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Australia Cuts 110 Climate Scientist Jobs

101 points by nkurz 11y ago

FreedomToCreate 11y ago
Similar things happened in Canada under the Harper government. When everything is viewed from a monetary gain perspective, a lot of research that has no foreseeable innovation or gain becomes obsolete, but this viewpoint is extremely distorted. Imagine if Einstein had only worked on theories that had foreseeable monetary gain. We would never have the theory of relativity and decades later we would have not had satellites in space.
- dnautics 11y ago
  the government is caught in a bind with basic science. Let's say it puts its money into science with no concrete outcome. How can we be sure that taxpayer money hasn't gone to some 'scientist' that just happened to have political connections instead of scientific qualifications? Or maybe the scientist was an eminent and qualified scientist who frittered away the money on a lark. There's no accountability in basic science, and a lack of accountability is anathema to good governance. Hell, that even happens in non-basic science. How do we expect basic science to be any better? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWbkvCMuU5A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWbkvCMuU5A
  - vkou 11y ago
    There's no basic accountability in the private sector either. Money does not necessarily flow to people who provide social value - if this were the case, a number of extremely scummy, value-destroying industries would not exist.
    - dnautics 11y ago
      yeah, but at least it's not "taxpayer money" (or really printed money, which screws over the poor the hardest)
      - vkou 11y ago
        The poor are already the ones more affected by the predatory industries I'm thinking of. And I'm having a hard time understanding why inflation eating at your savings is harmful... When you are a person who has no savings. Edit: You are quite right in that pensions, entitlements, and the minimal wage needs to keep pace with inflation.
        dnautics 11y ago
        >And I'm having a hard time understanding why inflation eating at your savings is harmful... When you are a person who has no savings. Check your rich person privilege. This should be obvious. If inflation didn't hurt the poor, then why do we have to keep raising the minimum wage?
        svachalek 11y ago
        Very broadly speaking, inflation is a spiral of wages and prices that devalues money itself while leaving the relative value of labor and goods equivalent. In this sort of inflation, the value of saving and the cost of debt are reduced. Many economists view this as encouraging investment and as an overall public good provided the rate is slow enough to inflate everything more or less evenly. Minimum wage is by definition not a market rate, therefore when wages and prices inflate, minimum wage and other fixed benefits are left behind. This is not so much inflation hurting the poor but rather the government choosing to help them less, in a nicely passive "don't blame me" sort of way.
        dnautics 11y ago
        that's not correct. Government is not a passive actor in the inflation game, it is not true that simply through inaction does less to help out the poor. Government takes an active role in creating inflation for several social engineering reasons. The fiscal reason is to pay for government spending above what it takes in in income taxes. The monetary reasons are to lower the strength of the dollar and create competitiveness in international trade and to modulate employment, and the investment reason you state (basically that's a writ large transfer of wealth to the rich). There's also a third reason in that if it doesn't, the current system of fractional reserve lending will collapse catastrophically (but that's complicated) http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/the-case-for-higher-inflation/ http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/the-case-for-hig... "It’s really, really hard to cut nominal wages. Yet when you have very low inflation, getting relative wages right would require that a significant number of workers take wage cuts. So having a somewhat higher inflation rate would lead to lower unemployment, not just temporarily, but on a sustained basis." Parse that really carefully and read between the lines. The policy reason for inflation is to cheat wage earners and laborers out of the real value of their earning (out the gate, not as saved in a bank) in order to bolster employment numbers.
  - lutorm 11y ago
    Science has a concrete outcome: knowledge. And there are established procedures for evaluating it, things like peer reviews of research proposals. The procedure surely has its flaws, but I doubt they are more significant than the problem of evaluating whether some commercial invention actually was beneficial to society.
    - dnautics 11y ago
      leave basic science to private nonprofits. It's not impossible. Peter Mitchell discovered the chemiosmotic effect (how the mitochondrion worked) using a private nonprofit... Janelia Farms is working on some groundbreaking neuro stuff. Peer review of research proposals. It's seriously one of the most broken 'established procedure' out there. There is not a single scientist out there that doesn't whine about the capriciousness of the grandfunding process, there's even a coined term "grantsmanship" which refers to one's skill in essentially scamming the government into funding what you want to work on by shoehorning it into their call for proposal.
      - lutorm 11y ago
        Proposal funding breakage notwithstanding, are you saying that there is a working procedure for figuring out what "profitable" research should be? (It's not even clear to me what you mean by that, should it be profitable to the government, to a few individuals, or to the nation as a whole?) Personally, I think you've got it completely backwards. I'm confident that we can leave the commercializable science to those wanting to make a buck. Public funding for basic science is the only workable way. Sure, nonprofits help in certain areas, but those are also usually "earmarked" for specific fields or tasks. I don't think society's avenues of exploration should be decided by a few rich people.
