Temperature and rainfall records are among the most extensive, robust data sets in all of science. For good reason: climate affects everyone and everything, from the cost of fuel to the price of goodies on holiday tables. And climate is essentially day-to-day weather in a given locale averaged over time. But like a modern day Caligula threatening to remove a name or fact from living memory by royal decree, Trump and his minions seem to find climate data an inconvenient truth. Researchers now have to worry about the safety of those carefully preserved data points:
“Something that seemed a little paranoid to me before all of a sudden seems potentially realistic, or at least something you’d want to hedge against,” said Nick Santos, an environmental researcher at the University of California at Davis, who over the weekend began copying government climate data onto a nongovernment server, where it will remain available to the public. “Doing this can only be a good thing. Hopefully they leave everything in place. But if not, we’re planning for that.”
In a related story, Trumpsters sent out an eerie questionnaire demanding the names of anyone working at or on behalf of a government agency who may have written or worked with, or even voiced concerns about climate change. An Orwellian intimidation tactic to be sure. A spokesperson for the Department of Energy responded to that demand with a polite invitation for Trump and company to get lost:
“We will be forthcoming with all publicly-available information with the transition team. We will not be providing any individual names to the transition team.” Burnham-Snyder’s email had the last sentence in boldface for emphasis.
Source
http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/EIoxEbFpFwE/-Scientists-scramble-to-preserve-decades-of-climate-data
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