Back in 2016, there was tremendous anxiety among climate scientists and environmental activists that the new administration would delete or even destroy the historical record of climate change data maintained by the EPA.  An environmental anthropologist named Nicholas Shapiro responded by rallying a network of scientists and archivists to preserve critically important, publicly funded datasets and documentation. 

Working at breakneck speed, hundreds of volunteers archived more than 200 terabytes of data and content from government websites between fall 2016 and spring 2017. They are now formally organized as the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative, or EDGI, with a mission to “protect and advance the public’s Environmental Right to Know (ERTK)”; to improve the collection of environmental data; provide social, political and historical context; and promote better environmental governance.  

EDGI’s job has gotten a lot bigger since 2016. Climate-related research is now integrated into policy making in multiple sectors, including public health, agriculture, weather forecasting and disaster preparation, energy, economic development and housing—and EDGI tracks changes to environmental data and policy across the range of federal agencies. 

Just weeks into the new administration, a number of organizations have launched lawsuits challenging the administration’s attempts to erase data-driven evidence supporting climate-informed policies. Those attempts include the removal of health and climate data from the websites of the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Agriculture.   

There is a clear pattern to the sweeping budget cuts and firings announced over the past few weeks: it’s not enough to cut programs. The administration is determined to cut research and data collection through NIH, CDC, FDA and other federal agencies, to “disappear” existing data that correlates and quantifies environmental impacts, and to marginalize the role of scientists in policy-making decisions. The administration seems to be moving to eliminate all funding and research that measures the health and environmental effects relating to fossil fuels, chemicals and industrial processes as well as climate change, and forms the scientific basis for responsible policies and regulations. 

So, for example, the EPA has announced cuts to a range of programs that help homeowners make their homes safer, healthier and more energy efficient. The agency has also cut a modest research and development grant that would support those efforts by helping the building industry measure lifecycle emissions and develop healthier building materials and systems that would reduce asthma, heart disease and respiratory illnesses. 

Another backdoor strategy for undermining the role of valid science and data in policy making is the disbanding of the federal advisory committees (FACs) appointed to ensure that federal agencies have access to scientific expertise. The Union of Concerned Scientists has reported on the administration’s efforts to sideline or eliminate science advisory committees that work to ensure science-based methodologies and best available information to guide decisions across a range of government agencies and to help those agencies avoid science integrity violations. For example, the Commerce Department has eliminated committees at the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Geological Survey, and the Department of Health and Human Services has canceled meetings of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, which is hampering the development of effective flu vaccines for the 2025 flu season. At the EPA, the Science Advisory Board and the Clean Air Science Advisory Committee are being reconfigured with all-new, presumably politically aligned members, and the work of the pioneering National Environmental Justice Advisory Council (NEJAC), established in 1993, seems to have come to a complete halt. 

And finally, the Department of Government Efficiency has gotten into the act with a proposal to terminate the lease on a small office in Hilo, on the Big Island in Hawai’i, used by the eight-member scientific team that measures global carbon emissions at the Mauna Loa Observatory. This storied project, founded by Charles David Keeling, has been recording carbon dioxide levels since 1958, contributing immeasurably to the scientific record and our understanding of the gradual increase of CO2 in the atmosphere. The modest office space is necessary because Mauna Loa is an active volcano, and an eruption in November-December 2022 blocked the access road with a massive lava flow 30 feet deep. The administration’s cost-cutting geniuses estimate that closing the office could save American taxpayers a whopping $164,391 per year.  

Learn more

www.theverge.com/22313763/scientists-climate-change-data-rescue-donald-trump

www.envirodatagov.org

www.insideclimatenews.org/news/24032025/epa-decimates-c-more-grant-program-construction-material-emissions/

www.yahoo.com/news/doge-cuts-could-end-decades-182117554.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cH