The fallout from the new government’s budget is still being seen in Australia, but it is already obvious that climate change is a loser when it comes to funding. Prime Minister Tony Abbott has long been skeptical of global warming and the science behind it, but with his new-found legislative power it seems as though he is looking at making that viewpoint into law. According to critics, there is no longer even the pretence of working towards limiting the effects of climate change as the government works to protect the interests of fossil fuel producers and businesses. Whether or not there is a real connection between big business interest and the new budget, Abbott and his cabinet have taken the axe to climate change research and are poised to fundamentally damage all scientific research in Australia in the process.
The budgetary facts are inescapably grim for researchers and scientists based in renewable energies and research. The funding for all government programs related to climate change is set to shrink at an alarming rate, going from $5.75 billion this year to a scant $500 million in the next four years. Additionally, the Emissions Reduction Fund which is meant to help lower greenhouse gas emissions in Australia is going to be reduced to only $1.14 billion. This was devastating news after Environment Minister Greg Hunt had gone on record promising to provide $2.55 billion to fund the program. Nevertheless, it is not only climate change programs that are feeling the pinch of the Abbott budget. The Commonwealth Science and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), Australia’s national science agency, will have $111 million worth of funding slashed over the next four years, which will affect an uncertain number of programs and a loss of tenth of the CSIRO workforce.
The outlook is bleak from the standpoint of scientists and researchers in Australia, many of whom will probably leave the country in order to find work elsewhere. This represents a loss of a skilled workforce for a country that is already seeing a six percent unemployment rate. Despite harping on the jobless rate, the Abbott government has not provided a solution to getting more people working. Cuts to climate change programs and scientific research are only the tip of the unemployment iceberg. Under this budget, unemployment rates are set to rise to 6.25 percent by June next year. This is worrying news for the hundreds of thousands of Australians currently out of work or who are facing the prospect of unemployment in the wake of the new budget plan.
But it is not only highly educated scientists who may lose their employment after climate change research was axed by the government that is currently running things in Australia. There are thousands of jobs connected to renewable resources that will also be lost due to funding cuts. Thousands of jobs exist in rural areas where renewable energy sources like wind and solar power have a great presence. Wind mills and solar energy outposts have to be built in rural areas that have enough space to accommodate them. People who own the land these are built on also see an income from the renting of their property to the operators of this machinery, an income they will most likely lose should funding be cut so drastically. It looks as though funding for climate change programs is not just an issue of ideology, but a problem of real-world economics.
Some have claimed that the cuts are completely ideologically driven and have nothing to do with principles of budget balance or good governance. Greens party leader Christine Milne called out the prime minister’s oppositional stance to climate change science. She referred to the government’s repeated claims to support emissions reduction and called the budget a repudiation of that, a dropping of the curtain on their real designs on the issue. She went a step further, calling the budget an attempt to “shore up the vested interests of coal-fired generators and the old order of Australia.” Her comment points to the role of the mining industry, which provides six percent of the country’s economy.
There is some good news for climate change funding and the scientific research community that is facing down the barrel of the Abbott government’s budget. Until the budget passes the senate, there will be no changes to funding and organization of the sector. For now, climate change research is safe from getting axed and if the senate does not allow the budget to go through, the jobs that could be lost will still exist in Australia’s renewable energy sector.
Opinion by Lydia Bradbury
Twitter @theAQTweets
Sources:
The Economist
Sydney Morning Herald
ABC
The Australian
ABC
Business Insider
Australian Mining
44 thoughts on “Climate Change Research Axed in Australia”
darn it they will come to the U.S. to try to lie to us some more
Hey this is almost good news. Good news would be if these climate cult crooks had their budgets cut to zero and their jobs terminated for cause.
Hundreds of reputable scientific organizations from around the world and 97% – 98% of all actively publishing climate scientists = cult. Do you believe other branches of science constitute a cult, or just this one in particular?
‘Scientific Organisations’ do not produce Science by OPINION chappy, whilst the 97% ‘statistic’ is itself a fraudulent number only. Notice…
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/that_97_per_cent_claim_four_problems_with_cook_and_obama/
…derived by ‘activist’ types trying to protect their ’cause’.