        dnautics 11y ago
        You don't know your science history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_D._Mitchell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_D._Mitchell > I don't think society's avenues of exploration should be decided by a few rich people. And having it decided by popular people (politicians), spending other people's money, is any better? Moreover, just because science is privately funded doesn't mean that it's coming from rich people.
  - vacri 11y ago
    The CSIRO is (was) a prestigious institution that had an excellent reputation for producing solid work. It was gutted for political reasons, by a Prime Minister who campaigned on the 'horror' of the opponent party kicking out their chosen PM in his first term... and then being such a bad specimen himself, was kicked out in his first term. With the exclusion of the government propaganda around the time of the gutting of the CSIRO, I've never heard anyone (domestic or foreign) speak of the CSIRO with anything but respect. Accusations of fat-cat scientists feathering their nests doesn't fit.
    - blorgle 11y ago
      Unfortunately the new CEO of CSIRO is a VC, not a scientist. Fits perfectly with the "innovation" hype the Turnbull government is selling. Short termism wins again.
- ken47 11y ago
  If you're familiar with the notion of a greedy algorithm, that is capitalism in practice -- easy to find local optima, but in the case of humanity, very unlikely to find the global optimum.
  - ken47 11y ago
    I'm getting a strong mix of upvotes and downvotes. I understand that achieving a true global optimum is likely intractable, so I thought I'd clarify my statement, and hopefully solicit some real responses. The most influential players in capitalism, not in theory, but as it is practiced in the real world today, are measured by their performance during financial quarters, or political terms. Such an incentive structure is not going to encourage long-term optimization.
- Shiva2012 11y ago
  Sigh... sorry but Einstein had nothing to do with putting satellites in space. If anything you're talking about the working of the GPS system and even in that case, the effects of gravity are below the error of the device. (clock drifts dealt with via regular ground synch) The only appreciable effect is the ephemeris calculation which uses relativistic doppler calculations. Unfortunately the difference between normal doppler and relativistic doppler is minuscule at these speeds and are also within error ranges... So ultimately even the GPS argument doesn't hold water.. So... like, go with Jonas Salk who gave away the fortune that was the Polio vaccine. That's a real hero.
  - dnautics 11y ago
    Except Jonas Salk didn't take government money. The money to research the Polio vaccines (salk and sabin) was raised through a private nonprofit called the March of Dimes.
    - Shiva2012 11y ago
      Hmm... good point, but I think it's about valuing the advancement of knowledge over monetary issues that is the heart of the matter right?
  - burkaman 11y ago
    Do you have some source for the claim that relativity doesn't really matter for GPS? If I google "GPS relativity", I get results from several universities, Wikipedia, Stack Exchange, Wired, etc. that all disagree with you. I don't know the science well enough to figure it out myself, but I can't find any trustworthy source that contradicts this idea.
    - jessriedel 11y ago
      See my reply to LeoPanthera. Shiva2012 doesn't claim that GR effects can't be detected using GPS satellites, he's saying they are already corrected in a way that doesn't require understanding GR at all: by regularly re-syncing the clock with ground. In a hypothetical world without GR, this would be a mysterious drift rather than a non-mysterious one, but it wouldn't make GPS any less possible. Do you have a link from any of those prestigious places that says GR is actually necessary for making GPS work?
- fiatjaf 11y ago
  The same old "oh, you don't understand, we are scientists, we need your money because we do things no one want to pay for, but I'm pretty sure they are important!" talk.
- jusben1369 11y ago
  It's interesting you mention Canada. Canada, like Australia, had a wonderful 10 - 15 years selling huge quantities of natural resources to China. Weaker societies, like Brazil, have basically gone off the edge of a financial cliff with the significant retraction in China. Australia and Canada are better prepared but nonetheless I'm not surprised to see hard cost cutting decisions having to be made. Live by the sword....
- lintiness 11y ago
  you don't need a government paycheck to break ground scientifically, and government sure as hell isn't immune to "profit".
- cam_l 11y ago
  You don't need to appeal to Einstein.. Csiro invented WiFi.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
- sundvor 11y ago
  I had exactly the same thoughts. It is a great shame to see what the Turnbull government is doing to Australia's pride and joy of scientific research. The cuts have been going on for some years now under the Liberal government and it is having a devastating effect on staff morale.
  - lukevdp 11y ago
    Turnbull has not cut funding. Turnbull has mostly restored the funding that Abbott cut http://www.itnews.com.au/news/turnbull-to-restore-csiro-funding-shake-up-govt-it-procurement-412721 http://www.itnews.com.au/news/turnbull-to-restore-csiro-fund... This change to CSIRO has nothing to do with Turnbull either, it's a head count neutral internal reorganisation
eugeneionesco 11y ago
Good.
- chris_wot 11y ago
  Why so?
  - daeken 11y ago
    He leaves the same comment on every article that could be taken as negative for the climate change camp. In other words, he's a troll.
    - eugeneionesco 11y ago
      Not a troll, that's my opinion on the issue.
      - dang 11y ago
