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Whatsapp What will happen to climate science in Australia in the wake of funding cuts to the CSIRO?

Australia's premier science organisation is undergoing a major shakeup, and many of its climate scientists are facing the sack. CSIRO CEO Dr Larry Marshall is determined to deliver products that can be commercialised, and climate science isn't one of them. Paddy Manning investigates.

After news broke in February that CSIRO was cutting up to half its climate scientists, 200 angry staff met with the organisation's CEO, Dr Larry Marshall, at the Black Mountain site in Canberra.

The government policy, frankly, determines public good.

In a secret recording of that meeting obtained by Background Briefing, Marshall tells climate scientists CSIRO is now less interested in science for the sake of curiosity.

'It's a fundamental shift away from curiosity-led research toward impact. That's the key,' he said.

The focus now would be on delivering the Prime Minister's innovation and growth agenda, said Marshall. That meant funds once devoted to so-called 'public good science'—such as monitoring and measuring climate change—would be directed elsewhere.

'The government policy, frankly, determines public good,' Marshall proposed to the meeting. 'That's their decision.

'The danger of us deciding what is public good for ourselves; the risk is that we are biased. If I poll the organisation−and I did−each group fundamentally believes that what they do is public good, in the truest, purest sense of the word.'

And according to Dr Marshall there was no mistaking the signal the government was sending: federal funding for climate science programs had been cut. The federal government was CSIRO's most important 'customer', and it no longer wanted what the climate scientists were selling.

'I don't mean to be insensitive,' said Dr Marshall, 'but you have to get real about your customer.'

In the tape, the scientists can be heard groaning and protesting at Marshall's comments. By the end of the meeting half of them had walked out, including the head of the Land and Water Division. One, however, asked Marshall how he could argue—as he appeared to be doing—that the science on climate change was 'done'.

'What I was trying to say was we have proven climate change,' replied Marshall. 'It's real, it's happened, I don't think there is any doubt about that. Not to say the science is done.'

It's talk like this that alarms the science community.

They're worried that if we don't measure and model how our climate is changing, and how and to what degree it is warming and acidifying the oceans, we'll have no chance of adapting.

'I have no argument whatsoever that on-the-ground adaptation is a really critical and important area to pursue,' says University of NSW professor Andy Pitman, a director of the Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science.

'What Dr Marshall misunderstands is that you can't do that without knowing how the climate and climate extremes on time scales from days to decades, how those will change, and what the fingerprint of those changes will be on the systems we care about.

'You will adapt to climate change blind if all you do is build regional scale adaptation strategies without knowing what you're actually adapting to, which is why you need the first part of that—the global climate modelling capability.'

Marshall says he hopes universities will now do the work CSIRO scientists used to. IN a compromise deal brokered by the Chief Scientist, CSIRO will establish a new Climate Research Centre in Hobart, where a minimum of 40 climate scientists will continue to work, while doing 'less of the value-add to the data', in Marshall's words.

For decades, CSIRO's Aspendale Laboratories in Melbourne's south-east held the biggest concentration of Australian scientists studying the atmosphere. It's where ice cores from Antarctica are analysed.

'We're looking at some samples that go back to the last interglacial [period] which is about 120,000 years ago, that's the last warm period we had, just a little bit warmer than we have now' says David Etheridge, the facility's principal research scientist.

'It's used as an analogue of where we might be heading in climate over the next century or so.'

To know where we're heading and adapt to it, climate scientists say this kind of work must continue.

Hear the full investigation on Background Briefing at 8:05am on Sunday. Subscribe to Background Briefing on iTunes, ABC Radio or your favourite podcasting app.