Date published: 2006/03/14
The BBC says:
Controversial plans to close four global warming research centres and cut scores of jobs have won approval.
The Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH) sites at Dorset, Oxford, Monk's Wood in Cambridgeshire and Banchory, in Aberdeenshire, will shut.
Managers at the Natural Environment Research Council say they will cut 160 jobs instead of the 200 proposed.
Union Prospect said the decision was "tantamount to disarming the UK in the battle against global warming".
Staff at the centre - which offers independent advice on a range of environmental issues, including climate change - will now be based at four sites at Bangor, Edinburgh, Lancaster and Wallingford, Oxfordshire.
Its headquarters will move from Swindon to Wallingford.
A spokesman said the restructuring was essential "if the long-term scientific and financial sustainability of the CEH is to be secured".
Well this certainly looks to be crazy. Of course everyone and anyone who has anything to do with the environment these days claims to be working on "global warming", since that is supposed to make them protected against such cuts. (Just like many biochemists claim to be working on things that will help "cure cancer".) But unless the NERC wants to claim the work at these centres is second-rate, the closures do not seem warranted. The UK should be spending more on science, not less.
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