CSIRO Being Joined at the Hip to Fossil Fuels? (July 5, 2010)

Simon McKeon

Paddy Manning, writing in this past Saturday's Sydney Morning Hareld's Business Day claims: "Questions are being raised about the closeness of BHP Billiton and the CSIRO under its chief executive, Megan Clark. A former technology vice-president at BHP."

 Mr Manning continues: "In January Michael Glinsky was recruited from being manager of BHP's resources research and development divisions to join CSIRO's 25-member Office of the Chief Executive. On his LinkedIn page, Glinsky chirped about being appointed to CSIRO's 'highest scientific position with a guarantee of funding for several postdocs, graduate students and equipment for the R&D of my choosing'. All brilliance aside, insiders marvel how Glinsky has been given such free rein."

And while Mr Manning notes that hard figures are hard to come by he quotes: "According to CSIRO's operational plan for 2009-10, headcounts in the energy group roughly favour fossil fuels 70 : 30, with 212 people working on petroleum resources (136) or clean fossil fuels (76) and 82 people working on renewables. Renewables and clean fossil fuels come under CSIRO's energy technology division, which received $12 million last financial year, but the funding split is not public."

Finally, Mr Manning raises a journalistic eyebrow regarding Simon McKeon's appointment to the Chairmanship of the CSIRO board.

Mr McKeon, a solicitor, is chairman of the Melbourne operations of Macquarie Bank, president of the statutory dispute resolution body for Australian public company takeovers, the Australian Takeovers Panel and  is Chairman of software specialist MYOB.

In addition he is Chairman of the Association of Independent Schools Victoria as well as Chairman of the Point Nepean Trust and MS Research Australia.

The following observation by Mr McKeon in an interview he gave The Age late last month is rather disquieting: "I'm just so sad, or disappointed rather, that after a good decade or two of the world being aware of this issue, the data is still interpreted so differently. Surely mankind can come to a landing sooner rather than later as to whether the climate is changing and then start to take a view on what the implications of that are?"