Eureka Science Prizes 2010

21 August 2010

Now in its 21st year, the Australian Museum's Eureka Science Prizes have been awarded for 2010. Lynne Malcolm reports.

Robyn Williams: Another fixture of National Science Week is of course Eureka Prize night, held on Tuesday. This is Senator Kim Carr, science minister, addressing the guests.

Kim Carr: The Australian Museum has been hosting the Eureka Prizes now for some 21 years. But never during this time has science been challenged in quite the way it is being challenged today, or at least in some quarters. Science is all about the contest of ideas, and all friends of science welcome that contest.

What we are seeing today, however, is not a fair fight. On the one side we have science, with its rigorous procedures and its vast accumulation of empirical evidence. On the other we have a mass of opinion, anecdote, and special pleading, all of it demanding to be treated as is it's the intellectual equivalent of science. Too many people have been willing to appease this demand. Too few are prepared to look humbug in the face and see it for what it is.

And of course, I am thinking here about the climate change debate or what passes for the climate change debate and those who deny it in defiance of the overwhelming evidence. I am thinking about those who malign the scientists who report the evidence. The real danger in these partisan attacks is that they may undermine the legitimacy of all scientific endeavour.

The good news is that few Australians seem interested in joining this backward march to the dark ages. Research by Swinburne University shows most Australians feel strongly that science and technology are continuously improving our quality of life. The same research shows that Australians have a high level of trust in scientists and scientific institutions, including CSIRO and our universities. These are actually considered to be more than twice as trustworthy as the commercial media, to take one example. Yet it is equally clear that the climate change deniers have sown seeds of uncertainty and doubt in people's minds, and there is just no shortage of survey data to bear this out. That's why it is so important that we set about building a community consensus on climate change and the action that's actually needed to address it. It is also why the friends of science must never shy from defending its heritage, its methods and its results.

That doesn't mean we can't question things. We can and we should. What it does mean is that we do not have to pretend the Earth might after all be flat. We do not have to accord superstition and wishful thinking the same status as science. This is much more than fairness requires and much more than reason permits.

What it means is that we have to show the respect for real science and to celebrate its achievements. And that is what our purpose is here this evening. The Eureka Prizes recognise Australian success in scientific research, science communication, and science education. From the two William Braggs, father and son, through to the one and only Elizabeth Blackburn, Australian scientists have distinguished themselves in the most exalted of international company.

The reality is, however, that if we want to win the modern battle against climate change, if we want to win the unending war against disease and hunger and want, we cannot rely on just a handful of heroes. We need a thousand heroes, thousands of thousands of heroes. And we are meeting some of those heroes this evening, and it is an honour to be amongst their company.

 The award for environmental research went to Professor David Lindenmayer

Lynne Malcolm: The award for environmental research went to Professor David Lindenmayer for his 20 years of work on forest biodiversity conservation. Focusing on Victorian ash forests, his research has revealed the incredible capacity these old growth forests have to store carbon.

David Lindenmayer: We've looked at what amount of carbon is actually tied up in native forests, including forests that have had very little human disturbance, either Aboriginal disturbance or white disturbance. And the extraordinary thing that's coming out is that some of those native forests, the wet forests of Victoria, for example, have over 2,000 tonnes of carbon per hectare in the above-ground biomass.

These are astronomical numbers that are far larger than, for example, the IPCC was using as its default value of 90 tonnes. These are far larger than we ever thought was likely to occur in these kinds of forests. So it means that in a carbon economy those forests have massive values in terms of their carbon storage, and so we really need to rethink how we treat those forests. And it may well be that those forests have a very, very important carbon offset role in a country like Australia, which is one of the biggest coal exporters, one of the biggest iron ore exporters anywhere on the planet. The carbon value of those forests may well far exceed the value that we're going to get from something like a pulp mill.

David Lindenmayer
Senior Fellow
Fenner School of Environment and Society
Australian National University Canberra ACT
http://fennerschool.anu.edu.au/people/academics/

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2010/2989087.htm