Iraq". The funniest bit though is their ( Johns and Roys) reluctance to show their working out.

Words fail me about these cuts and Aitkin's response so I will quote from others better qualified:

Andy Pitman from the University of New South Wales:

"What we don’t know is, over Australia, what the detailed pattern of rainfall change will be, how extremes will change, how much cyclones will intensify, how much heatwaves will intensify and a whole range of other things that are precisely what you need to know in order to adapt. And the closing down of Australia’s climate modelling capacity leaves Australia hopelessly exposed to the range of climate impacts we are likely to experience."

Tony Haymet, previously a policy director at the CSIRO and a director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in the US:

"Australian farmers and the fishing industry, the Royal Australian Navy, anyone who lives on the coast and worries about erosion or sea level rise, this is a kick in the guts to them because there are so many stakeholders and users of this CSIRO capability who not only need it now but are going to need it more in the next 30 years."

John Birmingham, columnist Canberra Times:

"They'll be roaring with laughter around the board table at Big Oil as they light themselves another fistful of stogies and wonder whether whether they can afford their own cutbacks to all of the pseudoscientific climate change denier foundations and institutes they've been funding for years."

Enough said

You will note that the email sent out to staff said that they had provided "climate change" existed or had occurred. Of course it had, but what was the change due to?

The problem for the global warming industrial complex that it has spent so long whipping up hysteria on global warming (27 years) and setting five and 10 year deadlines and the like, which are all now in the past, the industry now has to acknowledge that it is too late. If any of the forecasts are actually proven right by the passage of time, then the one option now is adaptation - efforts to cut emissions internationally have simply proved too difficult.

I have taken to ignoring climate change waffle. However, I would like to say that ALL jobs and ALL expenditures connected with the stupid idea that man can do anything about climate change should be cut to nil. The only money or effort put in should be in ADAPTING to climate change.

ttbm -

You can't do the adaptation without the underpinning climate research. Peter Stott of the UK's Met Office was interviewed on ABC's "The World Today" yesterday. Simon Lauder asked:

"The CSIRO says its changes to its employment arrangements are to change the focus from monitoring climate change to adaption instead. Doesn't there come a time when that is what should happen?"

To which Stott replied: "You need to do both. Now this is an international effort on the underpinning science and Australia have been taking a leading role in that international effort.

But you absolutely need to do both, you need to continue to do the underpinning science and then you need to continue to work to inform people and answer peoples questions based on those underpinning science, but applying it to their questions."

Why indeed? And given all maths and equations were settled hundreds of years ago, why do we need any more mathematicians?

The only thing we have far too much of,is largely useless and vastly more costly politicians. And were we able to rationalize this area of endless squabbling, by removing an entirely unnecessary and counterproductive tier, we could pocket around 70 billions PA!

But no, that would impact on too many mates and colleagues, better to get rid of the minds that are working on something actually useful, namely how to ameliorate against climate change, or failing that what's needed to adapt!

And given what has transpired, tantamount to the burning of scientific books by the (if you don't like the science)Nazis?

Are all right wing conservatives so fundamentally obtuse?

Maybe so, otherwise they'd join more progressive entities?

Incidentally, the sun has been in wane mode (cooling) since the mid seventies !(NASA) Meaning, the science is anything but settled?
Rhrosty.

if anyone can't see how ridiculous arrogant man's failed predictions have been in regards to climate change over the last 50 years you are very naive or just plain ignorant. Imagine the billions wasted was spent on picking up rubbish, cleaning oceans and other useful pursuits. Instead because some arrogant charlotans say the 'science'is settled we have groups like getup and other young naive people falling for it. Still I suppose millions are still cashing in on it as it is the biggest 'morale challenge'of the century. Make up issues so you don't have to deal with real ones.

Sorry runner, what "failed projections"? I've been following the issue for three decades now and what they projected were more extreme weather events, higher temperatures and rising sea-levels. We seem to have all three. Or did you miss the news that 2015 was the warmest year on record? Did you not read about the British floods two years ago and again this year? Or Superstorm Sandy?

