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Greg Hunt orders CSIRO to hire back scientists to study “settled” stuff

 Cut the blob and the blob reforms

Thanks to Prof Peter Ridd for the nice one-liner.

Back in February, the new head of CSIRO, Larry Marshall, agreed that  the “debate was over” and sacked 350 pointless climate researchers who were studying stuff that was already settled. Marshall’s crime was to hire people to solve the climate problem rather than just keep the cheer squad. But the eco-carers were outraged. Seems that a cheer squad is important.

What does this mean? Not much for climate science or skeptics, its only fifteen jobs and $37 million over 10 years. It’s just another line of press releases advertising The Blob. More government waste.

Mr Hunt has announced an extra 15 jobs focusing on climate science, as well as additional support, costing $3.7 million a year. He said it would increase the number of climate researchers from 100 to 115 after the latest round of job cuts is taken into account.

These researchers are being paid to find a crisis, so they will only find the truth if it happens to coincide with a crisis. Imagine the outcry if Hunt had hired 15 full time skeptical scientists for ten years? Imagine what a difference that would make.

What are they afraid of?As usual actual numbers are rubbery. How many were sacked to start with? Some say 350. Some say 275. Some say only half of the job cuts have actually happened.

The CSIRO Staff Association’s Dr Sam Popovski welcomed the announcement… He said more than half of approximately 300 job cuts announced earlier this year have been carried out, including 61 jobs in the oceans and atmosphere division.

Hype is everywhere

15 jobs is not a major U Turn:

New Science Minister Greg Hunt has ordered a major U-turn in the direction of the CSIRO, reviving climate research as a bedrock function just months after the national science agency slashed climate staff and programs.

But the big cuts were not so big either:

When the CSIRO cuts were revealed, it was initially feared that the Oceans and Atmosphere division, which held the bulk of climate scientists, would lose most of its 140 staff.

However, this figure was whittled down to about 35 climate-science jobs across two key research programs. It is understood some voluntary redundancies have already been accepted.

CSIRO is about to become a bigger blob:

He said the CSIRO’s budget would increase by about $100 million over the next three years, and overall staffing levels will increase by more 200 “as opposed to where they were expected to be this year”.

The shame is that we have a science minister who doesn’t know what science is. He’s a “Consensus” Minister.

h/t David Archibald, Willie, Chris, Alistair, Peter Ridd.

 

 

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