Here it is:
U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to remove the climate change page from its website, two agency employees told Reuters, the latest move by the newly minted leadership to erase ex-President Barack Obama’s climate change initiatives.
The employees were notified by EPA officials on Tuesday that the administration had instructed EPA’s communications team to remove the website’s climate change page, which contains links to scientific global warming research, as well as detailed data on emissions. The page could go down as early as Wednesday, the sources said.
“If the website goes dark, years of work we have done on climate change will disappear,” one of the EPA staffers told Reuters, who added some employees were scrambling to save some of the information housed on the website, or convince the Trump administration to preserve parts of it.
The sources asked not to be named because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
A Trump administration official did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The order comes as Trump’s administration has moved to curb the flow of information from several government agencies who oversee environmental issues since last week, in actions that appeared designed to tighten control and discourage dissenting views.
The moves have reinforced concerns that Trump, a climate change doubter, could seek to sideline scientific research showing that carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels contributes to global warming, as well as the career staffers at the agencies that conduct much of this research.
Myron Ebell, who helped guide the EPA’s transition after Trump was elected in November until he was sworn in last week, said the move was not surprising.
“My guess is the web pages will be taken down, but the links and information will be available,” he said.
The page includes links to the EPA’s inventory of greenhouse gas emissions, which contains emissions data from individual industrial facilities as well as the multiagency Climate Change Indicators report, which describes trends related to the causes and effects of climate change.
EPA employees are scrambling to save climate data saved on site Trumo admin has instructed them to delete https://t.co/sxj2zJWAe4
— Eric Katz (@EricM_Katz) January 25, 2017
The EPA was just directed to freeze all grants and contracts. This means that grad students and researchers funded on EPA funds are now without funds. All ongoing studies are stopped.
It happened in a moment with a memo, by executive action, with zero input or oversight.
It could happen to any Federal institute, including the National Science Foundation, which funds my lab’s research and several of my students (including their health insurance and living stipends). Trump also froze all federal hiring yesterday as well.
Please, if you can safely raise your voice, raise it loudly. Call your congresspeople, call the White House, write op-eds and articles and blog posts. This is only Day 4.
Please, stand up for science and the environment. This is the emergency we were all worried about.
I saw that in various news outlets. He’s purging a heck of a lot of pages from the White House website as well as demanding that other government websites remove reams and reams of pages. But he won’t last long, I reckon. He’s trying too hard to be a dictator and tyrant.
Errr, who’s going to stop him? Congress? The Supreme Court (with the new appointee)?
I don’t know – but perhaps there is a clue here. Excerpt:
“It should be crystal clear to all Americans that his political enemies are searching for any pretext to launch an impeachment effort to unseat President Trump, once they think it would have a chance of success. Given the level of animosity toward Trump in his own party, and the possibility of midterm election losses for the president’s party (the normal pattern in American politics), these efforts can’t be dismissed as impossible.”
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46280.htm
Here’s one of the VERAs checking in. One of the “make nice” versions rather than one of the “piggies”. Unfortunately, she is once again citing “fake news” and anti-American propaganda sites.
World News Daily is hardly the most reliable source, but the link does begin with a piece by Robert Reich that is credible. Unfortunately it soon swings over to horseshit from American Thinker and Washington Free Beacon, and becomes an attack on the “liberals” who are “out to get” Trump.
Beware of ANYTHING that any of the VERAs post, even the ones that “play nice”.
Trump is a figurehead. The comic fallguy. An easy target to attack. It is the administration and the apparatus that props him up that is the threat.
(forgot to sub)
Couldn’t it all be moved to another country? One where Trump can’t gag _real_ facts?
It has been…
They may sue to have the data turned over, but I think it’s going to turn into a pop-goes-the-weasel thing if they do. They’ve pissed of so many people around the world, they won’t be getting control of this data again.
I earlier came across a link to a website where the whole page has been copied. Nothing on the web disappears completely, as many women have discovered about compromising material. I’m sure there are many copies, although they may be much harder to find.
