Trump's 'targeted' attack on climate data escalates across government

• Trump administration limiting references to climate, data
• Effort seen as more 'targeted' than in first term
• Volunteers working to restore, preserve information

RICHMOND, Virginia - In his second term, the administration of President Donald Trump has waged a systematic attack not only against climate change and research but the very language and data that undergird modern scientific conclusions, according to experts.

The campaign has data experts scrambling to restore and preserve what they can while struggling to keep pace with the all-out effort that they say extends far beyond what the president was working to accomplish in his first term.

"It feels far more targeted, far more organised, far more rapid," said Jonathan Gilmour, who works with the Public Environmental Data Partners, a coalition working on data restoration and preservation.  

Among the administration's efforts, the Environmental Protection Agency is moving to reverse the longstanding finding that greenhouse gases are harmful to public health.

The administration is also deleting, removing and downplaying reams of data and web pages tied to issues like environmental justice.

"(The) prevailing attitude ... in the first administration towards climate change ... was sort of climate denial. Now, we're seeing climate erasure," Gilmour said.

"It goes beyond the sort of standard denial and is far more dangerous. They're trying to remove the data that we use to make sense of how humans have impacted the world and how those changes affect us and our societies and our health."

Limiting online availability

Among other targets like health care and LGBTQ+ data, the Trump administration, through agencies like the EPA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), is limiting or removing studies and data tied to climate change.

That includes limiting the public online availability of the National Climate Assessment, a congressionally mandated report that typically comes out every four years and documents human influence on the world's rising temperatures.

A White House official said the scope of the assessment was being "reevaluated," after the administration dismissed hundreds of researchers and experts working on the next version.    

The official said the assessment participants were told they were "released from their roles ... while plans for the next assessment are developed, noting that there may be future opportunities for them to contribute or engage."

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) had signalled it would try to host previous reports online after the website of the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), which oversees the climate assessment, starting going dark in late June.

However, that appears to no longer be the case.

A spokesperson for NASA said the USGCRP "met its statutory requirements by presenting its reports to Congress."

"NASA has no legal obligations to host globalchange.gov's data," said spokesperson Bethany Stevens.

Also gone from online access is an environmental justice screening tool the Biden administration set up as part of its pledge to steer at least 40% of certain federal benefits to historically underserved communities.

"Probably a lot of people were expecting to see the changes to environmental justice and (DEI)-related information that we did see," said Izzy Pacenza, project coordinator with the Environmental Data & Governance Initiative (EDGI), which is also involved with the Public Environmental Data Partners.

"But for me personally, I didn't expect that to be so expansive and for it to be one of the first things that the administration targeted."

The EPA did not respond to requests for comment.

'Shooting yourself in the foot'

NOAA said in May it would no longer add to a database of U.S. disasters where the damage exceeds $1 billion, although it would keep historical data through 2024 available. 
    

NOAA also did not respond to requests for comment.

Fulton Ring, a private company that also works with the partnership, announced this month it has restored its own version of the billion-dollar disaster database.

"I think the attack on data was probably somewhat unprecedented ... it's one of these things where to prove a point, you're sort of shooting yourself in the foot," said Rajan Desai, a company co-founder.

"Why would you mess up your own government's capabilities just to send a message, right? It makes no sense."

Part of the issue now, Desai said, is spreading the word, which essentially is a volunteer, grassroots effort.

"It's a great thing to archive all these data sets, but it's sort of like, a tree falls in the forest and no one's around to hear it – did it actually happen?" Desai said.

"If you don't actually do something useful with these data sets ... you won't be able to galvanize support for starting recollection of these data sets."

Pacenza said part of the message is that private individuals should not have to step in and fill a governmental function in the first place.

"They have the resources, they have the money to do it and also it is funded with our taxpayer dollars, this data and information," Pacenza said.

"So while we're thinking about 'this is great that people are doing this,' ... we shouldn't have to and we need to be advocating for our government to do its job."

(Reporting by David Sherfinski; Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst.)