"Scientists have recorded the first-ever heatwave in Antarctica "Iceberg the size of Sydney breaks off Amery ice shelf in Antarctica "Antarctic ice melting faster than ever, studies show"""
Am not saying suppression of scientific information from Australia's CSIRO was worse under our conservative Liberal-National Coalition governments because i don't know if that's true. Only saying because i noticed a couple of dates below Australia was under Coalition government from 2013 to 2022 .. https://www.naa.gov.au/explore-collection/australias-prime-ministers . After Gillard/Labor came Abbott, Turnbull, Morrison, to 2022 Labor/Albanese. Hmm, one here 2009 -- Gagged CSIRO scientist resigns By Crystal Ja December 3, 2009 — 11.36am .. https://www.smh.com.au/national/gagged-csiro-scientist-resigns-20091203-k7ir.html . Kevin Rudd was labor PM then. Rudd is now Australian Ambassador in Washington. Seems this is (or was) as much a CSIRO management culture as much as anything else. Fear of losing funding would be a huge (even a partially legitimate) worry. Too many top management, i'd guess, worried about losing their own jobs.
The beauty and wonder of the natural world is what keeps these scientists fighting to protect it. But a culture of suppression and self-censorship has meant that speaking out comes at a cost.
By the climate team’s Jess Davis and Tyne Logan Published 24 Oct 2023, 6:31am
For the past 40 years, Antarctic ecologist Dana Bergstrom has studied one of the wildest places on the planet.
“Antarctica gets into your blood,” she says.
“For somewhere so cold, it really makes your heart warm.”
Dana Bergstrom visited Antarctica and sub-Antarctica more than 20 times over her career. Supplied: Patti Virtue
As a public servant with the Australian Antarctic Division, she operated inside a system where any outside communication about her scientific work was carefully calibrated, crafted and monitored.
But, eventually, that calibration went beyond what Bergstrom thinks can be justified.
“I was gagged,” she says.
Recently retired, Bergstrom is now speaking out about being silenced.
“I went with it, I was a good public servant.
“But it was disheartening to not be able to tell the whole story.”
[Three photos]] Dana Bergstrom has always been enchanted by the natura world. ABC News: Maren Preuss The bush around Dana Bergstrom's home provides her with endless fascination. ABC News: Maren Preuss Tasmanian paddymelons keep Dana Bergstrom company in the bush around her home. ABC News: Maren Preuss
And she’s not alone. Ecologists and climate scientists have told the ABC of a widespread culture of suppression and self-censorship.
Sometimes it’s insidious, driven by the fear of losing funding or contracts.
Sometimes it’s overt, through active gagging or academic careers being threatened.
All of that for attempting to “speak the truth” about environmental damage, ecosystem collapse and climate change.
And it’s taking a toll, with scientists suffering mental anguish at their research being suppressed instead of being used to help save species on the brink of extinction, to help arrest the rapidly deteriorating state of the natural world.
As one says: “It really impacts you, because how can it not?
“You can’t look away.”
[... photos with overlaid script as you scroll, don't know a name for it ...]
Amongst the rock and ice, one place stands out in Bergstrom’s memories of visiting the continent — Heard Island.
“It’s the wildest place on the planet. It’s 4,000 kilometres from anywhere and it’s covered in ice.
“It’s a place just for animals — humans visit there so rarely — and life goes on.”
But the wonder and awe is turning into a nightmare, as the impacts of climate change move much more rapidly than scientists predicted, or even imagined they could.
“I’ve seen in my lifetime, a glacier retreat on Heard Island,” Bergstrom says.
“I’ve seen plants go from healthy to critically endangered in three years.
“It was an ecological surprise. When I first started with climate change, we thought time scales of 50 years or 100 years, but not three.”
[Photos] Castle Rock in Antarctica captured by Dana Bergstrom. Supplied: Dana Bergstrom Elephant seals are one of the many fascinating creatures that Dana Bergstrom has observed through her studies. Supplied: Dana Bergstrom Dana Bergstrom's says watching species like penguins suffer takes a mental toll. ABC News: Maren Preuss
Bergstrom likens scientists to soothsayers, carrying the burden of being able to see the future, a vision that is now hurtling much faster towards us.
“It plays a heavy toll on your psyche,” she says.
-- “It’s hard to take because we know what’s coming down the track.” --
In 2021, after releasing a comprehensive paper that revealed 19 ecosystems were collapsing, she says she was “gagged”.
The groundbreaking report, which garnered international attention, had come from research Bergstrom had started on ecosystem collapse on Macquarie Island.
“It was an idea that had come very much out of Antarctica, we had seen ecosystem collapse,” she says.
“A team of just under 40 world-leading ecologists had put this story together of collapse right across the [Australian] continent and to Antarctica.”
Bergstrom was one of two lead authors and it was her work that led to the paper, but, despite being at the heart of the research, she was unable to be the leading voice in the media.
At six o’clock the night before the paper came out, the Australian Antarctic Division (AAD) told her not to speak anymore and to let the researchers outside the division take over.
“It was quite disheartening to suddenly not be able to talk,” she says. “I had been talking to the media in preparation, but suddenly to get a gag order [was hard].”
Bergstrom doesn’t know the reason she was gagged. She speculates it could have been to avoid embarrassment to the minister at the time, or the government department that oversaw the AAD, the then Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment.
“It left me with a sadness because I couldn’t tell the story about how it generated out of Antarctic science, out of the incredible things that we do with the Antarctic Treaty,” she says.
“What people then focused [on] was the collapse in 19 examples, but what we also had was the story about what to do about it.”
