Canberra Entomologist Dr Philip Spradbery is shocked at the changes in the Black Mountain site and describes the mood among staff as a 'morgue'. Credit:Rohan Thomson "The organisation is in chaos and IT witch-hunts of staff 'leaking' or dissenting are in progress, apparently," the scientist says, speaking on the condition of anonymity. CSIRO chief Larry Marshall, a physics-trained, long-time Silicon Valley entrepreneur, made the abrupt decision to axe staff. Resources saved are to be devoted instead to dealing with climate mitigation – cutting greenhouse gases – and adapting to the inevitable impacts. The argument is that the focus should shift away from climate change research and data collection because the question of global warming has been "settled".

One of the world's three major atmospheric greenhouse gas recording stations at Cape Grim is under threat. However, many scientists argue it's critical to keep watching and measuring. The focus of the media coverage is the cuts to climate science. But scientists say the cuts of land and water science are even more serious and these cuts affect Canberra most. CSIRO was already being criticised for making redundant the bulk of its globally respected optics team, which a US scientist said made a "phenomenal" contribution to the search for gravitational waves. Around the world the backlash against the job cuts is fierce – the international scientific community is aghast that Australia is preparing to abrogate its role as the eyes and ears in the southern hemisphere.

Almost 3000 scientists from nearly 60 nations signed a petition calling on Australia to halt the CSIRO's plans to halve the number of researchers working on climate monitoring and modelling. Australia's ability to assess future risks and plan for climate change adaptation "crucially depends" on maintaining this research capacity, they said. Is it really that bad? Well, consider this: how does a row about a scientific organisation in Australia produce a scathing article in the New York Times? It says Australia's science agency's decision to lay off 350 researchers and shift the organisation's focus to more commercial enterprises threatens the work done at the Cape Grim monitoring station and "climate studies around the world".

This week, as the row over the cuts continued, young scientists from around the country descended on Canberra for the annual Science meets Parliament where they line up meetings with their local backbenchers and then are shocked by the school yard antics of Question Time. As part of the week, Chief Scientist Dr Alan Finkel delivered the Wednesday speech at the National Press Club where he admitted "a lot of effort" was needed to maintain the nation's climate research capacity following the restructure at CSIRO. Fairfax Media went to former heads of CSIRO and other long-serving and retired staff in Canberra to gauge the implications of the cuts. Former CSIRO senior scientist Dr Philip Spradbery says the Black Mountain site is "like a morgue". Spradbery has been practicing science for more than half a century and operated a wasp awareness hotline for the ACT government from his Yarralumla home's laboratory.

The entomologist worked for CSIRO for four decades including 20 years at the Black Mountain site where he witnessed staff morale decline. The cuts targeted high earning senior researchers but appeared to leave administration unscathed, he says. "What's been happening is the really good people were the ones being given the pat on the back and told it's time to go. I've got nothing against the bureaucrats but it seemed to some of us scientists that it would end up with a laboratory full of administrators and not a single scientist, no lab coats at all." He left and established XCS consulting "with all these ex-CSIRO scientists who were being given the boot or invited to leave". Visiting the national insect collection recently, he was struck by the changes at the Black Mountain site.

"The mood – quite honestly, the word I used to describe it to colleagues was, a morgue, not a nice word to use but it was very unpopulated, very few people around. It seemed to lack any vibrancy. In the old days you'd be bumping into people in corridors all the time," he says. "I think it's a function of the number of staff who have gone and the people who remain are few and far between." Hugh Tyndale-Biscoe of Hackett, one of Australia's most famous wildlife scientists, says in CSIRO's first 50 years, its discoveries were worth many times more to Australia than the money invested in it. "Science is about understanding the unknown; business is about exploiting the known," he says. "As a businessman, Larry Marshall thinks we now know sufficient about climate change and CSIRO must redirect its resources towards mitigation. He is wrong.

"It is imperative that CSIRO continue to study what is happening in the Southern Ocean as profound changes begin in the Antarctic ice sheets and glaciers. "These are the great unknowns – even unknown unknowns – that we ignore at our peril. While mitigation is important, it is more the province of politics and law than first order science. "Since the business model for CSIRO has so comprehensively failed, the government should seriously consider restoring the structure that worked so well for so long." Max Whitten, former chief of CSIRO Entomology, says the finest piece of taxonomic detective work ever conducted by the division was to solve the riddle of gum tree scribbles. "Until then it was still a complete enigma for children and their parents ever since Snugglepot and Cuddlepie popularised the scribbles," he says.

