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Australia Cuts 110 Climate Scientist Jobs: "The Science is Settled."

Posted by timothy on from the with-or-without-an-apostrophe dept.

An anonymous reader writes: With an ax rather than a scalpel, Australia's federal science agency last week chopped off its climate research arm in a decision that has stunned scientists and left employees dispirited. Why? Because the science is settled, there is no need for more basic research, the government says. No doubt many will experience a case of schadenfreude as they see those who have long claimed "the science is settled" face the inevitable and logical consequence of that stance.

8 of 568 comments (clear)

  1. The basic question is answered...but still... by sbaker · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sure, we know the answer is "The world is getting hotter and it's all our fault" - but there are still a heck of a lot of questions that need to be answered. "How Fast?" and "Will the extra CO2 help crops or weeds grow faster?" and "What can we do about it?" and "Will such-and-such course of action have enough effect to avoid such-and-such consequences?"

    We need those guys even more than we did before the original question was answered.

    --
    www.sjbaker.org
    1. Re:The basic question is answered...but still... by XXongo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      but there are still a heck of a lot of questions that need to be answered. "How Fast?" and "Will the extra CO2 help crops or weeds grow faster?" and "What can we do about it?" and "Will such-and-such course of action have enough effect to avoid such-and-such consequences?" We need those guys even more than we did before the original question was answered.

      Climate scientists aren't qualified to answer most of those questions; you need to hire economists and agronomists.

      Many of these questions are going to need to start with climate models, to answer things like "what will be the effect at different latitudes, what will be the effect on precipitation, what will be the effect on storms"

    2. Re:The basic question is answered...but still... by Mr+D+from+63 · · Score: 5, Funny

      "what will be the effect at different latitudes, what will be the effect on precipitation, what will be the effect on storms"

      We know already. Just read the headlines we see all the time. Its all going to be catastrophically bad, everywhere, for everyone. Cold snaps will be colder. Dry places will be dryer. Wet places will be wetter. Floods will be bigger. Hot places will be hotter. Shorelines will be underwater. Extinctions will be accelerated. Heck, even earthquakes will be quakier.

    3. Re:The basic question is answered...but still... by PopeRatzo · · Score: 5, Funny

      you need to hire economists

      Absolutely not. Economists are not scientists. They are data-free advocates for a world-view. They're the last people you want around any discussion of solutions to a problem.

      Better to have parapsychologists than economists. At least the parapsychologists have a little bit of rigor in their discipline.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
  2. The science is not settled by mysidia · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Anyone that tells you the science is settled is not a scientist.... they are a politician wanting to shutdown inquiry on an issue and install dogma in its place.

    Science is not dogma, and if someone who is a scientist tells you that "The science is settled"; that is really just their personal opinion on the topic, And it should be taken to assume that the research results they produce might be accidentally (or maliciously) biased to reflect results consistent to the bit of science they would claim to be "settled".

  3. Re:If it's "settled", it ISN'T "science" by NoNonAlphaCharsHere · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sorry, "smoking leads to lung disease" isn't dismissable as religion, and simply denying it isn't 'skepticism'. The current crop of oil-company-shill climate denialists are no different than the tobacco company liars of a generation ago.

  4. Ignore the hype, pay attention to the science by XXongo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    No one in climate science is interested in answering those questions. It's all "X is caused by global climate change", where X can be literally anything,

    If you read what actual climate scientists say, and not the hype in the press, they in fact don't say "It's all "X is caused by global climate change", where X can be literally anything," Over and over, they say things like, no particular storm can be attributed to global warming-- it's a long term global effect. Over and over and over. But the press likes disaster stories. They'll keep looking until they can find a way to write the story that makes it a disaster story, and bury the "other scientists caution that there's not enough data to attribute X to climate change" on page 2.

    with pictures of polar bears in the background.

    I've read a lot of papers by climate scientists, and never seen one with "pictures of polar bears in the background." I think I can safely say that if what you're reading has pictures of polar bears in the background, you're reading the popular press, and not a scientific paper. Even the paper (one paper-- count it, one) that talked about dead polar bears in the arctic didn't have pictures of polar bears in the background.

  5. Predictions, so far, have been accurate by XXongo · · Score: 5, Informative

    It would help if any of the climate models demonstrated some degree of predictive ability. The difference between model projections and reality have grown to ridiculous proportions.

    Let's look at that. The very first numerical greenhouse effect model was Manabe and Wetherald 1967-- That's the classic, the model from which pretty much all current climate models stem. Since the paper was submitted in 1966, that's 50 years ago-- definitely long enough to see how well the prediction worked. They predicted that the climate sensitivity to CO2 (assuming constant relative humidity) was 2.3C. Comparing that to the actual carbon dioxide, for the rise from 320 ppm to 400 ppm (here) using the Arrhenius relation, we get 0.74C for the temperature rise from 1966 to 2015. The measured temperature rise (here) is 0.7C, with the error bars in the figure 0.1C.

    Looks like not merely a good prediction, but an outstandingly accurate prediction.

    For comparison, the current IPCC 5th Assessment report estimate of sensitivity is that it is the range 1.5C to 4.5C with "high confidence", so Manabe and Wetherald's value of 2.3 is still is the range of current estimates.