For decades, Australia has run the most advanced and comprehensive atmosphere and ocean monitoring programs in the Southern Hemisphere, providing critical information not only for a nation that is already the driest on earth and fast getting drier, but also for a world in urgent need of such data to search for ways to cope with climate change.

Last month, to the dismay of climate scientists around the world, Australia’s federally financed science agency — the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, or Csiro — announced plans to shift its focus to commercially viable projects and cut or reassign 350 researchers. The decision, as more than 3,000 climate scientists have declared in an open letter to the Australian government, demonstrates a deplorable misunderstanding of the importance of basic research into what is arguably the greatest challenge facing the planet.

Larry Marshall, a Silicon Valley technology entrepreneur and venture capitalist who returned to Australia in January 2015 to take charge of Csiro, explained the change in the agency’s mission by saying that climate change was now a settled question “and the new question is what do we do about it and how do we find solutions for the climate we will be living with.” The decision did not come entirely out of the blue: Australia’s national climate policy has been in political flux for more than a decade, and in May 2014, Csiro’s budget was severely cut and almost 1,000 positions were eliminated. But climate scientists were stunned by the severity and illogic of Dr. Marshall’s decision.