Certain dictatorships and pseudo-democracies around the world are infamous for their control of public news and data, while also firing those employees that do not toe “the party line” on such information. For example, Turkey’s own military space programme has been recently hobbled after many of its experts and engineers were dismissed over their suspected links to a recent coup attempt against the Erdogan regime. Now there is a fear growing that a similar approach may be taken in USA once Donald Trump takes over the presidential reins in January.
As such, some environmental scientists are making back up plans to store public domain data taken from NOAA controlled satellite observations of the planet. The Washington Post reports that NOAA and NASA scientists are storing large datasets of environmental change data onto independent servers, lest noted deniers of global temperature change in the new administration attempt to tamper with or remove the data. Some are fearful that their research funding and thus jobs may go.
While Donald Trump has watered down is hard line denial of global temperature change and its climate effects, he remains to be convinced that human activities are the main cause of it. Some of his “transition team” are reported to be openly sceptical about even the facts of global warming and are said to be seeking the names of those state employees who are in favour of greenhouse gas emission restrictions.
