Scientists are frantically copying U.S. climate data, fearing it might vanish under Trump

[riversedge]

Source: washington post





By Brady Dennis December 13 at 11:07 AM



Alarmed that decades of crucial climate measurements could vanish under a hostile Trump administration, ......................


.......................... One Trump adviser suggested that NASA no longer should conduct climate research and instead should focus on space exploration.

Those moves have stoked fears among the scientific community that Trump,.............

................................


“They 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,” Halpern said in an email. “There is a fine line between being paranoid and being prepared, and scientists are doing their best to be prepared . . . Scientists are right to preserve data and archive websites before those who want to dismantle federal climate change research programs storm the castle.”

To be clear, neither Trump nor his transition team has said that the new administration plans to manipulate or curtail publicly available data. The transition team did not respond to a request for comment. But some scientists aren’t taking any chances.

“What are the most important .gov climate assets?” Eric Holthaus, a meteorologist and self-proclaimed “climate hawk,” tweeted from his Arizona home Saturday evening. “Scientists: Do you have a US .gov climate database that you don’t want to see disappear?”...................................



Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/12/13/scientists-are-frantically-copying-u-s-climate-data-fearing-it-might-vanish-under-trump/?utm_term=.a60dd55159e9&tid=sm_tw

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OMG! what horror has trump unleashed--This is nothing by harassment and must be stopped!
Best to read the whole article. Hard to cut down!





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[Energy Dept. rejects Trump’s request to name climate change workers, who remain worried]

[harun]

1. Need to send it to the European Union Scientists before it's cleansed here.

[ananda]

3. I'm not sure even that's safe with Putin on the borders now.

nt

[lunasun]

2. They will sic the Russians on them too hack away archives be gone! Look we didn't do it and

we don't know who did ....right?

[StevieM]

4. I'm not so sure we would have any less to fear from an incoming President Scott Walker.

He would embrace the same type of ideology, the same type of tactics.

The GOP is a frightening organization.

[riversedge]

6. Agree. Walker is responsible for dismantling the wind industry in WI.

[louis-t]

5. This remended me of Sandy Berger. I've always believed

Sandy Berger removed copies of documents from the National Archives because he feared those docs would disappear under a bush administration.
While refreshing my memory about the details, I discovered something that is
relevant to current events:
" In November 1997, Berger paid a $23,000 civil penalty to settle conflict of interest allegations stemming from his failure to sell his stock of Amoco Corporation as ordered by the White House. Berger was advised by the White House to sell the stock in early 1994. He said he had planned to sell the stock, but then forgot. He denied knowingly participating in decisions in which he had a financial interest. With no evidence that Berger intended to break the law, the United States Department of Justice determined a civil penalty was adequate for a "non-willful violation" of the conflict of interest law.[13]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Berger#Convicted_of_mishandling_classified_terror_documents

[avebury]

7. The documents need to be copied to a multiple number

of secure off line servers scattered all over the planet. If they could find a way to publish all the information, a copy could also be registered at the National Archives. The key would be to copy it and disseminate it so widely that they cannot make it disappear.

[0rganism]

8. sounds like a job for...

WIKILEAKS!

[Hekate]

9. KnR for the heroes

[CousinIT]

10. THEY might vanish under Trump

The publication run by the President-elect's chief strategist casually suggesting scientists should be shot:

https://twitter.com/Khanoisseur/status/808630612730859520

[Bernardo de La Paz]

11. Totalitarian tRump Politburo bringing in thought crime clampdown. . . nt

[mahatmakanejeeves]

12. booklet titled "Handling Political Harassment and Legal Intimidation: A Pocket Guide for Scientists"

Lawyers with the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund — which provides legal assistance to researchers facing lawsuits over their work on climate change — will be holding one-on-one consultations with researchers who think they might need help from a lawyer. And the organization’s table in the AGU exhibition hall is piled high with booklets titled “Handling Political Harassment and Legal Intimidation: A Pocket Guide for Scientists.”

{Shrinking mountain glaciers are ‘categorical evidence’ of climate change, scientists say}

“We literally thought about it the day after the election,” said Lauren Kurtz, the legal defense fund’s executive director. “I have gotten a lot of calls from scientists who are really concerned. . . . So it’s intended in some ways to be reassuring, to say, ‘There is a game plan; we’re here to help you.’”

The 16-page guide contains advice for government researchers who believe their work is being suppressed, as well as how scientists should react if they receive hate mail or death threats.

Climate Science Legal Defense Fund

https://twitter.com/brady_dennis

Why Scientists Are Scared of Trump: A Pocket Guide

By Elizabeth Kolbert December 8, 2016

Next week, the American Geophysical Union will hold its annual conference in San Francisco. The A.G.U. meeting is one of the world’s première scientific gatherings—last fall, some twenty-four thousand experts in fields ranging from astronomy to volcanology attended. This year, in addition to the usual papers and journals, a new publication will be available to participants. It’s called “Handling Political Harassment and Legal Intimidation: A Pocket Guide for Scientists.”

The guide is the creation of a group called the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund. One of the group’s founders, Joshua Wolfe, and its executive director, Lauren Kurtz, made the decision to write it on the day after the election. “There is a lot of fear among scientists that they will become targets of people who are interested in science as politics, rather than progress,” Wolfe told me in an e-mail.

With each passing day, that fear appears to be more well founded. The one quality that all of Trump’s picks for his cabinet and his transition team seem to share is an expertise in the dark art of disinformation.

Consider, for example, Scott Pruitt, who is reportedly Trump’s nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency. Pruitt, currently the attorney general of Oklahoma, is an outspoken critic of the agency that he would lead. This is not, in and of itself, disqualifying, but, as a 2014 investigative piece in the Times revealed, Pruitt’s criticisms have little basis in evidence. Instead, he has basically served as a mouthpiece for talking points dreamed up by the oil and gas industries. In one case, Pruitt signed a letter criticizing the E.P.A. for supposedly exaggerating the air pollution attributable to natural-gas drilling in Oklahoma. It turned out that the letter had been written for him by one of the state’s biggest drilling companies. ... “Outstanding!” was the reaction that the company’s director of government relations sent to Pruitt’s office.