Major US climate website likely to be shut down after almost all staff fired

Exclusive: Climate.gov, which supports public education on climate science, will soon no longer publish new content

A major US government website supporting public education on climate science looks likely to be shuttered after almost all of its staff were fired, the Guardian has learned.

Climate.gov, the gateway website for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa)’s Climate Program Office, will imminently no longer publish new content, according to multiple former staff responsible for the site’s content whose contracts were recently terminated.

“The entire content production staff at climate.gov (including me) were let go from our government contract on 31 May,” said a former government contractor who wished to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. “We were told that our positions within the contract were being eliminated.”

Rebecca Lindsey, the website’s former program manager, who was fired in February as part of the government’s purge of probationary employees, described a months-long situation within Noaa where political appointees and career staff argued over the fate of the website.

“I had gotten a stellar performance review, gotten a bonus, gotten a raise. I was performing very well. And then I was part of that group who got the form letter saying, ‘Your knowledge, skills, and abilities are no longer of use to Noaa’ – or something to that effect.”

Lindsey said she had been worried that climate.gov might be a target of the new administration soon after the election, but when a large Noaa contract was up for renewal at the end of May, her former boss told her that a demand came “from above” to rewrite parts of the contract to remove the team’s funding.

“It was a very deliberate, targeted attack,” said Lindsey.

Lindsey said the content for climate.gov was created and maintained by a contracted staff of about 10, with additional contributions from Noaa scientists, and its editorial content was specifically designed to be politically neutral, and faithful to the current state of the sciences. All of those staff have now been dismissed, she said.

“We operated exactly how you would want an independent, non-partisan communications group to operate,” said Lindsey, and noted that climate.gov is housed within the science division of Noaa, not its public affairs division. “It does seem to be part of this sort of slow and quiet way of trying to keep science agencies from providing information to the American public about climate.”

Noaa has been contacted for comment. It is unclear whether the website will remain visible to the public.

The climate.gov site was housed within the communication, education, and engagement division of Noaa, which describes itself as “the largest team in the federal government dedicated to climate communication, education, and engagement”.

The website receives hundreds of thousands of visits per month and is one of the most popular sources of information about climate science on the internet.

The fired staff believe the changes to climate.gov were targeted by political appointees within the Trump administration and specifically aimed at restricting public-facing climate information.

“It’s targeted, I think it’s clear,” said Tom Di Liberto, a former Noaa spokesperson who was also fired from his position earlier this year. “They only fired a handful of people, and it just so happened to be the entire content team for climate.gov. I mean, that’s a clear signal.”

The purge spared two web developers, which Di Liberto says is a concerning sign.

The contractor said: “My bigger worry, long-term, is I would hate to see it turn into a propaganda website for this administration, because that’s not at all what it was.”

The contractor said that while there will still be some pre-written, scheduled content posted on the site this month, there are no plans for further new content: “After that, we have no idea what will happen to the website.”

Lindsey said she also feared a “sinister possibility” that the administration may co-opt climate.gov to publish its own anti-science content. Lindsey said the administration could now “provide a content team from the Heartland Institute, leveraging our audience, our brand, our millions of people that we reach on social media every month. That’s the worst-case scenario.”

“Climate.gov is one heck of a URL. If you wanted to basically keep the website alive to do something with later, this is what you would do if you’re the [Trump] administration,” said Di Liberto. “It’s clear that the administration does not accept climate science, so it’s certainly concerning.”

The cuts also mean that there is now also no one left to run climate.gov social media accounts, which have hundreds of thousands of followers. Since staff in charge of climate.gov did a lot of pushback on misinformation, their absence may help anti-science information flourish there more readily.

“We were an extremely well-trusted source for climate information, misinformation and disinformation because we actually, legitimately would answer misinformation questions,” said the contractor. “We’d answer reader emails and try to combat disinformation on social media.

Cover photo:  A worker at their station at the National Hurricane Center in Miami. Photograph: Marco Bello/Reuters