Climate & Energy Communications Cheat Sheet 1/25/19

With everything from air traffic control, to federal criminal investigations and the Internal Revenue Service affected by or potentially affected by thirty-five (yes, 35!) days of the partial government shutdown, we thought it would be salient to use this email to highlight just a couple of the ways the shutdown will have long-lasting impacts on climate change.  

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Environmental and Climate Impacts of the Shutdown

Despite the Trump Administration’s ongoing efforts to scrub all references to climate change from agency websites, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) National Climatic Data Center provides vital data for researchers. But the site is down due to the ongoing shutdown and furloughed workers. This data center provides essential information on the state of climate change, climate monitoring, and online climate data tools. And just last week, a global temperature report from NOAA and NASA was delayed in response to the shutdown.

Around the nation, environmental research, both by federal and state agencies, have either come to a halt or scientists are being forced to work with reduced resources or staffs to produce work that either work toward mitigation and/or adaptation. And on Capitol Hill, a highly anticipated Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on climate change was moved and in its place, a hearing was scheduled to examine the impacts of the partial government shutdown on agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency and the Consumer Protection Commission.  

ICYMI

The New York Times’ Kendra Pierre-Louis interviews scientists from NOAA who talk about the impacts of the shutdown and how the delay in research could have longer range effects than most people realize. “We’re supposed to be the future of climate science and we can’t do our jobs,” says Chris Horvat, a polar oceanographer based at Brown University, who is also part of the NOAA Climate & Global Change Postdoctoral Program.

Talking Points

• The Trump Administration, long-time climate deniers, have effectually worked for the last two years to remove all references to climate change from agency websites, and now during a shutdown engineered by them, have created a situation where that information is no longer available to the public or to climate researchers.
• Scientists, charged with researching and analyzing climate data, are being forced to work with limited resources and staffing, which ultimately compromises the information collected and will have impacts on mitigation and adaptation efforts.
• Delayed environmental research, due to the shutdown, creates data gaps in ocean research which can be harmful as the ocean is changing so rapidly now due to climate change.