The Trump administration has told the EPA to remove its climate change data from its website
The EPA, a federal agency charged with safeguarding clean, livable air and water, funds and conducts research into the impacts of climate change on public health, the environment, and natural disasters.
Much of that data is available on its website, and is part of the toolkit scientists use to study the health, safety, and future of the planet.
The White House has not put out an official statement confirming the order, just as it has not confirmed that it has frozen grants and contracts at the agency, that the agency is not allowed to communicate with the public, or that the EPA wil be banned from funding original science.
Reuters writer Valerie Volcovici reported on Wednesday that the news agency heard of the order to take down the website from two agency employees who were defying the gag order.
Scientists are not resting easy. There was a significant effort before Trump took office to download climate data from government websites to private servers. It is not clear whether all of the key data on the EPA website is backed up elsewhere, and researchers encouraged each other over Twitter Wednesday morning to continue copying as much as possible: