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Trump administration limiting references to climate, data

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Effort seen as more 'targeted' than in first term

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Volunteers working to restore, preserve information

By David Sherfinski

RICHMOND, Virginia, July 30 (Thomson Reuters Foundation)

- I n his second term, the administration of President Donald

Trump has waged a systematic attack not only against climate

change and research but the very language and data that

undergird modern scientific conclusions, according to experts.

The campaign has data experts scrambling to restore and

preserve what they can while struggling to keep pace with the

all-out effort that they say extends far beyond what the

president was working to accomplish in his first term.

"It feels far more targeted, far more organized, far more

rapid," said Jonathan Gilmour, who works with the Public

Environmental Data Partners, a coalition working on data

restoration and preservation.

Among the administration's efforts, the Environmental

Protection Agency is moving to reverse the longstanding finding

that greenhouse gases are harmful to public health. The

administration is also deleting, removing and downplaying reams

of data and web pages tied to issues like environmental justice.

"(The) prevailing attitude ... in the first administration

towards climate change ... was sort of climate denial. Now,

we're seeing climate erasure," Gilmour said.

"It goes beyond the sort of standard denial and is far more

dangerous. They're trying to remove the data that we use to make

sense of how humans have impacted the world and how those

changes affect us and our societies and our health."

LIMITING ONLINE AVAILABILITY

Among other targets like health care and LGBTQ+ data, the

Trump administration, through agencies like the EPA and the

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), is

limiting or removing studies and data tied to climate change.

That includes limiting the public online availability of the

National Climate Assessment, a congressionally mandated report

that typically comes out every four years and documents human

influence on the world's rising temperatures.

A White House official said the scope of the assessment was

being "reevaluated," after the administration dismissed hundreds

of researchers and experts working on the next version.

The official said the assessment participants were told they

were "released from their roles ... while plans for the next

assessment are developed, noting that there may be future

opportunities for them to contribute or engage."

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) had

signaled it would try to host previous reports online after the

website of the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP),

which oversees the climate assessment, starting going dark in

late June.

However, that appears to no longer be the case.

A spokesperson for NASA said the USGCRP "met its statutory

requirements by presenting its reports to Congress."

"NASA has no legal obligations to host globalchange.gov's

data," said spokesperson Bethany Stevens.

Also gone from online access is an environmental justice

screening tool the Biden administration set up as part of its

pledge to steer at least 40% of certain federal benefits to

historically underserved communities.

"Probably a lot of people were expecting to see the changes

to environmental justice and (DEI)-related information that we

did see," said Izzy Pacenza, project coordinator with the

Environmental Data & Governance Initiative (EDGI), which is also

involved with the Public Environmental Data Partners.

"But for me personally, I didn't expect that to be so

expansive and for it to be one of the first things that the

administration targeted."

The EPA did not respond to requests for comment.

'SHOOTING YOURSELF IN THE FOOT'

NOAA said in May it would no longer add to a database of

U.S. disasters where the damage exceeds $1 billion, although it

would keep historical data through 2024 available.

NOAA also did not respond to requests for comment.

Fulton Ring, a private company that also works with the

partnership, announced this month it has restored its own

version of the billion-dollar disaster database.

"I think the attack on data was probably somewhat

unprecedented ... it's one of these things where to prove a

point, you're sort of shooting yourself in the foot," said Rajan

Desai, a company co-founder.

"Why would you mess up your own government's capabilities

just to send a message, right? It makes no sense."

Part of the issue now, Desai said, is spreading the word,

which essentially is a volunteer, grassroots effort.

"It's a great thing to archive all these data sets, but it's

sort of like, a tree falls in the forest and no one's around to

hear it - did it actually happen?" Desai said.

"If you don't actually do something useful with these data

sets ... you won't be able to galvanize support for starting

recollection of these data sets."

Pacenza said part of the message is that private individuals

should not have to step in and fill a governmental function in

the first place.

"They have the resources, they have the money to do it and

also it is funded with our taxpayer dollars, this data and

information," Pacenza said.

"So while we're thinking about 'this is great that people

are doing this,' ... we shouldn't have to and we need to be

advocating for our government to do its job."

(Reporting by David Sherfinski; Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst. The

Thomson Reuters Foundation is the charitable arm of Thomson

Reuters. Visit https://www.context.news/)