U.S. scientists have now begun copying crucial climate data from different sources in the hopes of preserving them before President-elect Donald Trump takes office next month.
Trump's skeptical view on climate science has made more than a few researchers worry about the future of their work. Many believe that the incoming administration would do away with decades' worth of scientific research in favor of promoting greater dependence on fossil fuel use.
Climate experts have called on their colleagues to take part in various activities including a "guerilla archiving" event where thousands of valuable scientific measurements will be copied in order to preserve them.
Meetings will also be held at the University of Pennsylvania to help teach scientists on how to download as much U.S. climate data as possible in the next few weeks and perhaps even store them in an online site being developed by database experts.
Nick Santos, an environmental scientist at University of California at Davis, is one of those fearful of losing federal climate research when the Trump presidency officially starts. He's already begun copying data onto a nongovernment server over the weekend.
"Something that seemed a little paranoid to me before all of a sudden seems potentially realistic, or at least something you'd want to hedge against," Santos said. "Doing this can only be a good thing."
Santos said he hopes that the Trump administration will leave all government climate data in place, but in case that doesn't happen, researchers already have a plan to deal with that event.
Trump's Climate Science Skepticism
Even before he was elected as the next U.S. president, Trump has always been vocal about his skepticism of climate change. In 2012, he blamed the Chinese for creating the idea of global warming in order to cripple U.S. production.
Trump also made it clear that he wants to get rid of the Environmental Protection Agency as well as the Energy Department and even revoke the Paris Climate Change Agreement.
Scientists say this hostility toward the scientific process could result in the loss of valuable data because of cutbacks in federal funding for climate research.
Several efforts are now being made by researchers to save their measurements and other data, including those at UPenn and the University of Toronto. Members of the Penn Program in the Environmental Humanities have begun copying the saved climate data to an online site.
Meteorologist Eric Holthaus also urged his fellow scientists to add federal climate databases to a Google spreadsheet file so that they can be saved on independent servers.
