Quoting from http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2016/s4624686.htm
Transcript and video available at above URL.
Preserving climate science data in the Trump era
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Broadcast: 22/02/2017
Reporter: Michael Vincent
In the United States, hacktivists are racing to save critical climate science data they fear will be erased by the new Trump administration. Michael Vincent reports.
Transcript
(CROWD CHEERING)
ACTIVIST: Our science has been politicised by people who are motivated to reject facts because those facts conflict with their world view, their political beliefs, their economic self-interest.
MICHAEL VINCENT, REPORTER: The Trump Administration is weeks old, and America's scientists already feel under fire.
CROWD: (CHANTING) Stand up for science.
ELIZABETH ENGLAND, DATA REFUGE DC: I feel like it is a war on information. There is a war on facts.
MICHAEL VINCENT: They fear critical data from NASA's climate change program will be restricted or even deleted under Donald Trump's orders.
PROFESSOR LES FIELD, AUSTRALIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCE: The White House website firstly removes the pages on climate change and replaced them with pages on America's energy future.
And we heard reports that the staff of the Environmental Protection Agency, the EPA in the US, were ordered to take down websites, web pages, regarding climate science.
MICHAEL VINCENT: Subtler changes are also at work.
GRETCHEN GEHRKE, ENVIRONMENTAL DATA & GOVERNANCE INITIATIVE: Things like removing links to greenhouse gas data. We are seeing some changes where you will see where there used to be links including information about things that caused climate change. Some of that has been removed for and it is more about just the fact that climate change exists, but, you know, there is some dampening of the information about what might be contributing to it.
MICHAEL VINCENT: It goes all the way down to information provided to children. Chelsea Clinton tweeting, "Very disappointing but not surprising to see these changes on a government website aimed at educating kids about energy and the environment."
Amongst the changes on the US energy information administration website for children - "there are environmental concerns associated with fracking." That was taken out and replaced with, "fracking has some effects on the environment."
This word play among multiple changes on just that one kids' site. The great fear is scientific data is also being taken down.
PROFESSOR LES FIELD: It is a total and utter abhorrence to a scientist to think that original data, raw data, is either restricted, you can't get at it, or perhaps in the worst case scenario it may be gone.
MICHAEL VINCENT: The US President is no longer being trusted to keep critical scientific information safe. Around the US archivists, academics and activists are gathering to download and protect government data and keep it public. NASA, NOAA, the Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency are amongst those targeted.
PROFESSOR LES FIELD: NASA it produces the core atmospheric data, the data on sea temperatures, on sea levels quite accurately, surface temperatures, surface currents.
All of which feed into the main climate models for modelling the weather all over the world. If that was to be compromised now, if that was to scale back or become non-available, that would have a dramatic impact almost immediately on the world's ability to model.
ELIZABETH ENGLAND: We have already seen that information can become harder to access under the current administration. So we are trying to create a way to ensure that this information remains available to the public.
MICHAEL VINCENT: Elizabeth England helped organise the DataRefuge project in the US capital.
ELIZABETH ENGLAND: Because we were in DC, hosting this event, we had a number of people that were there anonymously, that are civil servants, that work for these agencies and it is their life's work.
Their ongoing research depends on this information remaining available. So it is very scary to be in a time where facts are being pushed up against so much so that we have rogue social media accounts.
MICHAEL VINCENT: It is true various agencies, the US Geological Survey, the National Parks service and NASA all had rogue social media sites created to counter a gag placed on them by Donald Trump's Administration just last week.
There are also concerns about who will run the agencies.
SCOTT PRUITT: I have confirmed I would lead the EPA with the following principles in mind: First, we must reject as a nation the false paradigm that if you are pro-energy, you are anti-environment and if you are pro-environment you are anti-energy.
MICHAEL VINCENT: President Trump's pick for head of the EPA had previously sued it more than a dozen times. Democrats were trying to delay the new chief's confirmation, arguing emails he wrote to oil companies should be made public first.
CHUCK SCHUMER, SENATE MINORITY LEADER: It's not the worst thing in the world to take a few extra days to properly vet someone who will have immense power over our nation's streams, skies, even the lead levels in our homes, our schools and our water supply.
MITCH MCCONNELL, SENATE MAJORITY LEADER: The effort has been to delay the nominations that they have made controversial as long as possible in order to play to their left wing base, which will not accept the results of the election.
(CROWD CHEERING)
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