The Trump Administration signed a sweeping executive order hours ago at the EPA which curbs the federal government’s enforcement of climate regulations by putting American jobs ABOVE addressing climate change. MADNESS.
I’m on the road, and having difficulty loading links to the site, but i read this in the Opinion section in the Guardian and felt as my anger rose, of it’s importance.
The Trump Administration is destroying evidence of the effects of global warming. These politically-motivated data deletions come at a time when the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the global average.
I will paraphrase from an article by Victoria Herrmann..’I am an Arctic Researcher. Donald Trump is deleting my citations’.
“As an Arctic researcher, i’m used to gaps in data. Just over 1% of US Arctic waters have been surveyed to modern standards. In truth, some of the maps we use today haven’t been updated since the second world war. Navigating unchartered waters can prove difficult, but it comes with the territory of working in such a remote part of the world.
Over the past two months though, i’ve been navigating a different type of unchartered territory: the deleting of what little data we have by the Trump Administration.
At first, the distress flare of lost data came as a surge of defunct links on 21 January. The US National Strategy For The Arctic, the Implementation Plan for the Strategy, and the report on our progress all gone within a matter of minutes. As i watched more and more of links turned red, i frantically combed the internet for archived versions of our country’s most important polar policies.
I had no idea then that this disappearing act had just begun.
Since January, the surge has transformed into a slow, incessant march of deleting data, webpages and policies about the Arctic. I now come to expect a weekly email request to replace invalid citations, hoping that someone had the foresight to download statistics about Arctic permafrost thaw or renewable energy in advance of the purge.”
And this is what i had expected knowing who was coming into office..
“In the waning days of 2016 we were warned: save the data. Back up the climate measurements. Archive the maps of America’s worst polluters.
Anticipating a massive overhaul by the new administration, scientists around the world sounded the alarm to copy as many files off of government sites before they were altered or removed. As the inauguration neared, hundreds of guerilla archivists took up the call. Hackers raced against the clock to protect crucial datasets before they disappeared. Volunteers tried tirelessly to save what they could, but the federal government is a massive warehouse of information. Some data were bound to get left behind.
Each defunct page is an effort by the Trump administration to deliberately undermine our ability to make good policy decisions by limiting access to scientific evidence.
We’ve seen this type of data strangling before.
Just three years ago, Arctic researchers witnessed another world leader remove thousands of scientific documents from the public domain. In 2014, than Canadian p.m. Stephen Harper closed 11 department of fisheries and oceans regional libraries, including the only Arctic center. Hundreds of reports and studies containing well over a century of research were destroyed- a historic loss from which we still have not recovered.
These back-to-back data deletions come at a time when the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the global average. Just this week it was reported that the Arctic’s winter sea ice dropped to it’s lowest levels in recorded history. The impacts of an ice-free Arctic are already clear; a decline in habitat for polar bears, increases in coastal erosion that force Alaskans to abandon their homes; and the opening up of shipping routes with unpredictable conditions and hazardous icebergs.”
Without this data, Trump can more rationalize the full-speed-ahead attitude of more drilling, more C02, more greenhouse gases. The denial of human causation in global climate change. Madness.
Rising sea levels.
Rising temperatures.
What more can i add? That Trump is damaging us..and the world..in every conceivable way imaginable? For the future of our children. For the future of a healthy, vibrant world. All of this is already known.
We must Resist.
In. Every. Way. Possible.