Worried that federal climate databases might soon be taken offline, scientists are frantically trying to download as much data on climate change as they can before the Trump administration takes office, says The Washington Post.
“The efforts include a gorilla archiving event in Toronto, where experts will copy irreplaceable public data, meetings at the University of Pennsylvania focused on how to download as much federal data as possible in the coming weeks, and a collaboration of scientists and database experts who are compiling an online site to harbor scientific information,” says the Post.
In addition to his own declarations during the campaign that climate change is a “hoax,” Trump’s cabinet picks so far have included several climate change deniers, including the new head of the EPA, Scott Pruitt. The Department of Energy refused a request by the Trump team to send over a list of all DOE employees involved in climate science, while one Trump advisor said that NASA should cease all climate research and focus on space exploration instead.
“[Trump’s appointments] have been salivating at the possibility of dismantling federal climate research programs for years. It’s not unreasonable to think they would want to take down the very data that they dispute,” said Michael Halpern, deputy director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union for Concerned Scientists.
Neither Trump nor any of his team have said they intend to dismantle federal climate databases. But Andrew Drexler, a professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M, says that while he doubts the new administration will actually erase current information, he expects they could stop collecting fresh data — and in some ways that would be just as harmful.
“Having continuous data is crucial for understanding long-term trends,” says Drexler.
Meanwhile, lawyers with the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund — which provides legal assistance to researchers facing lawsuits over their work on climate change — have offered consultations with researchers who think they might legal assistance, the Post said.