CSIRO researchers need to "tweak" their science to better suit the needs of the customer in a bid to become more entrepreneurial, incoming head Dr Larry Marshall says.

Dr Marshall, an inventor with a PHD in physics, will take the helm of the 88-year-old organisation from outgoing chief executive Dr Megan Clark in January.

He was part of a panel addressing early and mid-career researchers as part of an astronomy symposium this week.

He told the crowd that Australia was risk-adverse, detailed his own entrepreneurial exploits "stumbling" through "five and half companies" during his 25 years in the US, and encouraged the scientists to take the plunge and begin their own companies saying many of the "wonderful people" doing "amazing" things at CSIRO were reluctant to leave.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/csiro-scientists-urged-to-take-the-plunge-or-tweak-their-science-to-become-customer-focused-20141203-11ztd8.html#ixzz3znzz2Tr4 
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Larry Marshall is an idiot bringing in the emotion that "it sounds more like religion than science"... Yes HIS VIEWS ON THE CSIRO are more about the religion of dollars than about sciences... And as far as "feeling like an early climate scientist in the '70s fighting against the oil lobby", I FEEL as if he represents the fucking oil lobby fighting the climate scientists...

CSIRO chief Larry Marshall has stepped up efforts to convince staff that the plan to slash 350 jobs will be good for the organisation, according to a transcript of an internal video leaked by disgruntled employees.

The question-and-answer style video was posted on Wednesday afternoon on the CSIRO's intranet but cannot be downloaded.

In it, Dr Marshall seeks to justify the planned cut of 100 full-time positions in the climate science unit.

"This is not a judgment call on the quality of our climate science - it's awesome! - but we've been doing that for 20 years," Dr Marshall said, according to a transcript sent to Fairfax Media.

"[It's] time to take action. Our nation needs us to do something about environmental change." 

The video, along with other public comments made by Dr Marshall, are likely to move employees, who are shifting from a state of shock following last Thursday's announced cuts, to anger, Anthony Keenan, a spokesman for the CSIRO Staff Association, said.

"It's a very soft puff piece of a video," Mr Keenan said, adding that the union was preparing to take industrial action unless management could show it was truly open to negotiations and consultation about the cuts.

Not only Google, so is Yahoo and so is Bing... These are impostors. They are not search engines. They are agents for advertisers to sell you crap. I already have exposed on this site that these "search engines" are not searching. From time to time, possibly twice a day, their giganormous memory bank is updated with what is out there. Then the engine ONLY SEARCH FOR WHAT ITS MEMORY HAS ACQUIRED, not what is really out there. Some news services are on automatic update and some pay for the service. Some, like this site floating on the floatsam jetsam of the internet, get not a look in at updates, until a few days later...

For example I have typed in ALL THE "SEARCH" ENGINES the title above "the hospital you don't want to end up in..." since the time it was posted around 8.00 AM this morning. by 2:00 PM, ALL the search engines CANNOT FIND IT.

THIS aspect of search engines came to me by simple deduction: I used to have a website from which I had deleted pages. THESE PAGES WERE STILL AVAILABLE ON GOOGLE. This only meant one thing: GOOGLE HAD ACQUIRED MY PAGES ON THEIR MEMORY BANK AND thus broke the international copyright laws and was in possession of stolen goods.

Beware, the success of "search" engines does not reside on their algorithms able to search the net, but their plunder of what's on the net, and cataloguing the loot.

Earth is running a fever but PM Turnbull thinks the CSIRO has more important things to do than investigate climate changes, says Peter Boyer.

IT ISN'T just that last year was warmer than ever. It’s the fact that every analysis shows the amount of warming last year was without precedent.

It isn’t easy to get the head around how science worked out that Earth’s surface in 2015 was exceptionally warm. Here’s my explanation.

In past years, I’ve tried to report findings as soon as possible, usually around mid-January, when the U.S. National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration’s Climate Data Center and NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies release their analyses of records dating back to 1880.

The World Meteorological Organization’s assessment of global mean surface temperature, showing 2015 in orange. (K = degrees Kelvin, which in this context is the same as Celsius.)

Some readers thought I was favouring these findings over the UK source, the combined dataset of the Met Office Hadley Centre and the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, whose analysis starts in 1850. So this year I waited until all were in.

Besides that “big three”, Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology compiles its own global time-series based on the UK dataset. The Japan Meteorological Agency has its own dataset starting in 1891, and Berkeley Earth, a privately-funded U.S. group, analyses data all the way back to 1750.

All these analyses draw on millions of observations. Some come from about 1500 strategically-located land stations, but bearing in mind that over two-thirds of Earth’s surface is ocean, most are from ships at sea and ocean buoys, increasing in number every year.

Some people have questioned the small number of land stations used (about one for every 100,000 square kilometres) and pointed to location (valley or mountaintop, grass or asphalt surface) affecting absolute readings. Both questions are largely resolved by the anomaly technique.

Absolute temperatures in various locations are less important in studying global climate than change over time. To discern this scientists look at anomalies: how much the temperature in each given place diverges from the long-term average for that location.

To establish a global mean, each agency uses its own methodology. That makes for sometimes pronounced differences in ways of processing the data and handling inevitable gaps over space and time. This independence is a good insurance against shared errors and biases.

The possibility of duplicated errors was tested by the Berkeley group, set up in 2010. Its co-founder, Richard Muller, had believed global temperature analyses used corrupt data and faulty techniques.

