CSIRO board extends CEO Larry Marshall's contract until mid-2020

CSIRO chairman, David Thodey.

The chairman of the CSIRO has reappointed the science organisation's chief executive officer Larry Marshall for another four years even as the agency reviews the results of a staff survey that produced "uncomfortable" results.

The extension, announced on Friday, adds another six months to the original five-year contract. It now runs until June 30, 2020.

Chairman David Thodey said Dr Marshall's reappointment "underpins our commitment to CSIRO's Strategy 2020" for the organisation to act as "Australia's innovation catalyst".

Dr Marshall had been under sustained pressure as head of the federal government's science organisation during a restructure that started in 2015 that led to the loss of about 300 jobs in the latest round of cuts, according to the Community and Public Sector Union.

Read the story in today’s Melbourne Age - “CSIRO board extends CEO Larry Marshall's contract until mid-2020.”

Many CSIRO climate scientists to lose their jobs

The CSIRO is going ahead with a controversial restructure that will see between a third and a half of its climate scientists lose their jobs.

Just some of the 74 jobs to go from the Oceans and Atmosphere division

CSIRO says it is a response to 70 per cent decline in government funding in past three years

Hardest-hit will be CSIRO's Aspendale laboratories in south-east Melbourne, which were set up after World War II to improve weather forecasting and have since gained an international reputation.

The labs look certain to close as part of the shakeup unveiled earlier in the year by chief executive Larry Marshall.

The CSIRO's staff association estimated 32 jobs would be lost from the Aspendale facility, and some staff have already begun to receive redundancy notices.

The cuts at the Aspendale lab are just some of the 74 jobs that will go from the Oceans and Atmosphere division of CSIRO.

Read the ABC News story - “CSIRO Melbourne climate science labs look certain to close under restructure.”

New Climate Sience Centre should aim high with refresher courses

Australia's Chief Scientist,
Alan Finkel.

When Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull shimmied into office last year, science was one of the key things he took for his own.

Not for him the years of trying to defend whether or not he really, truly believed in climate change and the reasons why it was happening. This was a man who, after all, had already lost the leadership of the Liberal Party once because of his unwavering belief in the issue.

The Coalition's policy of dealing with climate change might not have changed dramatically since Mr Turnbull became prime minister, but at least people knew he genuinely believed it was happening.

And so it was in the best traditions of karma when the man appointed by former prime minister Tony Abbott to head the country's premier scientific research organisation, Larry Marshall, managed to hand Mr Turnbull a headache that has only grown in severity over the past few months.

Read Stephanie Peatling’s story in yesterday’s Sydney Morning Herald and today’s Melbourne Age - “New climate science body should start with refresher courses for Coalition MPs.”

CSIRO Aspendale gas lab in doubt following Hobart decision

The future of the CSIRO gas lap in Aspendale
in doubt following a decision to
open the Hobart Climate Research Centre. 

The future of a major climate change laboratory in Melbourne is in doubt after the national science agency announced it would cut hundreds of jobs and open a smaller global warming research centre in Tasmania.

Scientists believe CSIRO's Aspendale atmospheric research laboratory – home to about 120 staff who do the bulk of the agency's climate modelling, and greenhouse gas and ice core measurement – is expected to close early as the it axes dozens of jobs from its oceans and atmosphere division.

Built in the 1950s, the Aspendale lab had been scheduled to close in about five years, with the expectation its work may be moved to an existing site at Clayton.

But an email to CSIRO staff on Tuesday from chief executive Larry Marshall said the organisation would now focus its climate research at a new centre in Hobart. It will employ 40 scientists.

Read the story by Adam Morton and Peter Hannam in today’s Melbourne Age - “Confusion over future of CSIRO Melbourne lab as climate science moves to Hobart.”

3000 scientists condemn decimation of CSIRO

Almost 3000 scientists from more than 60 countries have condemned Australia’s key government science agency over plans that would “decimate” its climate change research capabilities.

