permaculture

[Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>]

On Wed, Dec 14, 2016 at 12:19 AM, Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Here is the URL
>
> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MxB6lGN04bO3LlmpRttoIiYfbTZ6O
> aG7Okc_7-XSPno/edit#gid=0
> Here are comments about this in the Reddit sub /r/DataHoarder
> 1)
> "Canadian here. Our last Conservative government declared that all records
> need to be kept electronically and then a short time later emptied the
> government science library literally just throwing away the books. A huge
> amount of it wasn't converted and was lost. It's strongly believed it was
> done because the federal scientists kept calling B.S. on the governments
> stance on the environment."
> 2)
> "It's not like it couldn't happen. This is what the conservatives in
> Canada did to science programs.
>
> http://www.academicmatters.ca/2013/05/harpers-attack-on-
> science-no-science-no-evidence-no-truth-no-democracy/"
>

More particularly worthwhile comments:

"Whenever a government agency is defunded it loses its ability to maintain
servers and physical archives. The servers are decommissioned and the
physical materials go in the trash.

There is unfortunately substantial precedent for destroying research in
this manner. George W. Bush's administration dismantled the Environmental
Protection Agency's 29 research libraries
<http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/08/opinion/08burger.html>. This problem is
not unique to the United States: the Canadian government destroyed its own
priceless research
<http://boingboing.net/2014/01/04/canadian-libraricide-tories-t.html> in
2012.

We've already seen NASA shut down its servers
<http://www.space.com/23242-government-shutdown-nasa-back-online.html>
during the partial federal government shutdown in 2013, so it's clear that
even temporary budgetary issues swiftly remove public access to this
material.

When the new administration implements its current plan to defund NASA's
climate science research and dissolve the E.P.A., there will unfortunately
be no mechanism for preserving their research data. We can expect it all to
disappear unless archived by individuals outside of the government."
"To be clear, we're primarily concerned with raw research data here. For
example, when NASA's earth observing capabilities are defunded by the new
administration, the satellite data that helped to mitigate the damage of
this year's deadly Louisiana flooding
<https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/nasa-analyzes-deadly-louisiana-flooding>
will likely become inaccessible.

Regardless of one's view on climate change, much of the research coming out
of NASA and the EPA affects every day quality of life. When this research
is lost, it generally requires decades to rebuild. It would be quite
unfortunate if we became less capable of predicting the next major flood
simply because we did not value our current research enough to preserve it."

"It's not a matter of if it's backed up, it's where it's backed up and who
has access to the backups.

When publically funded areas suddenly get defunded, something that seems
increasingly likely for areas if the EPA and NASA, changes happen
incredibly quickly. Staff lose positions on very short notice and as soon
as they're gone, assets are usually transferred to other areas that have no
idea what is on them or they're simply wiped and sold."
"Are you aware of what happened to Canadian environmental science when they
had a government makeup that looked like Trumps picks a few years ago?
Decades of research was intentionally destroyed, this happens and it's not
a joke. So no it's not fear mongering it's precautionary action taken
because people who don't respect knowledge have no problem destroying it
when it goes against their agenda."

That subreddit is full to overflowing with anti-environment trolls,
probably alt-right operatives hired by the fossil fuel industry and the new
administration, following on the heels of the Bush administration's
destruction of priceless information that took decades to create, paid for
by the American taxpayer.
-- 
Lawrence F. London, Jr.
lfljvenaura@gmail.com
https://sites.google.com/site/avantgeared