(Il pendolo Trump continua ad andare in totale controtendenza. Dal Post)
Alarmed that decades of crucial climate
measurements could vanish under a hostile Trump administration, scientists have
begun a feverish attempt to copy reams of government data onto independent
servers in hopes of safeguarding it from any political interference.
The efforts include a “guerrilla archiving” event in Toronto, where
experts will copy irreplaceable public data, meetings at the
University of Pennsylvania focused on how to download as much federal data as
possible in the coming weeks, and a collaboration of scientists and database
experts who are compiling an online site to harbor scientific information.
“Something that seemed a little
paranoid to me before all of a sudden seems potentially realistic, or at least
something you’d want to hedge against,” said Nick Santos, an environmental
researcher at the University of California at Davis, who over the weekend
began copying government climate data onto a nongovernment server, where it
will remain available to the public. “Doing this can only be a good thing.
Hopefully they leave everything in place. But if not, we’re planning for that.”
In recent weeks, President-elect
Donald Trump has nominated a growing list of Cabinet members who have
questioned the overwhelming scientific consensus around global warming. His
transition team at the Department of Energy has asked agency officials for names of employees and
contractors who have participated in international climate talks and
worked on the scientific basis for Obama administration-era regulations of
carbon emissions. One Trump adviser suggested that NASA no longer should conduct climate research and
instead should focus on space exploration.
The Trump transition team has issued
a list of 74 questions for the Energy Department, asking officials there to
identify which department employees and contractors have worked on forging an
international climate pact as well as domestic efforts to cut the nation's
carbon output. (Whitney Shefte/The Washington Post)
Those moves have stoked fears among
the scientific community that Trump, who has called the notion of man-made
climate change “a hoax” and vowed to reverse environmental policies put in
place by President Obama, could try to alter or dismantle parts of the federal
government’s repository of data on everything from rising sea levels to the
number of wildfires in the country.
Michael Halpern, deputy
director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the advocacy group Union of
Concerned Scientists, argued that Trump has appointed a “band of climate
conspiracy theorists” to run transition efforts at various agencies, along with
nominees to lead them who share similar views.]
“They have been salivating at the
possibility of dismantling federal climate research programs for years. It’s
not unreasonable to think they would want to take down the very data that they
dispute,” Halpern said in an email. “There is a fine line between being
paranoid and being prepared, and scientists are doing their best to be
prepared. . . . Scientists are right to preserve data and archive websites
before those who want to dismantle federal climate change research programs
storm the castle.”
To be clear, neither
Trump nor his transition team have said the new administration
plans to manipulate or curtail publicly available data. The transition
team did not respond to a request for comment. But some scientists aren’t
taking any chances.
“What are the most important .gov
climate assets?” Eric Holthaus, a meteorologist and self-proclaimed “climate
hawk,” tweeted from his Arizona home Saturday evening. “Scientists: Do you
have a US .gov climate database that you don’t want to see disappear?”
Within hours, responses flooded in
from around the country. Scientists added links to dozens of government databases
to a Google spreadsheet. Investors offered to help
fund efforts to copy and safeguard key climate data. Lawyers offered pro bono legal
help. Database experts offered server space and help organizing mountains of
data. In California, Santos began building an online repository to
“make sure these data sets remain freely and broadly accessible.”
Climate data from NASA and the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have been politically
vulnerable. When Tom Karl, director of the National Centers for Environmental
Information, and his colleagues published a study in 2015 seeking to challenge
the idea that there had been a global warming “slowdown” or “pause” during the
2000s, they relied, in significant part, on updates to NOAA’s ocean temperature data set,
saying the data “do not support the notion of a global warming ‘hiatus.
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Caro Oscar, sono
molto perplesso, non capisco! Trump può avere tutti i difetti, da somaro ad
arrogante etc. ma c'è un partito, per carità non certo dei migliori, che ha
personalità in grado di guidarlo. Lo abbiamo visto con Regan, non certo
un'aquila, ma guidato da un polacco dal nome impronunciabile ma con mente
eccelsa. Possibile che nel partito republicano non vi siano tali elementi?
D'accordo che ha vinto le elezioni da solo, ma poi deve governare e questo è
un buon momento perchè i repubblicani, se non sbaglio, hanno la maggioranza
in senato. Illuminaci !
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Come se fosse semplice...a presto !
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