March for Science: Canberra protest calls for consistency in research funding

Canberra Times
April 22, 2017

More than 1000 people converged on the lawns of Parliament House on Saturday calling for greater awareness and funding for science.   

The Canberra March for Science was one of more than 600 similar protests being held around the world in 54 countries, with marches also happening in Sydney and Melbourne.

The demonstrations, which co-incided with World Earth Day, were held in response to funding cuts to the sector in the United States by President Donald Trump.

Speaking at the rally, ANU professor and climate change expert Will Steffen said support for science funding was now needed more than ever in the face of scepticism about global warming.

"Australia has an important tradition of being a pillar of science in the southern hemisphere," he said.

"Now that is being eroded in support for our own scientists and eroded in pulling back from international science programs."   

Following redundancies at the CSIRO and the abolition of the Climate Commission, Professor Steffen said, for many scientists, the stability of funding was diminishing.

"There is more and more pressure, even in the universities, for immediate outcomes for the research, in other words something that can be translated into some sort of economic benefit," he said.

Among the protesters was Margie Roberts, who is also a member of climate change advocacy group 350.org. She said there was an increasing trend of evidence-based research being rejected.   

"Australia is getting into the same situation like with Trump in America: if you have the loudest voice, your truth comes across," she said.

Barbara Norman, an urban planning professor at the University of Canberra,

said while scientists were often not ones to attend protests regularly, it was important to demonstrate the importance of science.

"Often scientists are behind closed doors in research, and this shows how concerned they really are," she said.

A recent ANU poll of more than 1200 people about science funding showed 67 per cent believed science was best funded by the government rather than private business. Eight-two per cent believed politicians should rely on more expert scientific advice.

Lead researcher Professor Matthew Gray said the poll was a snapshot of Australian attitudes at a time when spending on research and development was falling to around 2.1 per cent of GDP, below the OECD average of 2.4 per cent of GDP.

"The figure for Australia in 2013 was 56.3 per cent compared to an OECD average of 81.1 per cent, and well below the United States (70.6 per cent), Japan (76.1 per cent) and Germany (67.2 per cent).

"The relatively low proportion of Australian R&D being undertaken by the private sector is one of the reasons for successive governments attempting to increase private sector R&D expenditure."

Phffft , who needs science when you have jebus 

whiteknight wrote on Apr 23^rd, 2017 at 7:04am:



Now all they have to do is produce the seminal paper showing the warming is unprecedented.

whiteknight wrote on Apr 23^rd, 2017 at 7:04am:


Show us the evidence of increasing extreme weather. Of all the catastrophes that have been visited upon us that would previously have not occurred.

The sooner we get rid of global warming scientists that print bullsh!t to get government grants and keep their jobs, the better of we'll be.

Real science no problem lets get more grants out there.

The globe is warming JV just like it has in the past, where we have had cooling and warming phases.

You act as though this has never happened before.

But its not because of CO2, natural or manmade.

For a gas to have any significant effect on the atmosphere it must total at least 1% of the atmospheric volume.

CO2 is at the moment 0.04%.......

JM trots out a reconstructed set of anomalies and calls it data, again.

Jovial Monk wrote on Apr 23^rd, 2017 at 1:50pm:


Is that the ground based spectrometry model made in Chile or are you talking about satellites....???

Sources would be good JV.........!!!

Ajax wrote on Apr 23^rd, 2017 at 1:59pm:

Both terrestrial and satellite. NASA has two lots of satellites studying this.

Jovial Monk wrote on Apr 23^rd, 2017 at 2:45pm:


Yes and they have proved you wrong on all your assumptions.

Like for example CO2 is a well mixed gas...LOL...!!!

Jovial Monk wrote on Apr 23^rd, 2017 at 2:56pm:


The pseudo science that is Anthropogenic Global Warming is trying to undo all the affluent lifestyles that real science has given us.

Take away energy and you yourself will probably jump of the nearest bridge.....LOL

There is no science we humans have developed that cannot be put under the microscope for re-interpretation.

So when some scientist  say sit down shut up and trust us because the science isn't up for debate, well what more do I need to say.

When there are people looking to improve on Newton and Einstein.

No science is sacrosanct, especially one that says we have to create a $7 trillion dollar carbon derivatives in order that we may be saved...........

Jovial Monk wrote on Apr 23^rd, 2017 at 3:17pm:


No its not................!!!!

Indeed not.

Newman, for example, closed labs studying tropical diseases, antibiotic resistant bacteria (TB is making a comeback) and so on.

But climate science seems to have borne the brunt of the CSIRO cuts.

Jovial Monk wrote on Apr 23^rd, 2017 at 3:17pm:



Show us the proof. Just like the piece from the garudian this morning.

juliar wrote on Apr 24^th, 2017 at 1:39pm:

The maroon YouLiar showing his ignorance and boneheaded stupidity.

