Scientists brace ‘for the worst’ as Trump purges climate mentions from websites

Trump administration pulling references online ‘won’t make crisis’ stop affecting Americans’ lives, say experts

Donald Trump’s administration has started to remove or downgrade mentions of the climate crisis across the US government, with the websites of several major departments pulling down references to anything related to the climate crisis. Climate scientists said they were braced “for the worst”.

A major climate portal on the Department of Defense’s website has been scrapped, as has the main climate change section on the site of the Department of State. A climate change page on the White House’s website no longer exists, nor does climate content provided by the US agriculture department, including information that provides vulnerability assessments for wildfires.

An entire section on “climate and sustainability” hosted by the Department of Transportation has now vanished, with the department’s new leadership also ordering the elimination of any policy positions, directives or funding “which reference or relate in any way to climate change, ‘greenhouse gas’ [sic] emissions, racial equity, gender identity, ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’ goals, environmental justice or the Justice40 initiative”.

Sean Duffy, the US transportation secretary, said the administration is focused on “eliminating excessive regulations that have hindered economic growth, increased costs for American families, and prioritized far-left agendas over practical solutions”.

Some researchers have found that their own studies, from ocean carbon cycles to the connectivity of cleaner electrical grids, have now vanished from federal government websites. Critics say the actions will stifle the public’s understanding of the climate crisis amid record-breaking temperatures and a wave of storms and wildfires that are being worsened by the burning of fossil fuels.

“We should plan for the worst,” said Michael Mann, a climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania. “The keys to the car have been given to the polluters and fossil fuel plutocrats and they intend to drive it off the climate cliff.”

Mann said the Trump administration may be following in the footsteps of Florida, which last year passed a law banning any reference to climate change from state laws.

“Nothing would surprise me at this point, including efforts by the administration and the polluters who are running it to ban all references to climate change by administration agencies,” Mann said. “[Florida governor Ron] DeSantis and Florida were indeed the test bed.”

Some climate content remains, for now, on US government websites, although climate change sections on the Environmental Protection Agency’s and the Department of Energy’s websites appear to have been made less visible from their homepages.

Nasa’s key climate change website, which helps chart and explain the increase in the global temperature and planet-heating emissions, remains active but with a note that it is “going to look a little different in the coming months”. The new Nasa portal removes “climate” from its URL.

As well as moving to jettison the US from the Paris climate agreement, the president has also overseen less attention-grabbing moves to stand down the US’s response to the climate crisis.

Federally-funded highways, hospitals, schools and other infrastructure will no longer have to adhere to tougher standards to withstand fiercer floods and storms, while the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI), which seeks to preserve federal data, has noted the White House’s council on environmental quality has taken down a sustainability plan aimed at cutting pollution from federal activities.

When Trump was last in office, there was a nearly 40% decline in the term “climate change” across the websites of federal environmental agencies, only for this content to be restored and expanded under Joe Biden.

“It’s hard to tell at this early stage if this will be similar to Donald Trump’s first term, but from what everything we’ve seen so far we should expect a massive campaign for information suppression again,” said Gretchen Gehrke, co-founder of EDGI.

“Trump’s entire campaign was based on gaslighting and I do think they will gaslight the American public. The best way to do that would be to remove the authoritative sources of information that researchers, teachers and the general public rely upon.”

The White House did not answer questions about the reasons behind the latest deletions, instead referencing a review under way at the Department of Energy over its grants and loans.

Cover photo: Illustration: Guardian design