Scientists Frantically Copying Climate Data, Fearing It Might Vanish Under Trump

Scientists are so alarmed that decades of their crucial climate measurements could vanish under a hostile Trump administration that they have begun copying reams of government data onto independent servers abroad in hopes of safeguarding it from political interference, says The Washington Post.

Their efforts include an upcoming “guerrilla archiving” event in Toronto this Saturday, December 17, where experts will copy irreplaceable public data. Michelle Murphy, with the University of Toronto’s Technoscience Research Unit, told the BBC News that on guerrilla archiving day, volunteers will help select data they fear is most vulnerable to being lost, map the location of inaccessible environmental databases, and build a project “toolkit” for other groups interested in preserving some of the roughly 75,000 publications on the sprawling EPA website.

She said that the team was in a “race against time” to identify government sites they believe will be rapidly changed after Mr Trump is sworn in on January 20.

The Post article also said that at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union being held in San Francisco this week, volunteer lawyers from the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund have been handing out a 16-page guide that contains advice for government researchers who believe their work is being suppressed — as well as information on how scientists should react if they receive hate mail or death threats.