When there is a broad consensus across the scientific community about climate change, does it even matter at this point if the data has been changed? The U.S isn't the only country that collects this data. So even if changed, it doesn't matter.
There's more to climate science than the yes/no of whether climate change is a thing. We don't just need to know it's happening--we want to know details of how to model it, what different inputs have what affects, what the feedback loops are and how strong they are, how they and other effects interact...
> The U.S isn't the only country that collects this data. So even if changed, it doesn't matter.
Many countries collect data, but presumably the sets of data collected differ, and more data is better. Losing a large subset of our climate data would hurt advances in climate modeling.
It does if the data that was changed is the data that was used to support the consensus.
More generally, all data collected by research that is funded by taxpayers should be collected, cryptographically signed and verified, and archived where any taxpayer can see it. I have never understood why that is not already standard operating procedure.
I'm not saying it's right, and agree with you. But often there's a lot of entropy with the status quo, and to the seated incumbents in a space.
Losing that collection or archive would be a disaster for science and a loss for all of humanity. Destroying that data would be reminiscent of ISIS destroying relics in Palmyra except that destroying that data jeopardizes our future.
We know already that CO2 and other gases cause climate change and we understand the mechanism. I think that most of us would probably also agree that the earth is a sufficiently complex system that predicting accurately what effects we will see when is impossible. We expect to see more droughts, bigger storms and rising sea levels - but we can't really predict very accurately how big those things will be when. By the time we have accurate models it will be too late.
We know that we need to act now. Understanding climate change is not the most important research out there; what's important is developing technologies and industries to reduce our emissions. That research would be what I fear losing.
It's also worth considering the impact of some movements... as an example, there's significant impact in creating/shipping and replacing batteries on a large scale. It may not make as much sense compared to more efficient engines, and even additional looks at other engine techniques.
I find pollution relatively abhorrent on its' own though... recently driving through west Louisianan/east Texas and my initial thoughts as to the painful to breath air there was how can this be allowed to persist. I have mixed feelings all around, I just don't want to spend a lot of taxpayer money on ill-advised and lesser impacting processes. We do too much of that already.