Trump administration shuts down U.S. website on climate change
Last edited Wed Jul 2, 2025, 01:34 AM - Edit history (2)
Source: LA Times via MSN.com
8h - The Trump administration on Monday shut down a federal website that had presented congressionally mandated reports and research on climate change, drawing rebukes from scientists who said it will hinder the nation's efforts to prepare for worsening droughts, floods and heat waves.
The U.S. Global Change Research Program's website, globalchange.gov, was taken down along with all five versions of the National Climate Assessment report and extensive information on how global warming is affecting the country.
"They're public documents. It's scientific censorship at its worst," said Peter Gleick, a California water and climate scientist who was one of the authors of the first National Climate Assessment in 2000. "This is the modern version of book burning."
The climate reports were required by Congress, and there will still be alternative ways of finding them even without the website, Gleick said. "But this information will be harder and harder for the American public to find."
--snip--
The U.S. Global Change Research Program was established under a 1990 law, which also mandated that climate assessments be prepared every four years. In April, however, the Trump administration dismissed hundreds of scientists and other experts who had begun to write the latest National Climate Assessment report.
Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/trump-administration-shuts-down-u-s-website-on-climate-change/ar-AA1HLYyO
Previous versions of the website can still be found using the nonprofit Internet Archive's Wayback Machine https://archive.org/ ,
Here are the snapshots that are available:
https://web.archive.org/web/20240101000000*/http://www.globalchange.gov/
Here's a snapshot from December 29, 2024:
https://web.archive.org/web/20241229075205/http://www.globalchange.gov/
(I tried a snapshot from January 1, 2025 and got a "403 Forbidden". YMMV.
but we shouldn't have to do an end run around Winston Smith's memory hole to find it. But with the hundreds of scientists and other experts dismissed, what's written somewhere else in the future will not likely be nearly as comprehensive.
The article describes what else was at globalchange.gov
Edited to add: NPR story which has more information on what still can be found, and where:
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2025/07/01/npr-national-climate-assessment-nca5-archive-report

muriel_volestrangler
(104,222 posts)So the most recent for that home page is https://web.archive.org/web/20250630043543/https://www.globalchange.gov/ that I can see, from yesterday (it does say:
"Orange indicates that the URL was not found (4xx).
Green indicates redirects (3xx)."
so by elimination, blue means "successful" )
progree
(12,134 posts)I wanted to get an archive snapshot well before the current admin had made any changes. I arbitrarily started with Jan. 1, but I realize that admins didn't change before Jan 20.
I read from the OP article that the admin had mussed with it.
Sadly, we might all have to all become more familiar with archive.org
Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin
(126,539 posts)Just like COVID
hamsterjill
(16,153 posts)This administration is just fucking stupid. What they've done to weather tracking is increasingly a concern. You can't get decent radar any more. Sometimes, it really WAS nice to know that storms were coming, etc. Now, it's anyone's guess in my area.
twodogsbarking
(14,628 posts)Al Gore will be deported to Mt. Everest if he opens his mouth.