There is no OBSERVED anthropogenic effect on any pre-existing trend, not on Temperature (by Magnitude or Periodicity) or Sea Level (outright) which were already +ve trends.
What the ‘warmist’ is attempting is to cite these pre-existing trends as being somehow anthropogenic in source, the ‘warmist’ attempts to cite any change as anthropogenic ‘somehow’.
The funding is thus not been to research actual affect that can alter Climate Effect but instead to find that ‘somehow’ of a SUPPOSED anthropogenic effect.
But there is no anthropogenic effect, there is not been an anthropogenic effect and there is no good, honest and rational reason to consider that there could even be now an anthropogenic effect.
The ‘line’ you’d attempt chappy is been attempted now for 30 years (at least) and is still without supportive FACT or then Science but still only political opinions, some even made by ‘scientists’.
The funding is not needed at all, there is no problem and a few hundred million is more than adequate to research actual Climate Effect and those actual affects involved in its production.
I am guessing it will save alit more than that. We could go back into the black by putting that money towards national debt
Have a go Australia. You will save billions by eliminating useless programs studying trying to prove human caused climate change when it doesn’t exist. Wish the U. S. would follow suit. It would probably save $100 billion per year.
James Rust
Based on what information have you concluded that it doesn’t exist?
Chappy, can you identify one change in climate in the last 600 million years that has been caused by CO2. For example 33 million years ago Antarctica glaciated while CO2 doubled from 750 ppm to 1500 ppm hmmm. 28 million years ago Antarctica thawed while CO2 fell from 700ppm to 400 ppm. hmmm again. Then it settled at a steady 300 ppm while Antarctica reglaciated 12 million years ago and then dived into a full ice age 5 to 3 million years ago. Where ever there is any relationship between the two it is always temperature that leads and CO2 follows. So show me one change caused by CO2.
Models are a hypothesis – they are not evidence, and the latest IPCC report tells us that all the models are crap as they do not know whether cloud response is positive of negative. So where is there any evidence that
CO2 drives climate change ?
Good for Australia. Wish the U.S. would stop this fraud.
Global Warming (human caused) is a hoax.
http://sdebeaubien.wordpress.com/2014/03/18/is-climate-change-real/
I don’t see where you link to evidence that debunks 97% of the peer-reviewed research produced worldwide on this topic, but I do see where you link to an opinion piece by a man with a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science, and to a PDF article by the same people who worked with Phillip Morris to claim tobacco isn’t linked to cancer.
Finally, a politician that is working for the Australian people and not the green tyrant lobby. I salute you Mr. Abbott. One note to Lydia Bradbury, I realize this is an “OPINION” piece, but you really should try studying up on economics for your own sake.
A country displaying some sense. I can’t believe it. I wish the Dark Doofus in the White House would come to his senses.
If “The Science is Settled”(tm), then why why waste any more funding on further research?
Oh, you don’t want the gravy-train to end … ?
The science behind the Germ Theory of Disease is also settled, yet we continue to fund research into germs. Why do you suppose that is?
It’s not because we want to keep proving, over and over, that germs exist and that some of them cause diseases. We already know that they do. We continue to fund research because we want to find ways to cure or mitigate their harmful effects on society.
The same is true for climate research.
Bugger ’em! You’re LIVING IT, Mates!!
So they are cutting back on research money for climate change or cutting back money on promoting this lie.
Wait, let me see if I understand. It is governments job to provide money for jobs to keep the unemployment rate down? And the money to do this comes from taxes. So if unemployment rises then government should raise taxes and hire more people. Yet raising taxes will cost jobs. Meaning more unemployment, meaning more government jobs to lower unemployment, meaning more taxes to pay for the jobs. Seems to be a cycle that leads to ruin.
And I thought the science was settled and there was a concensus. What is the continued need for billions in funding on a settled consensus?
Climate research is a minor scientific backwater that scarcely merits the spending of £1 million worldwide every year let alone billions. Global climate is determined by the behaviour of our sun, as Astronomer Royal William Herschel realised more than two centuries ago. However that didn’t provide an excuse for more taxes, more government, more parasites and much self righteous bullying. The behaviour of the sun largely unpredictable. But even if we could predict it we wouldn’t be able to change it. Hence climatology is a gross waste of taxpayers’ hard earned money for anything other religious purposes, which seems to be what it’s for as far as its adherents are concerned.