Water vapor and the GHGs especially CO2 work to reduce the window whereby IR radiation can escape to earth. The more CO2 the more water vapor.

There has been no hiatus in AGW at all but trust Very Nice Person Juliar to try and pretend there was one.

MM,

U have excelled yourself with your display of gross ignorance of climatic weather inconsequence. A little "knowledge" is a dangerous thing!!!!

No wonder this farcical fudge of climatic sludge has been removed from site into the rubbish bin.



No Global Warming for 19 years now.






Now to TOTALLY stonker the climatically confused MM with science - but the paw soal won't understand a word of it as it is too hard to comprehend.



As other normal intelligent people can readily see water vapor has by far the most effect on slowing radiiation both to and from the earth - hence a cloudy day is cool.

CO₂ is so small it has a negligible effect.

Now if the old MM wasn't so climatically confused by all that Greenie Propaganda Rubbish he is sucked in by he would be embarrassed at how silly all that rubbish he bungs on makes him look.




Now just to rub it in there has been many climate change cycles over the centuries.

Val,

the difference is these graphs are real and factual and are based on actual real evidence.

Unlike the doctored nonsense "graphs" used by the lying Greenies for fraudulent purposes. Think of the hockey stick total bulldust fraudulent "Graph". Think Mr Flannery paid by Gillard to tell stories.

Anyone for hockey ?

Understand the Greenies get quite a bit of money from their Global Warming SCAM and it is very much in their interest to try to keep their fraud going.

Also understand the local Greenies get funded from similar ratbag groups overseas and it is the local Greenies role to try to keep their Global Warming HOAX going.

Understand the Global warming HOAX was fabricated many years ago in the Club of Rome as a way of fraudulently getting money for the UN.

But, as there has been NO Global Warming for 19 years, the Greenies lies are wearing a bit thin now so that Pres Trump has simply called them bulldust.


100 reasons why climate change is natural
Sunday express

HERE are the 100 reasons, released in a dossier issued by the European Foundation, why climate change is natural and not man-made:
By CHARLOTTE MEREDITH PUBLISHED: 00:00, Tue, Nov 20, 2012
     

1) There is “no real scientific proof” that the current warming is caused by the rise of greenhouse gases from man’s activity.

2) Man-made carbon dioxide emissions throughout human history constitute less than 0.00022 percent of the total naturally emitted from the mantle of the earth during geological history.

3) Warmer periods of the Earth’s history came around 800 years before rises in CO2 levels.

4) After World War II, there was a huge surge in recorded CO2 emissions but global temperatures fell for four decades after 1940.

Now to read the next 96 reasons why Climate Heating is all bulldust go to here

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/146138/100-reasons-why-climate-change-is-natura...

I have said many many times.

The earth has been through many heating and cooling cycles in its life.
But none of these scientists witch doctors  can explain definitivly why., or why this one is any different from all the others.

Our solar system rotates around a galactic centrepoint approx once every 200 million years.
Who is to say what influence the galaxy has on our tiny solar system?

Finally, when a scientist can accurately predict next weeks weather with better than 90% accuracy, Ill believe that they can predict the long term climate.

Of course they will pull out their usual caveat "weather isnt climate"
This is true
Climate is a million times more complex, and if they cant work out weather, they cant work out climate.

They are playing with a tiny amount of data, much of it collected with primitive, inaccurate equipment
Its like trying to calculate the trajectory of a ball with only a milisecons worth of data.

Jovial Monk wrote on Apr 24^th, 2017 at 8:42pm:


First you need something to compare it to. What are you comparing these spectrometry readings to?

Jovial Monk wrote on Apr 24^th, 2017 at 8:42pm:


And then look at the early 20th century records at look at glacier retreat, or look at newspaper reports of tree stumps being revealed by retreating glaciers, Roman mines etc. Then you would see it has happened before.

Jovial Monk wrote on Apr 24^th, 2017 at 8:42pm:



You still haven't pointed us to the paper saying Greenland is suffering NET ice loss. But then again you could look at barley. Grown by the Vikings and now being grown again. So Greenland has cooled and warmed. What is its "normal" temperature?

Jovial Monk wrote on Apr 24^th, 2017 at 8:42pm:



Which basically says it has warmed since 1970. Bushfire season has been early in some of the same period. What it doesn't tell you; bushfire season has occurred early approximately 25% of the time since about 1926, to where the current early bushfire extends to.

Jovial Monk wrote on Apr 24^th, 2017 at 10:00pm:



Please show the peer-reviewed paper that says spectrometry shows GHG's cause the earth to warm.

Ok

Climate science is real......happy

Jovial Monk wrote on Apr 24^th, 2017 at 10:15pm:



And they are way more expensive than steel or aluminium ones.

No argument from me, Emma.