        Maybe so, but your comment history is so full of unsubstantive comments that it certainly looks like trolling. We eventually ban accounts that do that, so please only post substantive comments from now on.
  - fiatjaf 11y ago
    Why not?
markhall 11y ago
But the debate here [US] looms on...
agentgt 11y ago
I'm curious how many scientist the US has on climate change? I have no perspective on quantity of scientist for climate change (or pretty much any field) ie is 110 a lot or is that normal for country like Australia?
- Roodgorf 11y ago
  At least in the context of Australia's resources this seems pretty significant considering it was 110 of 140 positions just in the one area, apparently with more cuts on the way. A drop to a quarter of research staff on pretty much any project seems like it would make a pretty big impact.
bdamm 11y ago
It sure seems likely that many countries are going to look back on this time with some substantial sense of shame.
- jessaustin 11y ago
  I love this comment because it admits a wide range of contradictory interpretations. That is, we agree, but we probably don't agree.
- pklausler 11y ago
  Only if global civilization survives the looming catastrophe with sufficient records of these times, preferably in a durable medium that doesn't require high-tech devices to decode when the remnant bands of short-lived hunter-gatherers originate their myths of how the gods humbled their coast-dwelling ancestors.
chris_wot 11y ago
Turnbull says he's different from the previous Abbott-led government, but clearly he isn't. That's very sad. I was really hoping Turnbull would be different. As bad as Labor are, the LNP is much, much worse. In fact, they can't even Claudio to be better economic managers: Labor listened to Treasury during the GFC and took action that saved us from a recession and job losses, albeit on the back of a mining boom. This current lot literally started stripping government spending from the economy, right at the tipping point where we are in danger of going into recession. And yet they have increased our national debt - something they crowed they wouldn't do whilst in opposition!
- Gatsky 11y ago
  Sorry mate, but this is an incredibly biased and pretty much useless summary of the last 10 years in Australian politics. Why post this on hacker news?
  - chris_wot 11y ago
    Hardly. You haven't contributed much with your comment. Why don't you refute it? Now that would be substantive, unlike the rather useless non-rebuttal you've just posted. Why post what you just posted on HN? Incidentally, I'm quite allowed to post my biased opinion on HN. I'm not being abusive, but I'm giving my viewpoint. You might not like it, but you can equally give your own biased counterpoint. As for it being useless, what part do you dispute? a. That Labor listened to Treasury and managed to prevent the worst effects of the GFC from hitting Australia? b. The fact that the instant that Abbott got in he and Hockey attempted to start stripping funding in the budget? c. Or perhaps you don't like the fact that our debt level in 2012 was A$233.968 billion and it is now, just over 3 years into a Coalition government, that the national debt is A$405.988 billion? Read it and weep - that's double what the ALP had when they lost power. And the Coalition aren't dealing with the GFC! I seem to recall that certain Coalition members said that the grownups were now leading the country. These are the same people whose first budget was so disastrous - with a leader so dreadful! - that they got rid of a sitting PM even faster than the ALP dumped Rudd! I mean, of all the ironies - Abbott and pretty much every LNP member were positively crowing when Rudd was taken out by Gillard. And they installed Turnbull after only just over 2 years of government and the Treasurer left parliament altogether because he couldn't pass any legislation? A Treasurer, I might point out, who made a valedictory speech that showed such an utter lack of insight into his complete failure in performing this important role that he called his "debt and deficit" and "lifters and leaners" speech one of the greatest speeches to be made in the last several decades. The same guy who literally said that poor people don't drive cars, smoked a cigar openly before one of the harshest budgets in Australia's history and who couldn't even guarantee that he would abolish the GST on tampons, even though he said it on the highest rating political media forums in the country, on our national broadcaster no less! If it wasn't screwing up our country, it would be very funny indeed.
samstave 11y ago
China should hire all of them to help fix their pollution problems
- fiatjaf 11y ago
  If scientists knew how to do anything besides article-publishing and money-asking.
Daishiman 11y ago
Sometimes I wonder if, secretly, a lot of governments just know the numbers and the sheer impossibility of tackling climate change with existing technology and have decided to settle for the near-term human civilization collapse scenario. Google's pretty much done that already.
- buckbova 11y ago
  I don't buy the doomsday scenario. The system will adapt.
  - Daishiman 11y ago
    You don't need to buy anything when the scientific evidence shows quite clearly that the disruptions on the ecosystem are too abrupt for adaptation. There's been a 30% reduction in phytoplankton in the Indian Ocean in the past few decades, an exponential increase in methane emissions from Arctic permafrost, and so on and so forth.
    - jessaustin 11y ago
      Actually one might want to buy lots of subarctic or humid continental real estate. If one believed that this cold land were due to get warmer and more valuable, that is. The advantage in knowing the future is in profiting from coming changes. If buying real estate is impossible for warming enthusiasts, maybe they could lobby governments and organizations to do so instead. If India is destined to lose farmland, maybe it would benefit by owning options on farmland in Siberia?
      - zbyte64 11y ago
        That sounds great until you read Russian laws on the matter: "foreigners may not own agricultural land" Any opportunities you conjure for the poor is already accessible to the wealthy and powerful.
