The Environmental Protection Agency, like much of the government, is now behind the Trump Wall of censorship, prohibited from talking with the press, public, or Congress. But behind that wall, some hammering and destruction can be heard.
U.S. President Donald Trump's administration has instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to remove the climate change page from its website, two agency employees told Reuters, the latest move by the newly minted leadership to erase ex-President Barack Obama's climate change initiatives.
Al Gore surely feels completely vindicated in coming to Trump Tower for a discussion now. After all, Trump did indicate he was keeping an open mind, and Ivanka was friendly. Now that US scientists are under a gag order prohibiting them from both speaking out and sharing the data that climate researchers need, that memory will surely keep him warm. Or cool.
The Trump administration’s decision to stop Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officials and other government staff from speaking out publicly has prompted the country’s leading scientific organisation to warn against “censorship and intimidation”.
Just a few weeks ago, the efforts to capture and archive climate data before it could be erased may have seemed overly cautious. Would that it still felt that way.
The employees were notified by EPA officials on Tuesday that the administration had instructed EPA's communications team to remove the website's climate change page, which contains links to scientific global warming research, as well as detailed data on emissions. The page is could go down as early as Wednesday, the sources said.
The age of data and facts has ended. We’re now under the reign of science denial and paranoid delusions.
"If the website goes dark, years of work we have done on climate change will disappear," one of the EPA staffers told Reuters, who added some employees were scrambling to save some of the information housed on the website, or convince the Trump administration to preserve parts of it.
Steve Bannon is getting his wish. We're burning it all down. And we’re doing it faster than anyone expected.