The open letter, delivered to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and his ministers on Thursday evening, warns the cuts would leave the Southern Hemisphere “with no sustainable, world-class climate modelling capability.”

Since news of the cuts at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) emerged last week, leading scientists and institutions from across the world have attacked the plans.

CSIRO chief executive Larry Marshall told staff in an email that the agency wanted to shift the focus of its Oceans and Atmosphere division away from climate change monitoring and modelling because the science of climate change was now “proved.”

Read the Desmogblog story - “Scientists from 60 Countries Condemn Cuts To Vital Climate Research at Australia's CSIRO Agency.”

Considering the risks of CSIRO cuts

Around mid-morning on 4 February the news broke that Larry Marshall, chief executive of CSIRO, was swinging the axe on hundreds of jobs. Unlike previous rounds of redundancies, these are tightly targeted – mostly focusing on climate research capabilities in the Oceans and Atmospheres Division and the Land and Water Division, each of which will lose around one hundred people.

Back before the Coalition came to government, when I was working at CSIRO as a climate projections scientist, the prospect that Tony Abbott might become prime minister was causing widespread unease among scientists and other staff. The fears proved to be justified – the organisation’s headcount was reduced by more than 20 per cent after the change of government. The broader scientific community thought that those cuts took CSIRO’s staffing to rock bottom, but we were wrong. And now it seems likely that the organisation’s climate research capability will altogether starved of fuel.

Read the Inside Story report - “CSIRO and climate: the devil in the detail.”

CSIRO cuts will leave us blind: SBS

Cutting climate science is like throwing out your speedometer while driving at full speed down a road you have never been down before. We know the direction, but we lose our ability to control how fast we are going. So what will be the impact? It doesn’t take an innovative entrepreneur of a start up to figure it out.

Yet late last week Larry Marshall, Chief Executive of the CSIRO sent an email to staff announcing his plan to decimate the CSIRO’s highly revered climate science division. The move is incredibly short-sighted and apparently caught even the CSIRO‘blindsided’.

It seems Abbott climate policies are alive and flourishing in a Turnbull government.

Read the SBS story - “Comment: CSIRO cuts will leave us blind heading into the future.”

CSIRO head Larry Marshall has sought to defend deep cuts

CSIRO head Larry Marshall has sought to defend deep cuts to climate science programs after days of sustained criticism, saying global warming research was "one piece of a much larger puzzle" in solving Australia's biggest challenges.

His defence came as dozens of scientists, including some whose jobs are under threat at CSIRO, rallied in Melbourne, warning the cuts would hurt Australia's ability to address the climate change threat.

In a lengthy statement released on Monday, Dr Marshall said there should be a focus on turning inventions into benefit for society and CSIRO had to weigh up where it could have the greatest impact.

Read the story in today’s Melbourne Age - “CSIRO head Larry Marshall defends climate research cuts asangry scientists protest in Melbourne.”

Larry Marshall puts pen to paper to put the facts straight

CSIRO boss, Dr Larry Marshall,
 putting some facts straight.

Last week CSIRO shared some plans with staff, in the same spirit of openness that we developed our Strategy, plans which included exiting some of our climate work, and it’s important to get some facts straight so I’d like to directly address some of the incorrect reporting by media.

Firstly the overall number of people in CSIRO is projected to be unchanged at the end of a two year period, however up to 350 people may lose their positions as we change the focus of our work program. Some people will be redeployed or reskilled and some will be made redundant and those final figures are not yet determined. CSIRO has a well-established and respectful process when changes are made.  People are advised early, as was done last Thursday, updated as soon as details are available, as is continuing this week, and consulted on how best to implement decisions.

Read this piece by CSIRO Chief Executive, Larry Marshall -“Correcting the Public Record on Changes at CSIRO.”

Failed climate science logic could cost taxpayers $billions - Pitman

Andy Pittman - 'most ill-informed statement
I have ever heard from a senior executive.
 

