CSIRO Fires John Church, Global Expert On Sea-Level Rise, Because Need To Run It Like A Business
For John Church, a leading authority on sea-level rise caused by global warming, there was much that was fitting – and yet callous – about being sacked at sea. The veteran scientist was well into one of dozens of research voyages he had taken since joining CSIRO as a post doctoral student in 1979. His vessel, the RV Investigator, was midway between Antarctica and New Zealand and steaming north on the 170 degree longitude when he received Thursday's call to tell him he was "potentially redundant".
Sitting with a supporter in the ship's conference room, Dr Church was told his services were no longer needed. "I was OK during the call but it is certainly not a nice feeling to have what you have worked for - for so many years - thrown on the scrapheap," the 64 year-old told Fairfax Media after finishing a 12-hour stint on watch.
Dr Church's achievements include developing sophisticated models linking sparse tidal gauge information around the world with satellite data to reveal how much sea levels are rising. The current mission is retracing previous journeys along the 170 W longitude line to measure precisely how key parameters such as temperature, salinity and acidity are changing.
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Dr Church, who has been among the most outspoken scientists criticising the current round of CSIRO job cuts, was told one reason for his firing was the need to consolidate sea-level change into regional impacts. "This is essentially a repetition of [chief executive] Larry Marshall's incomplete, naive and misleading statements, except for a focus on my area of science," he said. "Any reading of the literature or of the most recent [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] reports would clearly indicate that the overriding uncertainty in sea level remains the amount and distribution of sea level rise," he said.
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http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/global-sealevel-expert-john-church-made-to-walk-the-plank-by-csiro-20160513-gov0k9.html