Websites Hosting Major US Climate Reports Taken Down

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: Websites that displayed legally mandated U.S. national climate assessments seem to have disappeared, making it harder for state and local governments and the public to learn what to expect in their backyards from a warming world. Scientists said the peer-reviewed authoritative reports save money and lives. Websites for the national assessments and the U.S. Global Change Research Program were down Monday and Tuesday with no links, notes or referrals elsewhere. The White House, which was responsible for the assessments, said the information will be housed within NASA to comply with the law, but gave no further details. Searches for the assessments on NASA websites did not turn them up.

'It's critical for decision makers across the country to know what the science in the National Climate Assessment is. That is the most reliable and well-reviewed source of information about climate that exists for the United States,' said University of Arizona climate scientist Kathy Jacobs, who coordinated the 2014 version of the report. 'It's a sad day for the United States if it is true that the National Climate Assessment is no longer available,' Jacobs said. 'This is evidence of serious tampering with the facts and with people's access to information, and it actually may increase the risk of people being harmed by climate-related impacts.'

'This is a government resource paid for by the taxpayer to provide the information that really is the primary source of information for any city, state or federal agency who's trying to prepare for the impacts of a changing climate,' said Texas Tech climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe, who has been a volunteer author for several editions of the report. Copies of past reports are still squirreled away in NOAA's library. NASA's open science data repository includes dead links to the assessment site. Additionally, NOAA's main climate.gov website was recently forwarded to a different NOAA website. Social media and blogs at NOAA and NASA about climate impacts for the general public were cut or eliminated. 'It's part of a horrifying big picture,' [said Harvard climate scientist John Holdren, who was President Obama's science advisor and whose office directed the assessments]. 'It's just an appalling whole demolition of science infrastructure.' National climate assessments are more detailed and locally relevant than UN reports and undergo rigorous peer review and validation by scientific and federal institutions, Hayhoe and Jacobs said. Suppressing these reports would be censoring science, Jacobs said.

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