  - mineshaftgap 11y ago
    Anyone that does not believe in absolute doom is a denier. Stupid.
Udik 11y ago
"Because the science is settled there is no need for more basic research, the government says" Allow me to say that this is wonderfully ironic.
- a_bonobo 11y ago
  "We've proven that HIV causes AIDS, now we can fire all these researchers"
lukevdp 11y ago
This is part of a head count neutral reorganisation of CSIRO. The move is away from climate measurement towards "what can we do about climate change?". Here is an interview with the ceo explaining the changes http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2015/s4400695.htm http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2015/s4400695.htm Funding wasn't cut to the organisation, in fact it was mostly restored by Malcolm Turnbull last year after it was gutted earlier by Tony Abbott. http://www.itnews.com.au/news/turnbull-to-restore-csiro-funding-shake-up-govt-it-procurement-412721 http://www.itnews.com.au/news/turnbull-to-restore-csiro-fund...
- Gatsky 11y ago
  Yes, this is an excellent point. This article seems to be scare mongering by scientists with some kind of vested interest in the status quo.
- baylisscg 11y ago
  The issue is that they've eviscerated the groups working understanding and measuring climate change and are shoving them into "make it go away" roles. The CEO of CSIRO basically declared the breadboard prototype production ready and reallocated all the engineers who'd been working on it to sales.
  - lukevdp 11y ago
    He is saying "everyone else is already making breadboards, let's figure out how to cut bread"
    - dogma1138 11y ago
      >He is saying "everyone else is already making breadboards, let's figure out how to cut bread" Hmppf a breadboard is a prototyping board that is used to make basic electronic circuits it's also some times called a plug board basically a board with allot of holes that are interconnected usually on a single axis that you can plug your components to and with additional jumpers/cables complete the circuit. So unless you are trying to make a way to sophisticated pun and imply that they are tackling something way out of the current field of climatology I think that analogy might be wrong.
suprgeek 11y ago
Here is the CSIRO joker aka CEO endorsing water divining ...http://www.skeptics.com.au/2014/12/04/bent-spoon-to-csiro-head/ http://www.skeptics.com.au/2014/12/04/bent-spoon-to-csiro-he... Which such a firm grasp on pushing the "envelope" one wonders what other BS is he peddling.
Cogito 11y ago
I sent this message to my local member: ---- I read today of the plan for the CSIRO to cut 80% of its climate scientists (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/australia-cuts-110-climate-scientist-jobs/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/australia-cuts-110...) Firstly, how does this fit in with the government's vision for managing our climate, and contributing to international climate study? As the premier climate research country in the southern hemisphere this decision not only has ramifications for us but also for the global community. What can we do to ensure the continuance of long running monitoring operations, that provide some of the few sources of high quality and long term data on the climate in the southern hemisphere? The CSIRO has a long history performing fundamental science in tandem with commercialising its work. I am concerned at the current drive towards commercialisation at the expense of fundamental research. I support and understand the needs for commercialisation, as it is a clear driver of useful innovation, however the government is one of the few organisations that can focus on long term research that seeks answers to who we are and what place we have in this universe. How can we ensure that the government continues to invest in long term, fundamental research?
- shermanyo 11y ago
  Thank you for the clear, well articulated post. I forwarded an edited version to my local members too.
flashman 11y ago
Don't worry, the head of CSIRO is "interested in the development of technology that would make it easier for farmers to dowse or divine for water on their properties."[1] That's right, the head of our national scientific organisation is going to solve climate change with metal rods. [1]http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-10-20/nrn-csiro-ceo-water-divining-dowsing/5822472 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-10-20/nrn-csiro-ceo-water-di...
- Gatsky 11y ago
  Did you look through 2 years of CSIRO news to find the least charitable soundbite possible? Also he isn't talking about climate change in that article, he's talking about agriculture.
  - flashman 11y ago
    Maybe farmers have to dowse for water because they're looking at a huge drop in rainfall due to climate change: http://www.vegetableclimate.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/CSIRO-climate-change-predictions.jpg http://www.vegetableclimate.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/C...
shermanyo 11y ago
Yay for Australia, we finished science! /s
harry8 11y ago
http://www.smh.com.au/national/csiro-head-larry-marshall-defends-climate-research-cuts-as-angry-scientists-protest-in-melbourne-20160208-gmo81n.html http://www.smh.com.au/national/csiro-head-larry-marshall-def... The man has a PhD in physics but he believes in water divining. The second of these may have had more to do with qualifying him to head up the CSIRO than the first. http://www.skeptics.com.au/2014/12/04/bent-spoon-to-csiro-head// http://www.skeptics.com.au/2014/12/04/bent-spoon-to-csiro-he... I don't know if this is the right thing, but I'm just going to assume it is 100% wrong based on a bozo who believes in water divining being in charge of Scientific research and having stated he wants water divining researched by real scientists.
perseusprime11 11y ago
Did they ever fix the hole in their ozone layer?
emmelaich 11y ago
The Cape Grim monitoring is not in danger according to the CEO.