I find it curious that you are seemingly accepting of one scientific determination yet actively hostile towards another. On what objective basis have you chosen to dismiss the current scientific understanding of our climate in favor of a 200 year old realization that predates widespread knowledge of well established processes such as the greenhouse effect?
Fantastic, I wish our government here in the UK would kick the enviroloons into touch.
I’ll second that. Sadly unlike Australia (now) we don’t have a government in the UK prepared to represent the needs and wishes of the people. Instead we’re saddled with a bunch of cultural marxist eco-fruitloops with their heads as far up their fundaments as it’s possible to imagine.
“The outlook is bleak from the standpoint of scientists and researchers in Australia, many of whom will probably leave the country in order to find work elsewhere.”
I guess here we have the first climate refugees.
If this research is so important then let a google, Microsoft or an Elon Musk fund it and take any profit from what they find. And, it’s pretty funny to hear them play the employment card after all the jobs “green everything” has destroyed.
“The outlook is bleak from the standpoint of scientists and researchers in Australia, many of whom will probably leave the country in order to find work elsewhere.”
Looks as though these would be the first real “climate refugees”. 🙂
Great news. Here’s hoping the UK climate change scaremongering industry sees similar cuts soon.
Now….if only the U.S. leadership could be as bright!
If the ‘science is settled’ then why are they funding any climate research?
I agree, we are constantly told that the “climate scientists” know exactly what is going to happen in a hundred years time so why do we still need them. I wish the rest of us Scientists were that clever.
This is great news and I don’t even like Abbott or the Liberal party.
If Australia’s climate scientists do go abroad to find work then that fine nation will come to regard them as their greatest ever export. Australia appears to be the only oasis of sanity on this climate change BS obsessed planet.
I would say that distributing 5 billion into the economy instead of spending it on unproductive research etc. by a small minority,will more than compensate for the jobs lost by the “scientists”. Abbot may be quite aware that it is government spending, especially on usless projects, which deflates the economy (and causes unemployment). A further gain may be attained should the “scientists” actually find some productive work, thereby making a positive contribution to the economy.
Agenda 21 and AGW’s intention isto break our economies, good on Tony for recognising this and getting on with doing the right thing.
Milton Friedman’s “Free to Choose” and other publications describe these economic phenomena. Friedman should be compulsary reading for High Schools and Universities.
For an example of what students are being fed nowadays, read my blog at http://thedemiseofchristchurch.com/2013/03/13/are-we-experiencing-a-communist-infiltration-sponsored-by-the-united-nations/
Cheers
Roger
I’m the proud owner of that book signed personally for me by Milton Friedman, don’t wish to boast but in this case – why not?
If they are looking for jobs, there will probably be a few in mining shortly. So even better news. 5 billion to spend on real scientific research AND jobs in mining. Things are looking up in Oz
Since we can’t affect climate anyway, I agree with all of the above…
Excellent news.
The first actual climate refugees.
A hahahahahahahahaha!
Excellent start from the Abbott government. This article is ridiculously alarmist and full of errors. If climate scientists have to go abroad to leech of some other government then so be it. However I suspect they will simply revert to their former disciplines, whatever that was, before they were seduced by the enormous flow of subsidies flowing into a pretty useless area, all funded of course through surcharges on peoples bills, including the low paid, who could ill afford to keep these leeches in the manner they became accustomed to
The greens allowed so many people to burn alive in the Victorian bush fires by flatly refusing fuel reduction in those hills. They had the power in the Victorian senate. You could not move a twig for fear of a serious fine. They are psychopathic and totally unscientific in their religion. The twisted and hateful look of stark political irrelevance after June 30 2014 on Christine Milne’s face on budget night was a time for celebration for millions of Australians.
Good on Mr Abbott, He will go down in history as the man of principle who fought and beat the green doom mongers and climate activists alike. Others will follow his brave lead.
Australia is greening up under the influence of increased CO2. Another FAIL by the thermageddonists.
Sanity at last.
Time and past time. Now if we can just get rid of the green agenda in the U.S.
I pray the Climate alarmists are defunded and have to get a real job.
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