"[This is] stupendous science, stupendous outcome, cultural enrichment for the taxpayer by humble scientists finally deciphering nature's message stick!" Nationally-recognised author Clive Hamilton who is based at Charles Sturt University's Canberra campus, says the CSIRO cuts have been noticed around the world and have caused great consternation in the global climate science community. "People have been emailing me asking 'What's going on there? We thought things would change under Prime Minister Turnbull, but they are getting worse'," he told Fairfax Media. "At the Paris climate conference last December the world community united for the first time to get serious about global warming. But Australia is slashing its expertise at the same time as our carbon emission are growing. "It's clear from his email to staff that Larry Marshall doesn't have a clue about climate science – yet he is the chief of this country's premier scientific research body."

Dr Graeme Pearman, chief of atmospheric research at CSIRO for a decade, says climate scientists believe the plan to shift the investment in their research from the physical and dynamical impacts of climate change to adapting to these changes, is "absurd". "Given the state of current scientific knowledge of what to expect globally or regionally with global warming, physical climate research must go hand-in-hand with choices-risk management-policies related to how we respond with emissions reduction efforts and adaptation to change," he says. "But this announcement is consistent with a concerning trend in Australia's investment in science often reflecting the ideological view that all we need to do is to invest in science that is likely to reap economic wealth and somehow the 'good life' will follow. "It also highlights the surreptitious loss of independence of CSIRO and its capacity to set a research portfolio reflective of the wider needs of the Australian community now and in the longer term, independent of the transitory notions of individual CEOs, ministers or governments." Long-term CSIRO watcher Julian Cribb says the latest round of cuts is a tragedy.

He was a journalist at The Australian before working in public affairs at the science organisation. "It's a very hasty decision to cut a whole lot of public good science in favour of science that's really just rats and mice, dollar-funded science, short term, low rent science basically," he says. "Clearly that's what the chief executive of CSIRO wants now is to transform the organisation from being a public good institution which is what its act proclaims it is, into really something that just does panel beating for industry. "The CSIRO has always been an industrial research organisation but it's always had a very strong mission to do public good science and if you think about soil, water and climate, those three things are utterly crucial to Australians inhabiting this continent for the next 1000 years – to cut them out is basically saying, we don't want to understand our own continent." Cribb says the global backlash against the cuts is because Australia is the eyes in the southern hemisphere of the international scientific community.

"Of all the countries in the southern hemisphere, we are the one who has the skills, the equipment and the experience to measure, understand and monitor what's going on with the climate," he says. "You can't just study half the planet – the thing about climate change is you have to study the whole thing – so we are an important cog in the machine of climate understanding, world wide. And to take that out is an affront to climate science worldwide." Cribb sees the cuts as an attempt to appeal to the anti-climate faction within the government. "I think they find it easy to sacrifice that part of science because it doesn't have much of a political constituency within the government. There are no Liberal backbenchers springing to their feet, waving a sheaf of notes about it and protesting about it because they're very poorly educated, they just don't understand climate change, so it's an easy decision to make." He says CSIRO scientists have done outstanding work on drought and the Murray-Darling Basin plan.

"Our understanding of drought and how to manage water when we get serious drought is down to CSIRO – and here we are wiping that out. That's a dreadful decision, it really is a dreadful decision." He warns Australia is in serious danger of dismantling its water science. "We're losing our ability to manage our own water into the future, there is no more precious resource in Australia," he says. "So this is a really foolish decision, to take down land and water science and likewise with climate, the two are interwoven. "The climate people who've got the bullet are modellers, modellers don't make you a lot of money.

"It's for the nation and it's for perpetuity, it's knowledge that will be used one hundred and a thousand years from now, it's got almost infinite value for Australia and here we are, cutting it off at the knees. "Once you've axed a whole area of science, you've destroyed it root and branch ... you've lost all the knowledge, you've lost the experience, you've lost the deep wisdom that you had, it's like book burning in medieval times. "Once you've destroyed your knowledge, it's very, very hard to start up again from ground zero. "For Australia to damage itself in this one area of science is like Australia deciding to put out one of its eyes. As a member of the taxpaying Australian public who funds CSIRO, I say Larry Marshall has not the right to do that with our science."

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