All References to Climate Change Have Been Deleted from the White House Website | Hacker News Reader

All References to Climate Change Have Been Deleted from the White House Website

motherboard.vice.com

117 pointshamckio40 comments

I think the headline is a little wrong or maybe I am misreading it. It's not the case that someone went to the website and deleted climate change references; but rather, there is a new web site which doesn't have any references.

As the article itself says :

> To reiterate: It is normal that the site is completely new; it is notable that climate change is not mentioned on any one of Trump's new pages

Thanks for pointing this out, I missed it on my first read-through. The framing of this article implies that the Trump administration scrubbed the references first thing rather than roll out their new version which had no references to climate change.

I'm as ready as half the country to despise this administration but I'll save my outrage for things that are actually malicious.

The act of replacing the website is normal, but the content of the replacement is malicious.

How do you define malicious in this context? I see the content (from summaries, I haven't read it) as 100% self-consistent for the Trump administration.

It is, and the Trump administration's position on the climate is malicious, in that it will cause harm to the majority of humanity.

Title should have been: "Things from previous administration we agree about is not on new administration web site."

No, title should have been "Trump and his dipshit administration don't give two shits about global warming, our children be damned" (edit: Didn't realize there are this many trump supporters here) (edit2: People who think only "rational" emotionless discussion is appropriate here are living a fantasy. People don't think their way into movement.)

I did some digging.

$ wget --execute="robots = off" --mirror --convert-links --no-parent www.whitehouse.gov

$ grep -rl climate

the-press-office/2011/09/20/president-obama-participate-linkedin-town-hall-mountain-view-california-

the-press-office/2011/09/21/remarks-president-obama-and-president-clinton-clinton-global-initiative

the-press-office/2011/02/28/presidential-proclamation-50th-anniversary-peace-corps

joiningforces

1600/first-ladies/mamieeisenhower

1600/first-ladies/louhoover

The first three are press releases from 2011, so they're old. The fourth result "joiningforces" has this at the top of the page "This is historical material “frozen in time”. The website is no longer updated and links to external websites and some internal pages may not work."

The other two pages are duds, because they're just talking about the climate as in "it's a nice climate".

So yep, no references to climate change whatsoever

Sadly, it's directly mentioned on this page.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/america-first-energy

It's a shame that there's not a single mention of renewable, solar, wind, or nuclear, but coal and oil are mentioned multiple times each.

Trump is anti wind power.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/thinkprogress.org/amp/p/bd4acf3...

And his cabinet is by and large anti-everything-which-is-not-fossil-fuels.

I was of the understanding that he was pro-nuclear.

That'd be great. Maybe he should put it in his energy plan.

Nuclear is very good for the environment as long as it's done right. Besides the initial building costs and maintenance, it is a much better deal than most other ways.

Whitehouse.gov was archived to https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/ at noon. It looks like they've done a reasonable job with redirects from old URLs to the archives sites. (Hopefully forever)

Not quite the mantra of 'Cool URLs don't change', but a reasonable compromise for making something that the non-technical public can understand.

Some of the documents are missing though, the cabinet's exit memos are gone: https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/administration/cabinet/...

Maybe they were still restoring the data at that time? Few links that I clicked on that page worked for me.

As someone who lives in South Florida it's bad enough we have to deal with Rick Scott denying rising sea tides in his own back yard.

Now we're up against a POTUS who denies the disaster we will face in twenty years yet owns property in the afflicted area (North Miami Beach - Trump Towers). As I watch the city raise the sidewalks and roads by a foot I'm astounded. I've lived here for three years and since I got here every major roadway has been under construction - installing pumps to return flood water back to the bay. When I first arrived, you couldn't cross the street without steeping ankle deep into water and it's getting better. But pumps were only installed in key areas that affected the Mayor's and his friends' commercial properties.

I cannot buy property here because to do so would be a huge mistake considering what is now beach front will be underwater unless something is done about it.

Twenty years?

Global temperature will rise enough to disrupt the global food supply somewhere between 20 and 50 years from now. The catastrophe will be seen in famine and war over resources, not in higher flood insurance cost and taxes to pay for levees.

EVERYTHING has been scrubbed from the site, it would appear, because there is a new administration taking over.

It was quite surprising as I deref'd a link to the Obama administration's exit memos at just that point, but the site is apparently archived at https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/ (though not entirely, the page linking to the exit memos is there[0] but the link is dead)

[0] https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/administration/cabinet/

Some reports even claim that President Obama himself has been replaced by a completely different person!

I said it on election day and I'll say it again. Sorry kids, we fucked up. Making billionaires even richer is more important than keeping the Earth livable. Trump doesn't care, he'll be dead before the ice caps finish melting and we start seeing just how badly we're screwed. All that matters in the big race is winning, and winning is measured in dollars.

I downvoted your comment because I don't feel like it has anything to do with the linked story or adds anything to the thread.

Rather than complain from the top of the "I told you so" pedestal to people that generally agree with you, I urge you to approach the Trump presidency with rationalism. This isn't a situation where the Trump administration did anything inappropriate, by treating it as if it were you appear dogmatic.

Urging everyone to approach issues rationally is fine, but how can you excuse the inherent irrationality ("isn't a situation where ... did anything inappropriate") in denying that climate change/global warming is happening? (I am not saying it is or is not anthropogenic -- as far as I know, that is less settled.)

However, nothing about climate change was actually deleted. The website was replaced wholesale. What is rational about considering the act of not posting new climate change content on a new website within hours of the inauguration of a new president inappropriate?

Not sure I understand what you are asking. Could you rephrase it?

I think it is irrational that one can develop energy policy, including promoting the increased use of non-renewable resources like coal and gas, without including anything explicitly acknowledging the roles that their extraction and use may have in climate change or environmental damage.

> how can you excuse the inherent irrationality ... in denying that climate change/global warming is happening?

I had no intention of excusing the irrationality of climate change denial. It's not that the Trump administration went in and only deleted references to climate change at noon, they replaced the entire site.

I have no expectation for them to change position and build out a portion of their new website to address climate change, why would I? I think there position is irrational but the new site design is not a place to fight it.

This has nothing to do with Trump or the election though. Mankind is screwing up in general and having some text on whitehouse site is not going to change it.

Look at the startup scene. It's all about convenience (ignoring the massive amount of wasted resources), social media is all about endless narcissism and then we have everything handed out free by mining your data. All this is not going to change. All this mindless self-gratifying churn is what worsens the climate.

Really, Rick Perry and Scott Pruitt have nothing to do with Trump or the election? "eliminating harmful and unnecessary policies such as the Climate Action Plan" and "reviving America’s coal industry" have nothing to do with Trump and the election?

https://www.whitehouse.gov/america-first-energy

If anything it just worsens the climate faster than the current rate. Climate is going down regardless of who is in power.

Climate change will never affect Trump or his family personally nor his billionaire friends. Hence its a non issue to him.

Every paragraph on that page scares the heck out of me.

Take these two:

President Trump is committed to eliminating harmful and unnecessary policies such as the Climate Action Plan and the Waters of the U.S. rule.

The Trump Administration is also committed to clean coal technology, and to reviving America’s coal industry, which has been hurting for too long.

May God help America!

He said it was a hoax. But we were told to take him seriously not literally.

Why Is this flagged Mods? This pattern of flagging political stories is totally against what the Ycombinator community stands for

If car exhaust isn't harmful to people and the planet, close the White House windows and pump that shit in cowboy!

Why is that link flagged?

I suspect the HN members who've done so believe that the resulting discussion would produce more flames than illumination.

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