The Washington Post reports that the scientific community across the United States is secretly copying and backing up publicly owned climate change data out of the fear that the incoming Trump administration will delete or destroy data that disagrees with its ideology.
Key appointed members of the Trump Cabinet have already sought a list of names of those civil servants involved in US government climate change policy who participated in climate negotiations. Scientists are accordingly worried that the incoming administration will target environmental policy specialists and climate experts.
Scientists, lawyers, database managers and other members of civil society have even sought jurisdictional protection by locating retrieved data in foreign jurisdictions such as Canada. The University of Toronto is involved in archiving Environmental Protection Agency information on climate change, toxins, air, water and other information at high risk of being deleted.
The precautions seem reasonable as a similar change of governments in Canada resulting in the election of former Prime Minister Stephen Harper resulted in the deletion and destruction of environmental records.
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