Don't Say "Climate": Trump Administration Scrubbing Climate Information From Federal Websites,

Don't say climate change!  Trump administration scrubs
mention of it from everywhere, because if you don't 
see the words then it doesn't exist, apparently. 

 If you don't say "climate change" then it doesn't exist.  

That, apparently is the logic of our lovely Trump administration as federal websites across the board remove pretty much all references to climate change over the course of his first month in office. 

Trump's first term played fast and loose with lots of information including items related to climate change. 

But this time, it's a full throttled Orwellian vision in which "facts" are whatever the Trump administration wants them to be. Reality is besides the point.  

This post isn't even talking yet about anticipated firings at NOAA and NWS that will hobble the nation's weather forecasting and warning system. That' update is coming in a future post arriving pretty soon. I'm just talking in this post about the Trump administration's thought that if you don't ever think about climate change, then it will never be a problem. 

Or something like that. 

Among the harmful firings at the Federal Emergency Management Agency or FEMA are staffers that worked on climate change related issues. Since climate change affects the severity, location and types of disasters the U.S. faces, you'd think you'd need these staffers,

You know, to anticipate where and how disasters might strike so the agency can more readily help victims of these calamities. 

But I guess not 

The sprawling federal Agriculture Department has been ordered to scrub references to climate change as well, as Politico reports. 

The directive "could affect information across dozens of programs including climate-smart agriculture initiatives, USDA climate has, and Forest Service information regarding wildfires the frequency and severity of which scientists have linked to hotter, drier conditions fueled by climate change."

For now, some climate related material is still available from the Agriculture Department. USDA Climate Hubs, for example, was still up as of Wednesday (FEB5

NASA's Global Climate Change website is about to transition away, it it hasn't already.    It's been a handy source of climate information, including a dashboard on the home page that gives you the current amount of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere and their trends, global temperature and its trend and what direction Arctic sea ice is headed. Spoiler: Down.

There's now suddenly a disclaimer on the NASA Global Climate Change website that says "NASA's Global Climate Change website is going to look a little different in the coming months because we're headed to a new home, a more integrated portal on science.nasa.gov. Keep your eyes on our new space as we transition."

Yeah, love the attempt at the PR language (eye roll).  I'm not going to make a definitive conclusion on what the Trump administration is going to do with this site, but I bet it's not good. 

Climate information is disappearing from a lot of federal government websites, not just NASA. As Inside Climate News reports:

"The Trump administration is also removing climate information and documents from the U.S. State Department website, which (several days ago) had a climate section filled with documents related to U.S. climate policies aimed at meting the terms of the 2014 Paris climate pact, as well as materials outlining reaching plans to cut emissions of greenhouse gases other than carbon dioxide, including methane.

But searching the current State Department website for the term 'global warming' just now leads to a long list of non-functioning links, with the Biden-era climate materials relegated to archives that have to be searched for separately."

 Even experienced scientists are now beginning to have trouble finding climate info on government websites. As Inside Climate News reports:

"Some of the changes may already be making it harder for U.S. climate scientists to collaborate internationally. 

David Ho, a University of Hawaii at Manoa climate researcher, said last week he found an error message when he tried to look for reports related to his work on ocean carbon cycles on the White House Office of Science and Technology website."

There are efforts to preserve web material that already exists before it is completely scrubbed. There's End of Term Web Archive, which is a collaboration of nonprofit groups, universities and two federal agencies to preserve scientific data. 

Other organizations have been combing government websites, preserving science data before it can be scrubbed by the Trump administration. 

I worry it's a matter of time that we won't be able to see basic climate data like the monthly reports NOAA"s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) regularly releases.

Or even just the huge waves of routine daily data all the National Weather Service offices release. After all, some rogue scientist could use and compile that data to find temperature trends (which is part of what the NCEI does now.

Guy Walton, the dude from Guy on Climate agrees, as this lack of information hurts everyone, from citizen scientists like me to experts like Walton. 

"....if the NCEI surface temperature records site gets taken down, I can't do my research. Only a few months ago, ,I was thinking that after the election of Kamala Harris, the NCEI record site might be improved with some of my input. Now I will feel fortunate if it and other tools for research used by many other scientists are not touched. We will see." 

Any truthful information is suspect in the Trump administration. You probably don't even have to use "banned"words or phrases like climate change or global warming. 

Merely mentioning a record hot day, month or season might well get you in trouble 

Even collaboration of any kind is out. As CBC reported, any cooperation between Canadian scientists or Environment Canada and NOAA are pretty much verboten. 

NOAA scientists now just submit for review if any discussions with Canadians include climate, energy, offshore wind, ocean mapping and exploration, competitive seafood, aquaculture, ocean plastics, the World Meteorological Organization, Arctic security and Arctic energy, notes CBC. 

A side effect of all this would be a brain drain from the United States to Canada and European countries, perhaps Asia too.