101 points by nkurz 11y ago

Similar things happened in Canada under the Harper government. When everything is viewed from a monetary gain perspective, a lot of research that has no foreseeable innovation or gain becomes obsolete, but this viewpoint is extremely distorted. Imagine if Einstein had only worked on theories that had foreseeable monetary gain. We would never have the theory of relativity and decades later we would have not had satellites in space.

dnautics 11y ago
the government is caught in a bind with basic science. Let's say it puts its money into science with no concrete outcome. How can we be sure that taxpayer money hasn't gone to some 'scientist' that just happened to have political connections instead of scientific qualifications? Or maybe the scientist was an eminent and qualified scientist who frittered away the money on a lark. There's no accountability in basic science, and a lack of accountability is anathema to good governance. Hell, that even happens in non-basic science. How do we expect basic science to be any better? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWbkvCMuU5A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWbkvCMuU5A
- vkou 11y ago
  There's no basic accountability in the private sector either. Money does not necessarily flow to people who provide social value - if this were the case, a number of extremely scummy, value-destroying industries would not exist.
  - dnautics 11y ago
    yeah, but at least it's not "taxpayer money" (or really printed money, which screws over the poor the hardest)
    - vkou 11y ago
      The poor are already the ones more affected by the predatory industries I'm thinking of. And I'm having a hard time understanding why inflation eating at your savings is harmful... When you are a person who has no savings. Edit: You are quite right in that pensions, entitlements, and the minimal wage needs to keep pace with inflation.
      - dnautics 11y ago
        >And I'm having a hard time understanding why inflation eating at your savings is harmful... When you are a person who has no savings. Check your rich person privilege. This should be obvious. If inflation didn't hurt the poor, then why do we have to keep raising the minimum wage?
        svachalek 11y ago
        Very broadly speaking, inflation is a spiral of wages and prices that devalues money itself while leaving the relative value of labor and goods equivalent. In this sort of inflation, the value of saving and the cost of debt are reduced. Many economists view this as encouraging investment and as an overall public good provided the rate is slow enough to inflate everything more or less evenly. Minimum wage is by definition not a market rate, therefore when wages and prices inflate, minimum wage and other fixed benefits are left behind. This is not so much inflation hurting the poor but rather the government choosing to help them less, in a nicely passive "don't blame me" sort of way.
        dnautics 11y ago
        that's not correct. Government is not a passive actor in the inflation game, it is not true that simply through inaction does less to help out the poor. Government takes an active role in creating inflation for several social engineering reasons. The fiscal reason is to pay for government spending above what it takes in in income taxes. The monetary reasons are to lower the strength of the dollar and create competitiveness in international trade and to modulate employment, and the investment reason you state (basically that's a writ large transfer of wealth to the rich). There's also a third reason in that if it doesn't, the current system of fractional reserve lending will collapse catastrophically (but that's complicated) http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/the-case-for-higher-inflation/ http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/the-case-for-hig... "It’s really, really hard to cut nominal wages. Yet when you have very low inflation, getting relative wages right would require that a significant number of workers take wage cuts. So having a somewhat higher inflation rate would lead to lower unemployment, not just temporarily, but on a sustained basis." Parse that really carefully and read between the lines. The policy reason for inflation is to cheat wage earners and laborers out of the real value of their earning (out the gate, not as saved in a bank) in order to bolster employment numbers.
- lutorm 11y ago
  Science has a concrete outcome: knowledge. And there are established procedures for evaluating it, things like peer reviews of research proposals. The procedure surely has its flaws, but I doubt they are more significant than the problem of evaluating whether some commercial invention actually was beneficial to society.
  - dnautics 11y ago
    leave basic science to private nonprofits. It's not impossible. Peter Mitchell discovered the chemiosmotic effect (how the mitochondrion worked) using a private nonprofit... Janelia Farms is working on some groundbreaking neuro stuff. Peer review of research proposals. It's seriously one of the most broken 'established procedure' out there. There is not a single scientist out there that doesn't whine about the capriciousness of the grandfunding process, there's even a coined term "grantsmanship" which refers to one's skill in essentially scamming the government into funding what you want to work on by shoehorning it into their call for proposal.
    - lutorm 11y ago
      Proposal funding breakage notwithstanding, are you saying that there is a working procedure for figuring out what "profitable" research should be? (It's not even clear to me what you mean by that, should it be profitable to the government, to a few individuals, or to the nation as a whole?) Personally, I think you've got it completely backwards. I'm confident that we can leave the commercializable science to those wanting to make a buck. Public funding for basic science is the only workable way. Sure, nonprofits help in certain areas, but those are also usually "earmarked" for specific fields or tasks. I don't think society's avenues of exploration should be decided by a few rich people.
      - dnautics 11y ago
        You don't know your science history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_D._Mitchell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_D._Mitchell > I don't think society's avenues of exploration should be decided by a few rich people. And having it decided by popular people (politicians), spending other people's money, is any better? Moreover, just because science is privately funded doesn't mean that it's coming from rich people.
- vacri 11y ago
  The CSIRO is (was) a prestigious institution that had an excellent reputation for producing solid work. It was gutted for political reasons, by a Prime Minister who campaigned on the 'horror' of the opponent party kicking out their chosen PM in his first term... and then being such a bad specimen himself, was kicked out in his first term. With the exclusion of the government propaganda around the time of the gutting of the CSIRO, I've never heard anyone (domestic or foreign) speak of the CSIRO with anything but respect. Accusations of fat-cat scientists feathering their nests doesn't fit.
  - blorgle 11y ago
    Unfortunately the new CEO of CSIRO is a VC, not a scientist. Fits perfectly with the "innovation" hype the Turnbull government is selling. Short termism wins again.
ken47 11y ago
If you're familiar with the notion of a greedy algorithm, that is capitalism in practice -- easy to find local optima, but in the case of humanity, very unlikely to find the global optimum.
- ken47 11y ago
  I'm getting a strong mix of upvotes and downvotes. I understand that achieving a true global optimum is likely intractable, so I thought I'd clarify my statement, and hopefully solicit some real responses. The most influential players in capitalism, not in theory, but as it is practiced in the real world today, are measured by their performance during financial quarters, or political terms. Such an incentive structure is not going to encourage long-term optimization.
Shiva2012 11y ago
Sigh... sorry but Einstein had nothing to do with putting satellites in space. If anything you're talking about the working of the GPS system and even in that case, the effects of gravity are below the error of the device. (clock drifts dealt with via regular ground synch) The only appreciable effect is the ephemeris calculation which uses relativistic doppler calculations. Unfortunately the difference between normal doppler and relativistic doppler is minuscule at these speeds and are also within error ranges... So ultimately even the GPS argument doesn't hold water.. So... like, go with Jonas Salk who gave away the fortune that was the Polio vaccine. That's a real hero.
- dnautics 11y ago
  Except Jonas Salk didn't take government money. The money to research the Polio vaccines (salk and sabin) was raised through a private nonprofit called the March of Dimes.
  - Shiva2012 11y ago
    Hmm... good point, but I think it's about valuing the advancement of knowledge over monetary issues that is the heart of the matter right?
- burkaman 11y ago
  Do you have some source for the claim that relativity doesn't really matter for GPS? If I google "GPS relativity", I get results from several universities, Wikipedia, Stack Exchange, Wired, etc. that all disagree with you. I don't know the science well enough to figure it out myself, but I can't find any trustworthy source that contradicts this idea.
  - jessriedel 11y ago
    See my reply to LeoPanthera. Shiva2012 doesn't claim that GR effects can't be detected using GPS satellites, he's saying they are already corrected in a way that doesn't require understanding GR at all: by regularly re-syncing the clock with ground. In a hypothetical world without GR, this would be a mysterious drift rather than a non-mysterious one, but it wouldn't make GPS any less possible. Do you have a link from any of those prestigious places that says GR is actually necessary for making GPS work?
fiatjaf 11y ago
The same old "oh, you don't understand, we are scientists, we need your money because we do things no one want to pay for, but I'm pretty sure they are important!" talk.
jusben1369 11y ago
It's interesting you mention Canada. Canada, like Australia, had a wonderful 10 - 15 years selling huge quantities of natural resources to China. Weaker societies, like Brazil, have basically gone off the edge of a financial cliff with the significant retraction in China. Australia and Canada are better prepared but nonetheless I'm not surprised to see hard cost cutting decisions having to be made. Live by the sword....
lintiness 11y ago
you don't need a government paycheck to break ground scientifically, and government sure as hell isn't immune to "profit".
cam_l 11y ago
You don't need to appeal to Einstein.. Csiro invented WiFi.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

