ANU now one of world's top 20 universities

gazket said :

rubaiyat said :

Here’s hoping Malcolm means what he says, and the Liberal Party stops trying to burn intellectuals and researchers at the stake for Witchcraft.

Tim Flannery’s water desalination plants are making someone billions of dollars turned off instead of their much needed we have to have them now use of making fresh water for our dried out parched dams.

Seriously this is how you think? Lets do nothing until we absolutely have to do something, by which time we may not be able to fix the problem?

If another drought occurs and the desal plants are turned back on then they will be of use. Just like our enlarged dam. We don’t need it now, but when we do, we won’t be paying a fortune to fix a problem last minute, rather than spending a bit up front to have plans and contingencies in place. Worst case we lose a little bit of money up front. Best case we save a fortune in the future when the infrastructure is needed.

Same goes for the NBN. Lets build a partial solution now, then in 20 years time, we’ll upgrade again, another 20 years we’ll upgrade again. By that time its not my taxes paying for it, so it doesn’t matter if it was cheaper to build it properly in the first place, as long as my taxes didn’t go towards it, by spreading out the costs over generations…..

If I remember correctly, ANU had been previously ranked #16 and only slipped from the top 20 under Young’s Vice Chancellorship. Good to see them trying to get back to where they were – interesting that they were ranked so highly for Arts and Humanities, which has suffered the brunt of budget cuts too.

gazket said :

rubaiyat said :

Here’s hoping Malcolm means what he says, and the Liberal Party stops trying to burn intellectuals and researchers at the stake for Witchcraft.

Tim Flannery’s water desalination plants are making someone billions of dollars turned off instead of their much needed we have to have them now use of making fresh water for our dried out parched dams.

I see someone is reading Andrew Bolt and actually believes what he says.

Or maybe it is the Murdoch press’s perpetual personal attacks on anyone who dares speak up about the by now well established global warming.

https://indifferencegivesyouafright.wordpress.com/2012/08/06/tim-flannery-did-not-say-australias-dams-would-never-fill-again/

They are not Tim Flannery’s water desalination plants, and how quickly you forget the appalling state of our water storage in the last El Niño. Goulburn’s actually dried up and their were photos of Goulburn’s mayor standing on the bare ground behind the dam wall.

The Googong Dam was not much better and we have had to re-engineer the Corin Dam and construct pumping stations to transfer water cross country to fill Googong, at great expense.

Obviously there are many people in charge of our water supplies who don’t have their heads buried in the sand and are protecting our major urban communities from the steady overall decline of our national rainfall. Just as you apply the brakes and take precautions as you enter a blind bend in the road, they did what they had to and in the long run will prove necessary.

The CSIRO has noted that whilst there is an overall trend to lower rainfall, concentrated in the lower SE portion of Australia, the intensity of certain rain events hides that from the public’s perceptions. In other words bigger dumps less often. Unfortunately we want more rain spread more evenly to retain the water, not have it head out to sea or just evaporate.

http://www.csiro.au/en/News/News-releases/2015/New-climate-change-projections-for-Australia

Sadly we are constantly dealing with people who can not listen and can not understand the difference between climate and weather both local and current. The El Niño and La Niña periods are cyclical and oscillate between the western and eastern sides of the Pacific. Currently it is California and South America’s turn to endure extreme drought and forest fires, whilst we get the wet end of the cycle. Our turn will come again and with a vengeance.

It all reminds me of the Irish idiots, Sean asks Paddy to get out and check if his indicators on the car are working. “Are they workin’ Paddy”? “Just a minute Sean! Yes, no, yes, no, yes, no…”

rubaiyat said :

Here’s hoping Malcolm means what he says, and the Liberal Party stops trying to burn intellectuals and researchers at the stake for Witchcraft.

Tim Flannery’s water desalination plants are making someone billions of dollars turned off instead of their much needed we have to have them now use of making fresh water for our dried out parched dams.

Where does CCAE rank on the list? : ]

Here’s hoping Malcolm means what he says, and the Liberal Party stops trying to burn intellectuals and researchers at the stake for Witchcraft.

Amazing and we didn’t need the policy to deregulate Tertiary education after all!