CSIRO scientist on climate: “We don’t know what the heck is waiting for us”

The hysteria continues. Some public servants might get sacked. It’s unthinkable. But after the fuss, there will still be 5200 odd staff at CSIRO. The big evil here, apparently, is that we are choosing between two different sorts of scientists.

The lame arguments flow (especially in The Guardian). Prof Neville Nicolls says we need $90m-dollars-worth-of-climate-scientists to stop us being minnows at the “big table”. Maybe baby-climate-scientists have aspired to eat with the science guru’s, but I don’t think the average Australian has the same dream.

Tony Haymet was the Policy Director at CSIRO — and he thinks it’s like shutting down Australian cricket team (not one for exaggeration eh?). David Karoly — Shane Warne, what’s the difference? He also said, it’s a “kick in the guts” to farmers, fishermen and the navy, which it would be if only the climate models could predict things like rain, currents, and sea ice. Haymet barrells on — “We’ve only seen the beginning of climate change. We don’t know what the heck is waiting for us”.

Try to rationalise the statements “97% of scientists agree” with “we don’t know what the heck…”

If a certain Labor government hadn’t vaporised those scientist’s future salaries on windmills, pink batts, and $800,000-tin-sheds for schools, perhaps we could employ those same scientists now. Did any of these CSIRO geniuses protest at government waste? Did a single one point out that windmills won’t save the Spotted Quoll, or hold back the tide?

To quell the fuss, CSIRO released a statement on the job cuts. Total CSIRO staff levels are 5200 and staying that way. There are 420 staff in Oceans and Atmosphere work, and after the shift there will still be 355.

False Flag at Cape Grimm

One of the pet projects held up as a sacred cow to be sacrificed is the CO2 monitoring station at Cape Grimm. That was the worst thing this apparently anonymous scientist could warn us about in The Guardian:

One example he gave was Cape Grim, in north-west Tasmania, where the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology run an atmospheric monitoring station, one of only three in the world to get “baseline” data from the cleanest possible air.

“We’ve been doing that for 40 years,” he said. “Universities are not doing the carbon budget or the carbon cycle. There are a lot of capabilities that are not in universities that are in CSIRO. Unless they have a new huge injection of funds this capability would be lost. This took us 40 years to build.”

Scaremongering. It was never a target for the chopping block. CSIRO statement:

Cape Grim and RV Investigator are not under threat from these changes. The Cape Grim air pollution monitoring station which is a source of much of our greenhouse gas information will continue to be that source.

I am glad the CSIRO is still collecting the data. The only thing that could be irreplaceably lost right now are good measurements. There will not be another 2016. But the same people who collect the data should not be the ones publishing papers and policies on it and “auditing” it. We don’t allow that with financial records. Why do we think our environment is less important than our tax returns?

If not them, then who? Which other scientists should be sacked…

CSIRO’s Susan Wijffels thinks that when the question is “scientist” the answer is always yes:

“The idea that Australia has to choose between having this information and playing a great role in mitigation [of greenhouse gases emissions] we also strongly disagree with,” Dr Wijffles said.

“We are one of the wealthiest nations in the world. It seems absurd that we have to choose.”

Spoken like a true socialist. Its absurd we can’t spend more on everything all the time.

ABC Rural tells us in the headline that Farmers demand CSIRO not cut its climate scientists.

Which farmers? The total sum number of farmers in the ABC dataset is two. Mr Plant from Queensland says “it’s a tragedy” and Mrs MacDonald from Victoria says climate change was coming “like a freight train.

It’s not clear if the journalist Sarina Locke tried to ask any more. I don’t think the Pastoralists and Graziers would have put it the same way as the only two “representative” farmers that the ABC happened to phone.

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