The Australian Antarctic Division didn’t respond to questions from the ABC but said in a statement:
-- “The AAD actively encourages and facilitates its scientists to communicate about their research and specialist areas, as much as possible.” --
Bergstrom wonders how many other scientists have been gagged like her; how many other organisations are doing the same thing.
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The tight control over scientists within the public service is something former CSIRO climate scientist David Karoly has also experienced.
Since his retirement from the CSIRO last year, he’s spoken publicly about the restrictive culture there and the consequences of self-censorship.
“It’s clear that there is a very large cohort of government-employed climate scientists, both in CSIRO as well as in the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM), who are not allowed to talk about issues like climate change,” Karoly says.
“Their views, based on their own expertise and their assessments of other science datasets, is being suppressed and is not being allowed to be communicated openly to the media, or to the public, or often is being suppressed in government reports as well.
“And that is completely inappropriate in my view.”
Karoly says the worst example of direct censorship he experienced was as a reviewer on the two-yearly State of the Climate report, published jointly by CSIRO and the BoM.
He says while the reasons were never communicated directly to him, he believes the organisations vetoed agreed text in the report to make it more palatable to the relevant ministers at the time.
“I am certainly aware of where senior management within the Bureau of Meteorology or CSIRO have played final veto roles in suppressing what was agreed documents or material text within the report,” he says.
-- “It was direct censorship of material that was based on the best available science that was removed.” --
Karoly says that while the culture is improving a bit, there is still a very strong filter.
He says that is illustrated by the change in language from earlier State of the Climate reports to that used in the reports for 2020 and 2022.
For the first time, the report sets out a clear warning in its opening statement of the dangers of human-caused climate change and the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Do you know more? * Contact Jess Davis using davis.jessica@abc.net.au * If you require more secure communication, please choose an option on the confidential tips page
Karoly says it had nothing to do with the science changing significantly, or even the government changing — but because the scientists had decided to be more assertive in the organisation.
In a statement, the BoM [ http://www.bom.gov.au/ ] said the use of language in the reports reflected the bureau’s “role and capabilities [to] provide Australia with unrestricted public access to authoritative observation, analysis and reporting of climate change status and trends”.
-- “The bureau does not have a role or capability devoted to analysis or formulation of impacts of, or responses to, climate change, which are the responsibility of other agencies.” --
The CSIRO says, “the report commentary is directly related to the scientific data and analysis drawn as a result”.
“CSIRO and the bureau go to great lengths to ensure the strong message of how our climate is changing is conveyed accurately and objectively in the report,” a spokesperson said.
Karoly says the suppression and carefully calibrated communication of science is driven by a fear of losing funding from private industry — which includes the fossil fuel industry — or of annoying government.
He believes that has led to CSIRO shifting resources out of climate science — which can upset governments — and into other areas.
[GUESSING that was under - YEP, ABBOTT. One of the main reasons Turnbull who became leader in later 2015 .. https://www.naa.gov.au/explore-collection/australias-prime-ministers .. was booted was because he was, i think more than any other conservative coalition leader we've had, concerned about climate change.]
-- “It’s much more important that the media and the public are provided with the best available science on climate change, not science filtered by the interests of management,” Karoly says. --
“That sort of information can best be provided by experts in both weather and climate science, [and] there are limited numbers of those people.”
CSIRO told the ABC it rejected any suggestion its research was influenced by anything other than science.
“CSIRO is dedicated to research that will deliver benefit to Australia,” a spokesperson said.
“Collaboration with industry is an important pathway by which our research can deliver economic, environmental and community benefit.
“This includes working with hard-to-abate sectors to decarbonise, supporting the nation’s transition towards net zero.”
The federal government said it would never seek to interfere, with Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek [Labor current] saying in a statement: “I respect and admire the important work of our climate and conservation scientists.”
‘You can’t look away’
As an academic, wildlife ecologist Euan Ritchie has had much more freedom to speak about his work, but he’s seen the devastating impact the culture of suppression is having on his peers.
“I haven’t personally been gagged from speaking freely and I guess that’s a fortunate position that many university academics have,” Ritchie says
“But I guess [that] because of my personality, and also the privileged position that I have, I recognise that I have this freedom to speak. I see it as a duty to speak.”
That sense of duty comes from his love of the natural world, fostered by his mother since he was a little boy.
“[She] would wade into swamps with me and let me catch frogs and pick up dead birds on the side of the road to look at their feathers,” Ritchie recalls.
“My great-grandfather actually helped establish the Mornington Peninsula National Park and so I guess it’s almost in the blood, you might say — conservation.”
Like Bergstrom, Ritchie says knowing ecosystems and species intimately and witnessing their decline takes a toll and he finds himself oscillating between anger and sadness.
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In 2020, Ritchie co-authored a study that found ecologists and conservation experts in government, industry and universities were routinely constrained from communicating scientific evidence on threats to the environment.
It documented cases of senior managers or ministers’ offices preventing researchers from speaking, as well as cases of self-censorship by scientists, who feared damaging their careers or losing funding.
The research paper dubbed the information blackout “science suppression” and said it “can hide environmentally damaging practices and policies from public scrutiny”.
In the paper, dozens of scientists from government, industry and universities described harrowing experiences of being silenced due to financial or political interests of the organisations they worked for. All of them wrote anonymously.
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Ritchie describes the culture of suppression as “Orwellian and very 1984”, referring to George Orwell’s dystopian novel.
“Scientists are too scared to speak out, speak truth to power, and worse yet, they get conditioned to self-censor,” he says.
“The fact that so few people report cases of suppression speaks to how effective the system of suppression is.”
Freedom to speak
Senior principal research scientist David Eldridge is one of those now willing to go on the record — something he only feels able to do after having left his government job.
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