To the contrary, Berkeley Earth found that established datasets were robust, and that if the various agencies had erred about global warming, it had been on the conservative side.

In late January, the World Meteorological Organisation released its 2015 temperature report. WMO draws threads together from many sources, including the major U.S and UK datasets. It also goes to the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, which uses weather forecasting systems to fill in observational gaps such as for polar regions.

...

Yet incredibly, CSIRO head Larry Marshall told the ABC’s 7.30 last week that CSIRO had more important things to do than investigate how climate changes. There’s nothing more important, and that statement will haunt his career from now on. But that’s a whole new discussion, for next time.

The article was originally published on 9 February 2016 in SouthWind.

Read more there and also at https://independentaustralia.net/environment/environment-display/earth-is-running-a-fever---not-that-the-csiro-will-be-reporting-on-it-now,8669

CSIRO staff have begun a campaign to challenge plans to massively shake-up the nation's premier scientific organisation, lodging a dispute with the industrial umpire to try to stall the changes.

The CSIRO plans to cut 350 positions across areas including oceans, atmosphere, land, water and manufacturing.

Some of the cuts will involve a paring back of the organisation's climate measurement and monitoring capabilities — instead redirecting staff to work out how to tackle the problem of climate change.

Some staff will be made redundant and others redeployed, and the CSIRO has maintained that at the end of the two-year process, there will be no net loss of jobs.

The CSIRO Staff Association — represented by the Community and Public Sector Union — has lodged a dispute with the Fair Work Commission, claiming the organisation has not held adequate consultation.

"CSIRO have not discussed the introduction of the change, the effect the change is likely to have, measures CSIRO is taking to avert or mitigate the adverse effects of the change," the application to the Fair Work Commission said.

"Communications through email to staff by CSIRO business units... illustrate staff and their representatives have not been consulted or provided a genuine opportunity to influence the decision maker.

"For example, the email to Land and Water staff shows that reduction in staff of approximately 100 [full-time equivalent positions] will occur in already pre-determined programs.

"This indicates CSIRO's implementation of their decision, omitting any genuine consultation in accordance with clause 57(I) [of the CSIRO Enterprise Agreement]."

read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-02-17/csiro-staff-to-challenge-controversial-shake-up/7178014

Earlier in the month it was revealed CSIRO would be cutting up to 350 staff from climate research programs over two years. Over the following weeks, the organisation’s chief executive Larry Marshall explained that would result in a loss of about 50% of the staff working in climate modelling and measuring.

In a report titled “Flying Blind: Navigating Climate Change without the CSIRO,” the Climate Council said governments and businesses relied on the CSIRO’s climate modelling and measuring work to make billion-dollar decisions and if the cuts went ahead, would be relying on “guesswork”.

The report notes Australia and the rest of the world agreed to strengthen commitments to climate science at COP21 in Paris in December. “The recently announced cuts to climate science mean that Australia has already reneged on one of its obligations under the Paris commitments,” it concludes.

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/feb/22/csiro-climate-cuts-will-breach-paris-agreement-and-cost-economy-report

A "strangely warm southerly" continues to sweep across Sydney on Friday, causing hot and windy weather. 

And there will be little relief at beaches in New South Wales and Queensland as Cyclone Winston heads west, creating increasingly large swells on Friday turning into large, dangerous and powerful surf over the weekend.

Following Thursday's high of 33 degrees, Friday's weather will be very breezy with temperatures reaching 29 degrees, said Rob Sharpe, a meteorologist with Weatherzone.

read more: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/sydney-weather-strange-warm-southerly-brings-little-relief-20160225-gn41t4.html

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Actually the warm southerly is not strange, though more often seen lately. What really happens is that the westerly that brought the heat (41 in the suburbs) in the last few days blew hot wind across to the ocean, but was turned south by a northerly breeze blowing along the coast. This mass of warm air went south, and cannot rise because of density versus inversion layers. It cannot cool much because the sea surface is already pretty warm though it will pick up humidity. The switch of wind direction from the south, due to air pressure differential, only brings back the warm air of yesterday from the sea, slightly cooler but not like a real southerly change incoming from the Antarctic.

The temperature is cooling off mind you and is now around 26 degrees Celsius, BUT HEAVY WITH HUMIDITY. The recurrence of such hot wind from the sea (a few days ago it was above 28) is in line with observation the CSIRO should make and catalogue in regard to GLOBAL WARMING on temperature and wind direction equation.

Only 20 climate science positions will be lost from the CSIRO, down from an initial 96, after the Turnbull government intervened, issuing a ministerial directive to the independent agency.

Guardian Australia understands 35 climate scientist will still be sacked, but there will be 15 new hires. It is also understood there is no new money for the appointments, but must come from existing CSIRO funding.

The cuts were first announced by the CSIRO in February this year. The decision was made by the CSIRO, which acts independently from government, but were a result ofcuts the government made to environmental research funding.

read mor: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/aug/04/csiro-cuts-turnbull-government-orders-u-turn-on-climate-science-research

Still not good enough. More scientific positions should be allocated to the "problem"... Global warming is not going to go away despite a few cold rainy days in wintery Sydney. The sun is going fast into a "sleeping more" but so far this year (2016), record temperature have smashed last year's record. In 11 years when the sun cycle awakes, be warned, it won't be pleasant. Meanwhile, years like 20121 might even beat more temperature, more powerful storms and sea level rises records.