Most scientists want to seek the truth of the world around them. If that becomes impossible to do in the United States, then do it elsewhere, right?

The Trump administration's scrubbing away of any references to climate change won't just hurt Americans subject to the direct disasters and dangers created by global warming. Our economy, our innovation, our safety, our own wallets are all at risk. 

All because the merry band of oligarchs want to make a few more trillion dollars. 

 

Trump Intensifies Threats Against FEMA And All Aspects Of Disaster Relief As Calamities Continue To Mount

President Trump wants to get rid of FEMA and let
states handle disasters on their own, but that
could further harm the people he claims to champion.

President Trump on Friday doubled down on his idea to get rid of FEMA as he toured disaster sites in North Carolina and California. 

He also continued to float other ideas that will make life much harder for victims of weather disasters, which are increasing in number and scope due to climate change and increasing populations in the way of such calamities. 

Trump said instead, the federal government could provide money directly to the states, but I'm unsure how exactly it would work. 

Though all states have emergency plans for disasters, simply throwing money at states without resources in place to deal with the immediate aftermath of an emergency is dangerous. 

FEMA is rightly criticized for its performance with long term recovery that is supposed to kick in after the immediate emergency has passed.  Disaster victims deal with long waits and a miserable bureaucracy trying to get aid to rebulld homes, businesses and infrastructure. 

Where FEMA usually shines is during and in the hours and days immediately after a catastrophe like a flood, hurricane or wildfire.  Sure, local and state resources immediately respond in a disaster, but if the emergency is huge, states would be left scrambling with short supplies and manpower when time is of the essence.

The sooner and more complete a response happens in a disaster, the more lives are saved. Trump is threatening to upend all of that initial response. 

Also, disasters often cover wide areas, often multiple states at once. These emergencies create a whole bunch of issues that need involvement from federal agencies.  The Army Corp of Engineers might need to step in with debris removal. The Environmental Protection Agency might have to deal with toxic debris and residue after a disaster. 

What if more planes, trucks and emergency vehicles are needed than a local government or state has?  This is where FEMA comes in to help. 

Disbanding FEMA would probably hurt the working class that Trump tries to champion, as people with low and moderate incomes are far less likely to easily recover from disasters than people with more cash lying around. 

Contrary to probably his own beliefs, Trump can't just erase FEMA with the wave of his magic wand.  Congress would have to vote to disband the agency. 

Since an increasing number of disasters are hitting both blue and red states, there is bipartisan support for FEMA, regardless of any real or alleged flaws, as the Washington Post reminds us. 

OTHER TRUMP ISSUES

As expected, Trump has not been kind to weather and climate disasters and issues since he took office this month. 

California Aid

While Trump contemplates getting rid of FEMA, he's still on his kick to attach strings to any aid to recover from the horrific wildfires there. 

As The Hill reports, Trump wants to force California to institute Voter ID before it gets disaster aid. Never mind that Voter ID has nothing to do with the disaster and several other states lack this law.  Trump is also demanding California turn on this mysterious spigot that would allow lots of water to flow to southern California.

Such a big giant spigot does to exist. 

There's actually plenty of water stored in southern California reservoirs at the moment. Hydrants did go dry in the Palisades wildfire because so much water was being used all at once. Sounds like the hydrant system needs to be redesigned and improved, but that can be done without any fictitious spigots. 

Paris Climate Accord

This wasn't a surprise, but Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement, just as he did during his first term. (President Biden got us back into the accord during his term).

Under the Paris agreement, nations around the world agreed to cut greenhouse gas emissions to limit global warming. Trump keeps saying the Paris accord burdens the U.S. economy. 

For their part, reports NPR:

"Laurence Tubiana, CEO of the European Climate Foundation and an architect of the Paris Agreement, said in a statement that the U.S. pulling out of the deal is unfortunate. But, she said, international climate action 'has proven resilient and is stronger than any single country's politics and policies."

Exiting the agreement will probably harm the United States more than it harms the world as a whole.

NPR again, quoting David Waskow, who leads international climate policy and politics at the World Resources Institute: 

"Leaving the accord could prove damaging, Waskow said, by potentially sidelining the U.S. from some clean energy and and green tech markets and reducing leverage with other countries. That could hamper some of Trump's broader economic goals for the U.S."

Other Ideas

Trump has always been obsessed with wind turbines. He hates 'em.  The theory is they installed turbines off the coast of Scotland offshore from one of his golf courses and he thinks they're ugly. So he hates 'em all. Anyway, Trump has imposed a moratorium on new wind projects on all federal lands. So far, Trump hasn't been able to do anything about turbines on private land. 

Trump might hate offshore wind turbines, but he loves offshore oil drilling, despite the obvious environmental dangers.  

Finally, Trump figures if he somehow makes information about an issue go away, the issue itself goes away. Case in point: A page on the White House that dealt with climate change has disappeared now that Trump is in office.