Internet information may seem There is foreverBut it is only permanent that people choose to do so.
It’s obvious as the second Trump administration “Floods the areaWith efforts to dismantle scientific agencies and data and websites they use to communicate with the public. Targets range from public health And demography has climate science.
We are a Research librarians And Politician scholarship which belong to a network called Public environmental data partnersA coalition of non -profit organizations, archivists and researchers who rely on federal data in our analysis, our advocacy and our disputes and work to guarantee that the data remain available to the public.
During the first three weeks of Trump’s mandate, we saw the agencies delete access to at least a dozen tools for analyzing climate justice and the environment. THE The new administration has also rubbed The sentence “climate change“Government websites, as well as Terms like “Resilience. “”
Here is why and how public environmental data partners and others ensure that climate science on which the public depends is available forever:
Why government websites and data count
Internet and data availability are necessary for innovation, research and daily life.
Climatologists analyze the observations of satellites of NASA and Meteorological records of the national ocean and atmospheric administration has Understand the changes in progress In the terrestrial system, What causes them And how to protect the climates on which the savings were built. Other researchers use these sources alongside data from the census office for understand who is the most affected by climate change. And every day, people of the world is or does not do to help.
If the data and the tools used to understand the complex data is suddenly removed from the Internet, the work of scientists, civil society organizations and officials themselves can stop. The generation of scientific data and analysis by government scientists is also crucial. Many governments of states manage environmental and public health protection programs that depend on science and data collected by federal agencies.
The deletion of information from government websites also more difficult for the public Participate effectively in key democracy processes, including changes in regulations. When an agency proposes to repeal a rule, for example, it is necessary to request public comments, which often depend on government websites To find information relevant to the rule.
And when web resources are changed or offline, it Managers distrust in government and science. Government agencies have collected climate data, carried out complex analyzes, provided funds and hosted data accessible to the public for years. People around the word include climate change largely due to American federal data. Eliminate it deprives each of the important information about their world.
Goodbye data?
The first Trump administration Deleted discussions on climate change And climatic policies widely On all government websites. However, in our research with the Environmental and governance data initiative During these first four years, we did not find any evidence that data sets had been permanently deleted.
The second Trump administration seems different, with faster and omnipresent deletion of information.
In response, the groups involved in public environmental data partners have been Archiving climatic data sets Our community has prioritized, downloading copies to public standards and cataloging where and how to find them If they disappear from government websites.
Eric Nost, et al., 2021,, CC by
As of February 13, 2025, we had not seen the destruction of the archives of climate science. Many of these data collection programs, such as those of the NOAA or EPA greenhouse gas reporting program, are required by the Congress. However, the administration had limited or eliminated Access to many data.
Maintain tools to understand climate change
We have seen a targeted effort to systematically delete tools such as dashboards that summarize and visualize the social dimensions of climate change. For example, the Climate and economic screening tool Marginalized communities with low -income and others that should undergo serious climate change, such as losses of cultures and forest fires. The mapping tool was taken offline shortly after First set of decrees.
Most original data behind the mapping tool, such as forest fire risk forecasts, is Always availableBut is now more difficult to find and access. But because the cartography tool has been developed as An open-source projectWe were able to recreate.
Preserve websites for the future
In some cases, entire web pages are offline. For example, the 25 -year climate change center page at the Ministry of Transport no longer exists. The link returns visitors to the home page of the department.
Other pages have limited access. For example, the EPA has not yet deleted its pages of climate change, but it has Deleted the “climate change” of its navigation menuWhich makes it more difficult to search for these pages.
Machine Wayback Internet Archive
Fortunately, our partners at End -of -term web archive have captured snapshots of millions of government web pages and made them accessible via Internet archives Wayback Machine. The group has done so after each administration since 2008.
If you look at a web page and think it should include a discussion on climate change, use the “tool modifies ““In the Wayback machine to check if the language has been changed over time, or access the Snapshots of the page site before Trump inauguration.
What you can do
You can also find sets of data and archived tools on climate and environmental justice Environmental Data Partners public website. Other groups arise the data sets linked in the data.gov data portal and make them usable In other places.
Individual researchers also download data sets in consultable standards such as OSF, managed by the Center for Open Science.
If you fear that certain data currently available do not disappear, see this MIT library control list. It provides steps on how you can help protect federal data.
Shrink the knowledge sphere
What is not clear is how far the administration will push its attempts to delete, block or hide data and climate science, and how successful it will be.
Already, a The judge of the Federal District Court ruled The fact that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention remove access to public health resources on which doctors count were harmful and arbitrary. These are put back online thanks to this decision.
We fear that more data on data and information end up public understanding of climate change, leaving people, communities and underemployed economies and more at risk. Although data archiving efforts can stem the tide of eliminations to a certain extent, there is no replacement for government research infrastructure that produces and share climatic data.