G'day all,
Ah the CSIRO. This fine organisation, at Dan Morgan is quite right about it being a highly regarded organisation. He just isn't Australian and so doesn't also know that it has been accussed of political bias by both our main political parties.
I have mentioned the CSIRO before, when it was caught in an appalling misuse of data. It produced a brochure declaring that Australia was ideally placed to determine rising sea levels (true) and that the results of long term sea level monitoring was disturbing and proved global warming. Pity the brochure used only two locations, Sydney and Fremantle. Most people would know where Sydney is but less would know about Fremantle (perhaps if they followed the America's Cup they might remember). But it is at the mouth of the river on which Perth sits. So it was a bit like picking Miami and Los Angeles. Opposite sides of Australia.
The trouble is the long term sea level monitoring is not done by CSIRO at all but another government agency. They have 23 long term monitoring agencies around Australia. Fremantle was perfect to use because it showed a marked sea level increase. Sydney showed a lesser increase but still an increase. Pity that all 23 stations showed nothing of the sort. They showed a slight drop in sea level. Now Australia is bounded by three very important and very large oceans. If any single country could tell whether the world sea level had changed, Australia has a good chance of doing so. It might be that the sea level changes occur more in the Northern Hemisphere of course, but this isn't really about sea level changes throughout the world but rather the politicalisation of an esteamed organisation, the CSIRO.
They were wrong and it appears they deliberately misled the public in the use of selective data. That isn't what I would call the acts that "one of the most highly respect [sic] science research organizations on the planet" should do.
Just like NASA, the CSIRO is very pro-global warming. Why? I thought that the "Kicking Sacret Cow" book by Mr Hogan would help with this but it didn't all that much. His theory is interesting but he doesn't seem to back it up with much other than logic. Good logic, I must admit but not definitive, at least in my mind.
And anyman was quite right. CSIRO does show its bias very well by the link that Mr Morgan provides. It does read like hype. It is another organisation that bites the hand that feeds it. It seems that it is rather left leaning in its political outlook even though the current conservative government has provided more fundings to the sciences. But criticsm does often seem to have a political tinge to it. The same could be said for NASA, despite the US conservative governmet spending more on scientific research than the previous Democratic regime even suggested was a possibility.
I'm not suggesting that the conservtive governments should be applauded or that this should turn into a political discussion but the reasons for such organisation behaving the way they do will most likely fascinate political scientists, historians and science historians for a very long time to come.
Regards
Richard
