The University of Pennsylvania has jumped on to a project that would protect vital climate data from President Donald Trump’s administration, which has threatened to limit the discussion of combating climate change. The project, launched on Twitter by meteorologist and podcaster Eric Holthaus, has successfully preserved thousands of climate datasets before the Trump administration deleted them.
Holthaus predicts across-the-board budget cuts in the realm of climate science throughout multiple parts of the government. He mentions NASA, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy as organizations that may suffer as a result. He suggests those employed at these agencies will face dilemmas that will inhibit the ability to preserve datasets.
The climate datasets scattered throughout the United States federal government are the basis for research and projects conducted by scientists all over the world. Many of the datasets were stored only in U.S. government servers, which has suddenly put the data at risk of being lost entirely due to the Trump administration’s stance on global warming. Climate scientists and other climate research authorities have begun prioritizing datasets that need to be protected for future research. There has been a strong mobilization in the young intellectual community to push the data protection cause forward.
Read the full story here (via NPR).