Threats to Climate-Related US Agencies

Trump’s cronies are already going after US government employees involved in the response to climate change. You can read about it here:

• Hadas Gold and Rene Marsh, Elon Musk publicized the names of government employees he wants to cut. It’s terrifying federal workers, CNN, 27 November 2024.

When President-elect Donald Trump said Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy would recommend major cuts to the federal government in his administration, many public employees knew that their jobs could be on the line.

Now they have a new fear: becoming the personal targets of the world’s richest man—and his legions of followers.

Last week, in the midst of the flurry of his daily missives, Musk reposted two X posts that revealed the names and titles of people holding four relatively obscure climate-related government positions. Each post has been viewed tens of millions of times, and the individuals named have been subjected to a barrage of negative attention. At least one of the four women named has deleted her social media accounts.

Although the information he posted on those government positions is available through public online databases, these posts target otherwise unknown government employees in roles that do not deal directly with the public.

[…]

It appears [one] woman Musk targeted has since gone dark on social media, shutting down her accounts. The agency, the US International Development Finance Corporation, says it supports investment in climate mitigation, resilience and adaptation in low-income countries experiencing the most devastating effects of climate change. A DFC official said the agency does not comment on individual personnel positions or matters.

Musk also called out the Department of Energy’s chief climate officer in its loan programs office. The office funds fledgling energy technologies in need of early investment and awarded $465 million to Tesla Motors in 2010, helping to position Musk’s electric vehicle company as an EV industry leader. The chief climate officer works across agencies to “reduce barriers and enable clean energy deployment” according to her online bio.

Another woman, who serves as senior advisor on environmental justice and climate change at the Department of Health and Human Services, was another Musk target. HHS focuses on protecting the public health from pollution and other environmental hazards, especially in low-income communities and communities of color that are experiencing a higher share of exposures and impacts. The office first launched at Health and Human Services under the Biden administration in 2022.

A senior adviser to climate at the Department of Housing and Urban Development was also singled out. The original X post said the woman “should not be paid $181,648.00 by the US taxpayer to be the ‘Climate advisor’ at HUD.” Musk reposted with the comment: “But maybe her advice is amazing.” Followed by two laughing emojis.

This revives fears that US climate change policies will be rolled back. Reporters are interviewing me again about the Azimuth Climate Data Backup Project—because we’re again facing the possibility that a Trump administration could get rid of the US government’s climate data.

From 2016 to 2018, our team backed up up 30 terabytes of US government databases on climate change and the environment, saving it from the threat of a government run by climate change deniers. 627 people contributed a total of $20,427 to our project on Kickstarter to pay for storage space and a server.

That project is done now, with the data stored in a secret permanent location. But that data is old, and there’s plenty more by now.

I don’t have the energy to repeat the process now. As before, I’m hoping that the people at NOAA, NASA, etc. have quietly taken their own precautions. They’re in a much better position to do it! But I don’t know what they’ve done.

First I got interviewed for this New York Times article about the current situation:

• Austyn Gaffney, How Trump’s return could affect climate and weather data, New York Times, 14 November 2024.

Then I got interviewed for a second article, which says a bit more about what the Azimuth Project actually did:

• Chelsea Harvey, Scientists scramble to save climate data from Trump—again, Scientific American, 22 November 2024.

Eight years ago, as the Trump administration was getting ready to take office for the first time, mathematician John Baez was making his own preparations.

Together with a small group of friends and colleagues, he was arranging to download large quantities of public climate data from federal websites in order to safely store them away. Then-President-elect Donald Trump had repeatedly denied the basic science of climate change and had begun nominating climate skeptics for cabinet posts. Baez, a professor at the University of California, Riverside, was worried the information — everything from satellite data on global temperatures to ocean measurements of sea-level rise — might soon be destroyed.

His effort, known as the Azimuth Climate Data Backup Project, archived at least 30 terabytes of federal climate data by the end of 2017.

In the end, it was an overprecaution.

The first Trump administration altered or deleted numerous federal web pages containing public-facing climate information, according to monitoring efforts by the nonprofit Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI), which tracks changes on federal websites. But federal databases, containing vast stores of globally valuable climate information, remained largely intact through the end of Trump’s first term.

Yet as Trump prepares to take office again, scientists are growing more worried.

Federal datasets may be in bigger trouble this time than they were under the first Trump administration, they say. And they’re preparing to begin their archiving efforts anew.

“This time around we expect them to be much more strategic,” said Gretchen Gehrke, EDGI’s website monitoring program lead. “My guess is that they’ve learned their lessons.”

[….]

Much of the renewed concern about federal data stems from Project 2025, a 900-page conservative policy blueprint spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation that outlines recommendations for the next administration.

Project 2025 calls for major overhauls of some federal science agencies. It suggests that Trump should dismantle NOAA and calls for the next administration to “reshape” the U.S. Global Change Research Program, which coordinates federal research on climate and the environment.

The plan also suggests that the “Biden Administration’s climate fanaticism will need a whole-of-government unwinding.”

A leaked video from the Project 2025 presidential transition project suggested that political appointees “will have to eradicate climate change references from absolutely everywhere.”

Trump has previously distanced himself from Project 2025. In July, he wrote on the social media platform Truth Social that he knew “nothing about Project 2025,” did not know who was behind it and did not have anything to do with the plan.

But since winning the 2024 presidential election, Trump has picked several nominees for his new administration that are credited by name in the conservative policy plan, reviving fears that Project 2025 could influence his priorities.

Trump has also recently named Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead his new so-called Department of Government Efficiency, an external commission tasked with shrinking the federal government, restructuring federal agencies and cutting costs. The announcement has also ignited concerns about job security for federal scientists, including the researchers tasked with maintaining government datasets.

“There are lots and lots of signs that the Trump team is attempting to decapitate the government in the sense of firing lots of people,” said Baez, who co-founded the Azimuth Climate Data Backup Project in 2016 and is currently a professor of the graduate division in the math department at University of California Riverside. “If they manage to do something like that, then these databases could be in more jeopardy.”

Though federal datasets remained largely untouched under the first Trump administration, other climate-related information on federal websites did change or disappear, Gehrke pointed out. EDGI documented about a 40 percent decline in the use of the term “climate change” across 13 federal agencies it monitored during the first term.

A better organized effort could result in more censoring under a second administration, she said.

While groups like EDGI are gearing up for their next efforts, Baez says he has no immediate plans to revamp the Azimuth Climate Data Backup Project — although he hopes other groups will step up instead. One lesson he learned the first time is just how much data exists in the federal ecosystem and how much effort it takes to archive it, even with a dedicated group of volunteers.

“We got sort of a little bit burnt out by that process,” Baez said. “I’m hoping some younger generation of people picks up where we left off.”

If you’re interested in doing this, and want to see what data we backed up, you can see a list here.