This is just wonderful. Telling them "Your job is done little man go home and rest". What a laugh now they will have to earn a proper living.
This nonsense will still go on in a lot of other places but Australia with this gold medal effort has shown the way! Lots of other cash strapped countries will say thanks boys and girls and you shut the door on your way out.
Extreme weather has always been with us and as for last year being the hottest ever? They have said that every year for the last ten years.
You blokes have had a serious and wonderful pay day but it is over. In the immortal words of PM Keating "Get a job!"

popnperish
You must indeed being seeing the projections through rose colored glasses. Go back and look at the last IPCC report. It points out that there is no storm trend - or its weak (I forget the exact words). You will find that what you think of as a trend is a trend in storm damage and the result of development along the coast, not changes in storm intensity.

As for rising sea levels where does this bilge come from? If you look at http://sealevel.colorado.edu/ where they track sea levels by satellite, you will see that the increase has been a steady 3.2 mm a year since the early 90s. Over a full century this works out to an unexciting foot (one third of a metre about).

Global warming projections have been uniformly useless over the short term and this is now widely acknowledged.

JBower
They haven't said "This is the hottest year ever" for the past ten years but what they have said is that the ten hottest years, bar one (1997-8), have all been this century. So the trend is clear.

Curmudgeon
Living up to your name as always. At least you're consistent. Sea-level rise? On current rates, yes, 30cm a century (not to be laughed at - the extra 20cm experienced already made Superstorm Sandy a lot more damaging) but with glacier melt speeding up and continued thermal expansion because of rising temperatures, we can anticipate a lot more than 30 cm by 2100. At a Planet Under Pressure conference in London in 2012, they were suggesting 1.2 metres. Others are predicting worse than that though 1.2m will cause enormous damage to food-growing deltas and to major cities like New York and London.

Hi Don, Barnaby Joyce summed this up perfectly a few years back while appearing on Q&A, he said, "as long as we continue to fund research, researchers will continue researching"

Of cause pollies are reluctant to pull funding for fear of increasing the jobless rate, because that can have an adverse effect on elections and, considering being re-elected is their top priority, they don't want to rock the boat, the GST debate is a prime example.

Pollies know that the longer they serve the higher the 'set for life' pension is, Wyatt Roy knows this all too well. I will bet my bottom dollar he is against the GST rise.

Winters in Canberra are cold and those people need to eat!

They are not the type of people who can go out and physically say, plant trees.
They can only sit in an air-conditioned office, write computer simulations and draw charts,
and yes, they can also TALK about planting trees.

Now be honest, all of you: suppose you were paid a hefty salary where your job-description was to prove that monkeys have three legs, wouldn't you do everything you could to prove so? Perhaps you would come out with a theory that their tails are actually another leg, why not?

You really cannot blame them and it would be unfair to sack them, but you can change their job-description to stay home in bed instead.

' You really cannot blame them and it would be unfair to sack them, but you can change their job-description to stay home in bed instead.'

now that is funny Yuyutsu. It would stop them driving their evil cars and heating the planet.

My apologies popnperish I made an error of ten per cent. Your little CSRIO darlings would dream of errors of that accuracy. The money wasted on this nonsense is a world wide disgrace. Now Australia has fixed ours up and shown the way. All the ten bob shills will be be shown the door, bravo!

"The science is settled", is the dumbest statement that the climate scientists have made. If "the science is settled", who needs government employed climate scientists?

So now we are seeing statements from climate scientists that well, gee, maybe the science isn't quite settled. We just don't know. But we have to find out, because it is rooly, rooly important. You need to keep funding our research so that we can find out for sure. And I want to buy a new car. And my kid's private school fees are expensive. But most of all, capitalism is destroying the planet so, just like the ABC, I want to public to keep paying me so that I can use "science" to find reasons why socialism must triumph.

Climate Commissioner Tim Flannery is right. It is time to call out the troops and put Australia under martial law. Keeping our jobs is that important.

How would Don Aitkin know?