I also read that the national parks administration was (being ordered to) deleting tweets about CO² levels, and that the dept of Agr was also being forced to unsay things. It is starting to look like (denial of) climate change is a major policy focus, worthy of actual fighting effort, beyond just neglect and denial.
Shock and awe tactics. Expect worse, much worse!
Reblogged this on AGR Daily News Service.
The Fossil Fuel interests have captured the three levels of the US Federal Government. The short-term financial interests of coal, oil and gas are now the first interests of the USA Federal Government.
The interests of the people of the USA were lost in the election. Lies won the election and now run the Government, resistance is now mandatory. Those playing key roles in climate science will need everyone’s help.
In Australia:
When the fossil fuel interests won the federal election in Australia and Abbott was elected, the Climate Council replaced the Climate Commission when it lost all it’s federal funding. https://www.climatecouncil.org.au/about-us
Lots of climate research was shut down. Lots of scientists lost their jobs. Now the fossil fuel LNP backed politicians are way down in the polls and look set to lose the next election. Seven hard right federal politicians lost their seats after a grass roots campaign with cloud funding of $500,000 to explain the issues to everyone in their electorates. It worked they are out. Only a few hard right are left and the Liberal/National Party (LNP) coalition (Australian Tories) are in power by only 1 vote in the house federally. One more wrong move and they are out!
Cloud funding instead of Government funding will by needed for many similar US climate research areas. The strange orange falsehoods will eventually loose office.
Don’t give up, get even. As each of our funds allow we need to end our use of fossil fuels. The scientists need our help. The gloves are now off the lies and brutality is now plain.
It’s time to organize to allow civilization in the USA to have a future.
Might be worth adding that in Australia the Climate Council (who put a lot of very clear facts on climate change into mainstream media and other outlets) are now entirely crowd funded!
Well, that means EPA is not anymore trustworthy, no? I guess there’ll be a gap of uncertain lenght in the reliable information from USA.
The farce of an election was so obviously a coup d’etat by the fossil fuel industry.
They are the people that really own countries, and their people.
If you can’t hack an election, then hack the people by making them believe what you need them to in order to gain power.
Take a lie, big it up and repeat often and loudly to terrify the crap out of them into voting for you.
This is how people get radicalized and civil wars start, even civil ones.
It’s a fustercluck in a shitstorm in a handbasket to hell.
Resist as if your planet depends on it, because it does.
Not sure whether the freeze has been interpreted properly. If you give someone a grant you cannot suspend payments just like that without legal recourse, etc. Normally freeze means no modifications or additions, not actual cancellation of contracts and payments. Don’t know anything about the legal details, but it would surprise me if you could simply stop paying a grant leaving the recipient in the lurch. After someone may have take decisions, moved, etc., leaving you open for all kinds of legal redress of damages suffered, breach of contract, etcetc.
All that may be true, but does it matter? What matters is the message that is being sent and the negative impact it will have in the future work of the EPA and scientists working on climate change or protecting air and water.
PS Did all watch the two hour American Experience program on PBS last night? The one on Rachel Carson? I am old enough to have read her books when they came out, and they had a major impact on me then and since—-the PBS special gave a lot of info about her personal life and fleshed her out as a person.
Learned a lot, and she is now a many times bigger hero in my eyes. She was employed by the Fish and Wildlife Service for many years, and don’t be surprised when the FWS and all other government agencies with missions similar to EPA’s also come under attack.
From the article:
It isn’t the same thing as as having a living, breathing, growing website, but people may want to check out:
https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.epa.gov/climatechange/*
They have over 11,000 files archived, and you can sort by “from” to get the most current. It likely isn’t comprehensive, but I suspect it is a fairly substantial part of the EPA’s climate website. The people at Internet Archive Wayback Machine are currently located in the United States, and while some of their material is located in different countries, only with the election of Donald Trump have they decided it may be a good idea to have a backup of their entire archive in another country. They picked Canada and have been raising money for this endeavor.
Rachel Maddow had a story on it:
Trump of course took down the climate section of the White House website the very first day. Other parts have been taken down as well. However, everything is backed up at:
Gavin might want to get busy, though, if he hasn’t already.