It felt like an assault on the federal government’s online science portal, which Rebecca Lindsey had assisted in running for a decade and a half, when she was laid off by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in February. The website, Climate.gov, featured a huge collection of climate change research.
It was the first blow in what was going to happen to Climate.gov,” Lindsey, who was the website’s program manager and managing editor before, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. The remainder of her staff was let go by May, and the site itself was transferred from its long-standing independence to the NOAA public relations division the following month.
Environmentalists claim that the Trump administration’s historic modifications to federal websites, which include stopping data gathering and concealing data that already exists, have jeopardized crucial climate research. “It’s as if the federal science enterprise has experienced a natural disaster,” Lindsey stated. As a result, non-profit organizations and volunteers are rushing to preserve data, make it publicly accessible, and supply the means for others to use it.
As part of the effort to restore Climate.gov as Climate.us, Lindsey and her small group of unpaid volunteers are involved. This month, they made the most recent national climate assessment, which was taken offline in July, and content that had been blocked due to the administration’s new diversity and equality policy accessible again.
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