sundvor 11y ago
I had exactly the same thoughts. It is a great shame to see what the Turnbull government is doing to Australia's pride and joy of scientific research. The cuts have been going on for some years now under the Liberal government and it is having a devastating effect on staff morale.
- lukevdp 11y ago
  Turnbull has not cut funding. Turnbull has mostly restored the funding that Abbott cut http://www.itnews.com.au/news/turnbull-to-restore-csiro-funding-shake-up-govt-it-procurement-412721 http://www.itnews.com.au/news/turnbull-to-restore-csiro-fund... This change to CSIRO has nothing to do with Turnbull either, it's a head count neutral internal reorganisation

eugeneionesco 11y ago

Good.

chris_wot 11y ago
Why so?
- daeken 11y ago
  He leaves the same comment on every article that could be taken as negative for the climate change camp. In other words, he's a troll.
  - eugeneionesco 11y ago
    Not a troll, that's my opinion on the issue.
    - dang 11y ago
      Maybe so, but your comment history is so full of unsubstantive comments that it certainly looks like trolling. We eventually ban accounts that do that, so please only post substantive comments from now on.
- fiatjaf 11y ago
  Why not?

markhall 11y ago

But the debate here [US] looms on...

agentgt 11y ago

I'm curious how many scientist the US has on climate change? I have no perspective on quantity of scientist for climate change (or pretty much any field) ie is 110 a lot or is that normal for country like Australia?

