CSIRO staff layoffs include leading sea-level researcher

New York Times : Despite a controversial staff cut at Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) earlier this year, even more positions are soon going to be eliminated. Among the people who have been given notice is John Church, a leading researcher studying the causes and effects of sea-level change. On 17 May, Church said that CSIRO was consolidating the teams studying the effects of sea-level change and that he was being laid off. CSIRO did not confirm Church’s claim. A total of 275 research positions are to be cut, as CSIRO shifts its focus to finding solutions for dealing with the changing climate. In a petition, 3000 researchers from around the world indicated the staff cuts would result in a loss of active research and monitoring information that will hurt the global effort to predict the effects of climate change.