Get out of the way and let the CSIRO get on with its work, even if that does occasionally impinge on the right of big polluters to ruin things for now and for later.

If science is no threat to Big Capital, why the slimy attempts to shut it down? Or is the news that science brings too often containing of inconvenient truths as well as great boons.

Some of you want a return to medieval times and certainties, but I abhor your underlying self interested cynicism, dog in the manger malice and greed.

Get your heads out of your pitiful denialist butts.

Well given coal mining is becoming increasingly unprofitable, even though power supply charges have risen 61% since 2008!? And given its principle role in man made climate change? We could do worse than opt for pragmatic and much cheaper localised power supply! Cheaper inasmuch as we will hae eliminate costly transmission losses(11%) as well as vastly more costly distribution losses (64%)

And having localized more reliable and secure supply, allow genuine competition to flourish, along with the industrial renaissance that would create?

Genuine competition will allow the least costly most efficient power delivery to flourish and prosper on merit, rather than massive subsidies!

We need to once again become a nation that makes things rather than one who makes big unprofitable holes in the ground!

If we make things, then ensure they reach their intended customers by the least costly, most efficient means possible,rapid rail and interconnected roll on roll off nuclear powered ferries, we will have achieved at least two things; but only after creating a compelling Leadership example of how to quite massively build an economy, while effectively decarbing it!

Moreover we could pocket the 26+ billion we now spend on fully imported fuel; given we can quite easily achieve total self sufficiency in oil, with very broad scale oil rich algae farming.

Something that uses just one to two percent of the water of traditional irrigation. And arguably the very means at hand to not only save the Murray, but quite massively prosper it and all who depend on it!

Climate change? who cares! Lets just go and make some real money. And set our sights on once again becoming the third wealthiest nation on earth and a creditor one into the bargain.

Eliminate the (coal fired) parasite brigade, gain Full employment, affordable housing and health care the envy of the developed world!
Rhrosty.

Hi Paul,

I love those pea-and-thimble tricks, those definitional slides: "If science is no threat to Big Capital, why the slimy attempts to shut it down?"

Says who, 'science' ? isn't this topic about climate science, which is supposed to be settled ? About climate change ? So you drag in pollution, which I certainly think is a bigger issue, but not quite relevant to the discussion.

And who is saying that 'science' as a whole is being shut down ? Isn't the gist of these new initiatives the notion that, if the science is settled, or settled enough, then let's get on with using science to innovate and devise ways to mitigate the effects of climate change ? i.e. use different scientists with expertise in application, innovation and mitigation ?

And what has Big Capital to do with it ? What makes you think they won't jump into whatever might be a goer, including funding the CSIRO to apply what its scientists have found, in order to innovate and mitigate the effects of climate change, for the eventual benefit of Big Capital ? Why do you think that Big Capital has some sort of vested interest in 'shutting science down' ?

And in what way could science ever be seen to be a threat to Big Capital ? Big Capital makes big bucks out of any scientific break-through, isn't that so ? Vultures they may be, but vultures sitting and waiting for any new ways that science can help to boost their bottom line, isn't that so ? Science is Big Capital's friend, a publicly-funded gift that keeps on giving.

Joe

More time wasting argument.
It does not matter whether global warming is true or not !

Cannot you already see what is happening to oil & coal prices ?
We must leave oil & coal before oil & coal leave us.
The current chaos in oil prices is telling you that peak oil is past
and coal is not all that far behind.

Major oil & coal companies are in a bind. Too much capital investment
needed but it does not generate production that the economy can afford.
Surely it must ring very loud bells when companies like Shell, BT,
Exxon, Total etc etc are sacking tens of thousands and struggling to pay dividends.
Those companies profits have fallen dramatically.
Smaller companies are going bankrupt.
BHP has largely pulled out of oil & gas in the US.
In 2015 the number of US well rigs in use fell from 1600 to 571.
What does THAT tell you about the future ?

This is same problem with politicians, you & they do not have a clue
as to what is going on !
Unless cold fusion is proclaimed tomorrow then we should start building
nuclear power stations to prop up solar & wind tomorrow.

