Control, Alter, Delete
Trump's repression of climate science, and the race to rescue vital data from his fascist bonfire.
At its core, all climate action stands atop an irrefutable mountain of scientific findings. This is precisely why Donald Trump and other far-right climate deniers across the globe are systematically eliminating all the research they can get their hands on, blinding us to the pace of climate breakdown.
The Trump administration has already defunded more than 100 climate research projects and wiped thousands of climate mentions and datasets from government websites;
It has undertaken mass firings of climate scientists, including all of the 400-odd researchers working on the US National Climate Assessment;
Researchers fearing for their jobs are "removing their names from publications, abandoning studies, and rewriting grant proposals and papers to remove scientifically accurate terms (such as climate change) that agencies are flagging as objectionable";
The US government is also scrapping research contracts internationally, including those with at least six Australian universities, after sending emails asking whether research projects were related to “climate” or "environmental justice";
Trump’s plan is modelled on Argentina’s climate-denying president Javier Milei, who cut his country’s environment department’s budget in half and is moving to eliminate funding of all environmental research in the country.
Blinded By The Right
The consequences of this Orwellian reshaping of truth are profound, and in many cases will be difficult or impossible to repair. Once data is gone, it is gone.
The halting of emissions tracking and the deletion of thousands of datasets from government websites represent a potentially permanent loss of climate records, heralding in what science historian Robert Proctor has described as a “golden age of ignorance”;
These cuts endanger the world’s future capacity to understand — let alone address — the climate crisis, such as in the case of the imminent disabling of the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii;
The facility is the most important tracker of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels for decades (and just observed a seasonal record in excess of 430 parts per million). Among other things its output is essential to Australia’s ability to predict extreme weather events;
The dismantling of research capacity represents the potential loss of a generation of climate scientists, many of whom are moving into new fields and will be difficult to get back.
Safe Havens & Citizen Scientists
Plenty of initiatives are underway to salvage the science, including countries offering research opportunities to US scientists. There are also ways for anyone to get involved directly in a raft of citizen science projects.
Europe is stepping up to attract sacked US scientists, with countries and universities moving to shift climate information off US servers;
The Australian Academy of Science has a plan to offer opportunities to US talent, although it is yet to secure the backing it needs from the Australian government;
Over a thousand threatened datasets have been backed up by the Data Rescue Project, which continues to seek submissions of at-risk research, while the Public Environmental Data Partners group is calling for volunteers to archive key information before it is lost;
Anyone can use tools like the WayBack Machine to create records of climate webpages, or donate to support such initiatives;
In response to growing threats from climate deniers, Wikipedia is rolling out tools to protect the identity of its editors, amid an urgent need for volunteers to help edit climate pages, particularly with Australia’s existing Wikipedia editors struggling with burnout.
Misinformation about the climate crisis has been getting exponentially worse in recent years, but without immediate collaborative action, we may all soon have nothing but misinformation left.