Roodgorf 11y ago
At least in the context of Australia's resources this seems pretty significant considering it was 110 of 140 positions just in the one area, apparently with more cuts on the way. A drop to a quarter of research staff on pretty much any project seems like it would make a pretty big impact.

bdamm 11y ago

It sure seems likely that many countries are going to look back on this time with some substantial sense of shame.

jessaustin 11y ago
I love this comment because it admits a wide range of contradictory interpretations. That is, we agree, but we probably don't agree.
pklausler 11y ago
Only if global civilization survives the looming catastrophe with sufficient records of these times, preferably in a durable medium that doesn't require high-tech devices to decode when the remnant bands of short-lived hunter-gatherers originate their myths of how the gods humbled their coast-dwelling ancestors.

chris_wot 11y ago

Turnbull says he's different from the previous Abbott-led government, but clearly he isn't. That's very sad. I was really hoping Turnbull would be different. As bad as Labor are, the LNP is much, much worse. In fact, they can't even Claudio to be better economic managers: Labor listened to Treasury during the GFC and took action that saved us from a recession and job losses, albeit on the back of a mining boom. This current lot literally started stripping government spending from the economy, right at the tipping point where we are in danger of going into recession. And yet they have increased our national debt - something they crowed they wouldn't do whilst in opposition!

Gatsky 11y ago
Sorry mate, but this is an incredibly biased and pretty much useless summary of the last 10 years in Australian politics. Why post this on hacker news?
- chris_wot 11y ago
  Hardly. You haven't contributed much with your comment. Why don't you refute it? Now that would be substantive, unlike the rather useless non-rebuttal you've just posted. Why post what you just posted on HN? Incidentally, I'm quite allowed to post my biased opinion on HN. I'm not being abusive, but I'm giving my viewpoint. You might not like it, but you can equally give your own biased counterpoint. As for it being useless, what part do you dispute? a. That Labor listened to Treasury and managed to prevent the worst effects of the GFC from hitting Australia? b. The fact that the instant that Abbott got in he and Hockey attempted to start stripping funding in the budget? c. Or perhaps you don't like the fact that our debt level in 2012 was A$233.968 billion and it is now, just over 3 years into a Coalition government, that the national debt is A$405.988 billion? Read it and weep - that's double what the ALP had when they lost power. And the Coalition aren't dealing with the GFC! I seem to recall that certain Coalition members said that the grownups were now leading the country. These are the same people whose first budget was so disastrous - with a leader so dreadful! - that they got rid of a sitting PM even faster than the ALP dumped Rudd! I mean, of all the ironies - Abbott and pretty much every LNP member were positively crowing when Rudd was taken out by Gillard. And they installed Turnbull after only just over 2 years of government and the Treasurer left parliament altogether because he couldn't pass any legislation? A Treasurer, I might point out, who made a valedictory speech that showed such an utter lack of insight into his complete failure in performing this important role that he called his "debt and deficit" and "lifters and leaners" speech one of the greatest speeches to be made in the last several decades. The same guy who literally said that poor people don't drive cars, smoked a cigar openly before one of the harshest budgets in Australia's history and who couldn't even guarantee that he would abolish the GST on tampons, even though he said it on the highest rating political media forums in the country, on our national broadcaster no less! If it wasn't screwing up our country, it would be very funny indeed.

samstave 11y ago

China should hire all of them to help fix their pollution problems

fiatjaf 11y ago
If scientists knew how to do anything besides article-publishing and money-asking.

Daishiman 11y ago

Sometimes I wonder if, secretly, a lot of governments just know the numbers and the sheer impossibility of tackling climate change with existing technology and have decided to settle for the near-term human civilization collapse scenario. Google's pretty much done that already.

buckbova 11y ago
I don't buy the doomsday scenario. The system will adapt.
- Daishiman 11y ago
  You don't need to buy anything when the scientific evidence shows quite clearly that the disruptions on the ecosystem are too abrupt for adaptation. There's been a 30% reduction in phytoplankton in the Indian Ocean in the past few decades, an exponential increase in methane emissions from Arctic permafrost, and so on and so forth.
  - jessaustin 11y ago
    Actually one might want to buy lots of subarctic or humid continental real estate. If one believed that this cold land were due to get warmer and more valuable, that is. The advantage in knowing the future is in profiting from coming changes. If buying real estate is impossible for warming enthusiasts, maybe they could lobby governments and organizations to do so instead. If India is destined to lose farmland, maybe it would benefit by owning options on farmland in Siberia?
    - zbyte64 11y ago
      That sounds great until you read Russian laws on the matter: "foreigners may not own agricultural land" Any opportunities you conjure for the poor is already accessible to the wealthy and powerful.
- mineshaftgap 11y ago
  Anyone that does not believe in absolute doom is a denier. Stupid.