Good article, Don. My experience of the CSIRO in recent years is that many of its staff are undertaking irrelevant research so it certainly is time for the organisation to renew its direction.

Hi Bernie,

Yeah, I had an engineer friend (true !) who was desperately looking for employment, so he took a position with a dairy company who were looking for someone to find ways to compress milk. He worked on the project diligently for six months or so, until his conscience got the better of him.

No, he wouldn't have fitted into the CSIRO by the sound of it.

Cheers,

Joe

Loudmouth, why wouldn't his conscience allow him to continue?

Aidan,

Milk is mostly water. You can't compress water. You can make a living out of trying, but my friend realised very early that, since it was impossible, it was immoral to keep trying, and taking someone's money for pretending to be doing the impossible. Engineers have morals too, you know.

Joe

And it still took him 6 months to figure that out?

Yeah you're right, he probably wouldn't have fit in at CSIRO.

Hi Bugsy,

Well, he did all the modelling first. But GIGO, eventually.

Cheers,

Joe

//You can make a living out of trying, but my friend realised very early that, since it was impossible, it was immoral to keep trying, and taking someone's money for pretending to be doing the impossible.//

What sort of halfwit doesn't know that liquids aren't compressible and hires somebody to do the impossible?

A fool and his money are soon parted. This is why we need more science education.

Toni Lavis - So what do you call someone who knows something is impossible but still takes the money as if they can do it like the CSIRO have been doing for years and years. Not picking on CSIRO they all do this I think that was the point made!

Hi Toni,

"What sort of halfwit doesn't know that liquids aren't compressible and hires somebody to do the impossible?"

Welcome to the world of senior management, Toni. Many scientists have built their careers on it, I'm sure. You just need a white coat and a full pair of lips. Works wonders.

In a convoluted segue: that's worked pretty well in Indigenous affairs too. In the constant quest for a lucratively, white-funded but separate domain, Indigenous leaders in a multitude of organisations have worked tirelessly, if with little observable effort, to simultaneously boost their own careers AND denigrate the sources of their largesse, i.e. the Australian taxpayer and his/her racist ancestry, while having nothing whatever to show for their 'dedication' to their peeople. But it's got their kids through private school and on to uni.

Many non-Indigenous have gone along for the ride, kissed the right orifices, and retired in comfortable circumstances.

Cheers,

Joe

South Africa has its own CSIR, practically the equivalent of the Australian CSIRO and their national-fool character is Mr. Van Der Merwe.

A farmer had their plantation infested by monkeys and all attempts to chase them out failed until he heard that Mr. Van Der Merwe was the world's best pest-control expert. Well, he said, there's nothing to lose, so he called him in.

The farmer watched as Mr. Van Der Merwe went into his plantation.
First he saw Van Der Merwe saying something and all the monkeys started laughing, laughing and laughing.
Next he saw Van Der Merwe saying something and all the monkeys started crying, crying and crying.
Next he saw Van Der Merwe saying something and all the monkeys ran away as fast as they could, never to return.

What did you tell them, asked the farmer?

Well first I introduced myself, replied Van Der Merwe:

"Hi there, I am Mr. Van Der Merwe and I work for the CSIR".

Next I informed them about the poor work conditions and pay.

Finally I told them that I came to seek new recruits.

Loudmouth,

Technically you can compress water. Though liquids are generally regarded as incompressible, that doesn't actually mean it's impossible to compress them; it just means a very large increase in pressure will only correspond with a very small decrease in volume. But compress it enough and it becomes a supercritical fluid.

There is very good reason for compressing milk. Doing so can kill bacteria without affecting the enzymes in the milk as much as pasteurisation does. You can find out a bit more about the process at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascalization

Of course engineers have morals, so I'm surprised that your friend worked on the project for six months if he came to the conclusion he did early on.

_________________________________________________________________________________

JBowyer,

Is there anything CSIRO have been working on that you think they think is impossible? The only candidate I can think of is clean coal.