Following Trump’s inauguration, thousands of pages about climate change were downloaded by “data rescuers” as changes to the government websites were made in response to the incoming agenda. According to a number of concerned researchers and scientists, they sought to save this enormous amount of U.S. climate change data in case Donald Trump’s new administration changed or removed anything.
As evident in his public statements, the new president strongly doubts the concept of climate change, and climate change references have already been taken down from the White House website. The retrieved U.S. climate change data is expected to be stored in European servers, and researchers have shared their plans of monitoring changes between the previous data and anything added by the Trump administration.
Over the weekend, a DataRefuge meeting was held by scientists, teachers and the like at the Van Pelt Library in Philadelphia. As part of the resistance movement against Trump’s war on climate change, the group seeks to check for key datasets, such as greenhouse gases and ocean temperatures, in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to rescue such information.
These researchers have expressed their fear over the possibility of online changes going too far. U.S. climate change data collected and stored by the U.S. government is deemed among the world’s most influential and comprehensive. As such, scientists are worried that the data will be erased as Trump enters presidency.
Shaughnessy Naughton, founder of science advocate group 314 Action, shared the group’s views regarding the possible changes to the U.S. climate change data.
“The government has done a great job of collecting and maintaining climate change data on these websites located all across the federal government,” Naughton explained. “The concern is that the data may no longer be publicly available, and then that they may no longer gather the data. It’s a lot easier to deny climate change when you don’t have data.”
Meanwhile, the Institute for Energy Research also released an official statement about the Trump administration’s views on climate change. According to spokesman Chris Warren, the new president has priorities that are different from that of Obama and are reflected in the new website.
“He wants to increase oil and gas and increase wages, and you can tell from the changes to the website that it looks like what he talked about on the campaign trail,” Warren added.