Udik 11y ago

"Because the science is settled there is no need for more basic research, the government says" Allow me to say that this is wonderfully ironic.

a_bonobo 11y ago
"We've proven that HIV causes AIDS, now we can fire all these researchers"

lukevdp 11y ago

This is part of a head count neutral reorganisation of CSIRO. The move is away from climate measurement towards "what can we do about climate change?". Here is an interview with the ceo explaining the changes http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2015/s4400695.htm http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2015/s4400695.htm Funding wasn't cut to the organisation, in fact it was mostly restored by Malcolm Turnbull last year after it was gutted earlier by Tony Abbott. http://www.itnews.com.au/news/turnbull-to-restore-csiro-funding-shake-up-govt-it-procurement-412721 http://www.itnews.com.au/news/turnbull-to-restore-csiro-fund...

Gatsky 11y ago
Yes, this is an excellent point. This article seems to be scare mongering by scientists with some kind of vested interest in the status quo.
baylisscg 11y ago
The issue is that they've eviscerated the groups working understanding and measuring climate change and are shoving them into "make it go away" roles. The CEO of CSIRO basically declared the breadboard prototype production ready and reallocated all the engineers who'd been working on it to sales.
- lukevdp 11y ago
  He is saying "everyone else is already making breadboards, let's figure out how to cut bread"
  - dogma1138 11y ago
    >He is saying "everyone else is already making breadboards, let's figure out how to cut bread" Hmppf a breadboard is a prototyping board that is used to make basic electronic circuits it's also some times called a plug board basically a board with allot of holes that are interconnected usually on a single axis that you can plug your components to and with additional jumpers/cables complete the circuit. So unless you are trying to make a way to sophisticated pun and imply that they are tackling something way out of the current field of climatology I think that analogy might be wrong.

suprgeek 11y ago

Here is the CSIRO joker aka CEO endorsing water divining ...http://www.skeptics.com.au/2014/12/04/bent-spoon-to-csiro-head/ http://www.skeptics.com.au/2014/12/04/bent-spoon-to-csiro-he... Which such a firm grasp on pushing the "envelope" one wonders what other BS is he peddling.

Cogito 11y ago

I sent this message to my local member: ---- I read today of the plan for the CSIRO to cut 80% of its climate scientists (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/australia-cuts-110-climate-scientist-jobs/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/australia-cuts-110...) Firstly, how does this fit in with the government's vision for managing our climate, and contributing to international climate study? As the premier climate research country in the southern hemisphere this decision not only has ramifications for us but also for the global community. What can we do to ensure the continuance of long running monitoring operations, that provide some of the few sources of high quality and long term data on the climate in the southern hemisphere? The CSIRO has a long history performing fundamental science in tandem with commercialising its work. I am concerned at the current drive towards commercialisation at the expense of fundamental research. I support and understand the needs for commercialisation, as it is a clear driver of useful innovation, however the government is one of the few organisations that can focus on long term research that seeks answers to who we are and what place we have in this universe. How can we ensure that the government continues to invest in long term, fundamental research?

shermanyo 11y ago
Thank you for the clear, well articulated post. I forwarded an edited version to my local members too.

flashman 11y ago

Don't worry, the head of CSIRO is "interested in the development of technology that would make it easier for farmers to dowse or divine for water on their properties."[1] That's right, the head of our national scientific organisation is going to solve climate change with metal rods. [1]http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-10-20/nrn-csiro-ceo-water-divining-dowsing/5822472 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-10-20/nrn-csiro-ceo-water-di...

Gatsky 11y ago
Did you look through 2 years of CSIRO news to find the least charitable soundbite possible? Also he isn't talking about climate change in that article, he's talking about agriculture.
- flashman 11y ago
  Maybe farmers have to dowse for water because they're looking at a huge drop in rainfall due to climate change: http://www.vegetableclimate.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/CSIRO-climate-change-predictions.jpg http://www.vegetableclimate.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/C...

shermanyo 11y ago

Yay for Australia, we finished science! /s

harry8 11y ago

http://www.smh.com.au/national/csiro-head-larry-marshall-defends-climate-research-cuts-as-angry-scientists-protest-in-melbourne-20160208-gmo81n.html http://www.smh.com.au/national/csiro-head-larry-marshall-def... The man has a PhD in physics but he believes in water divining. The second of these may have had more to do with qualifying him to head up the CSIRO than the first. http://www.skeptics.com.au/2014/12/04/bent-spoon-to-csiro-head// http://www.skeptics.com.au/2014/12/04/bent-spoon-to-csiro-he... I don't know if this is the right thing, but I'm just going to assume it is 100% wrong based on a bozo who believes in water divining being in charge of Scientific research and having stated he wants water divining researched by real scientists.

perseusprime11 11y ago

Did they ever fix the hole in their ozone layer?

emmelaich 11y ago

The Cape Grim monitoring is not in danger according to the CEO.