Speaking to the Sydney Morning Herald yesterday, CSIRO chief executive Larry Marshall offered the following justification for his decision to cut 110 jobs from the agency’s climate science staff:

“We have spent probably a decade trying to answer the question “is the climate changing?” … After [December’s] Paris [climate summit] that question has been answered. The next question now is what do we do about it? The people that were so brilliant at measuring and modelling [climate change], they might not be the right people to figure out how to adapt to it.”

That is among the most ill-informed statements I have ever heard from a senior executive. It will take a little to unpack it and to show that the apparent decision to dramatically downscale CSIRO’s ocean and atmospheric research will cost taxpayers and governments billions of dollars in flawed investments unless, by sheer blind luck, the right guesses are made.

Read the story on The Conversation by the Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science at University of New South Wales in Australia, Andy Pitman - “CSIRO boss’s failed logic over climate science could waste billions in taxes.”

Seriousness of climate change escapes CSIRO overlords

by Robert McLean

The seriousness of climate change and the urgency of better understanding this world-wide social dilemma appear to escape the Turnbull-led coalition government.

Larry Marshall - CSIRO chief executive.

Pleading innocence and arguing government organizations such as the CSIRO are both free and independent to decide on internal infrastructure matters, the science body has strangely fallen into lockstep with the government’s protestations that our future is about profit and growth, and ideology that contradicts what is needed if the world is ever to ease exponential problems manifesting themselves as climate change.
According to the ABC, the CSIRO Staff Association reports that about 1,400 jobs had been lost at the organisation in the past two years.

But scientists became far more optimistic when the Prime Minister launched the National Innovation and Science Agenda in December last year, but that brought with it a $90 million commitment to the CSIRO to support increased commercialisation of research.

So although scientists were somewhat more optimistic, these latest announcements have kept them off-balance.

The ABC understands cuts are expected to be made within the Oceans and Atmosphere and Land and Water divisions and up to 350 positions in the organisation will change.

The organisation will attempt to redeploy as many staff as possible into emerging areas such as data science, but there are likely to be redundancies in the process.

And further, the ABC reports, “The CSIRO's climate science divisions are expected to be pared back as part of a massive shake-up of the organisation.”

CSIRO chief executive Larry Marshall, said the Paris conversation conclusively proved the existence of climate change suggesting changes within the CSIRO would see the organisation move away from measuring and monitoring climate change, to instead focus on how to adapt to it.

The ABC reported that the cuts were expected to be made within the Oceans and Atmosphere and Land and Water divisions and up to 350 positions in the organisation will change.

Commercialization of the CSIRO falls in line with the neoliberal and privatization ideologies of the coalition government, but fails dramatically in simply measuring the extent of climate change, for until we know the dimensions of the dilemma, we know not what to adapt too, how extreme our adaption measures need to be and when and where we should do what.

Recently, I was fortunate enough to sight an email from a CSIRO scientist, written to an uncle, that said:

“As you have read the CSIRO has cowered under government pressure to essentially cease climate research and focus on science which has immediate economic value for the organisation. Unfortunately the business leaders in CSIRO continue to demonstrate their ignorance of the science we do, and seem incapable of pushing back against illogical and incompetent political ideology. I'm sure you will hear much more about this as scientists and concerned public voice their opinions!”

Planned CSIRO staff cuts/changes damn Australia's Paris promises

CSIRO scientist and expert on sea level rise,
John Church, argues the public has been
misled and Australia will miss its Paris
agreed to emission reduction targets.

Australia will break a commitment made at the Paris climate summit less than two months ago if CSIRO goes ahead with its plan to axe its research programs, one of the agency's leading scientists has warned.

John Church, a globally recognised expert on sea level rise and one of CSIRO's most decorated researchers, said organisation chief Larry Marshall had misled the public by claiming there was now less need for climate research because the problem had been "proven".

It came as US scientist James Hansen, sometimes described as the father of climate change awareness, suggested the decision to cut the jobs was wrong.  

Read Adam Morton’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “'Misleading, inaccurate and in breach of Paris': CSIRO scientist criticises cuts.”