There isn’t a whole lot to say about this, other than to call your attention to it.
Apparently, there are a lot of climate researchers who actually think the incoming Trump administration will try to eliminate their records of data and analytical work. These people are reportedly in a frenzy to copy what they’ve got and get it stored in a protected place, for fear of losing it.
“Doing this can only be a good thing,” said environmental researcher Nick Santos. “Hopefully they leave everything in place. But if not, we’re planning for that.” …
Trump is even reportedly planning to sap NASA of funds for climate research to refocus the organization on space exploration. “If you can just get rid of the data, you’re in a stronger position to argue we should do nothing about climate change,” cautioned Andrew Dressler, who teaches atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University.
Scientists are responding by collectively copying and saving climate change data, with meetings across North America taking place to discuss how to store all the information. At the University of Toronto this coming weekend, researchers plan to “guerrilla archive” environmental data…
Yes: imagine sapping the National Aeronautics and Space Administration of funds for climate research, and refocusing the organization on space exploration. Besides being indicative of a desire to destroy people’s data, this move would seem to match the agency’s mission to its title. Oh, the humanity!
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
We can go through the litany of speculation about what’s actually happening.
– The warmist scientists are projecting. This one seems like a no-brainer, since many of them try to stamp out inconvenient climate data before it even has a chance to register. (When it does leave a trail, pesky snoopers keep pulling the old Scooby-Doo and exposing how it’s been manipulated.) It’s a reasonable bet that the warmists assume others will have the same inconsiderate, eliminationist approach to data.
– The warmists believe the unhinged progressive hype that Trump is Hitler, and will send in the jackbooted thugs on 21 January to raid their offices and march them at gunpoint to the concentration camps. (Ben Bowles had a good reminder for us today of just how unhinged the progressive hype is.)
We should probably consider a third possibility as well:
– The warmists aren’t going to leave their data to be sifted through by unbiased third parties. They’re not just “archiving” it for protection. They’re getting it away from inspection by other eyes. They don’t intend to leave it lying around to convict them of biased analysis and manipulation.
Whatever the reason, there can be no good one. It is unjustified and paranoid to think that Trump will sweep through agencies and labs trying to root out data stores.
I suppose the seed is being planted to create a fake narrative that Trump is about to do that, or might, or at any rate, that innocent, well-meaning climate researchers legitimately fear such an attack on their work. Whatever. Think up some more adjectives, if you like, or just shake your head and move on.
