Politically motivated climate data deletions | Hacker News Reader

Politically motivated climate data deletions

theguardian.com

65 pointsokket31 comments

This seems to be happening with enough frequency that we citizens of the world ought to create a third party mirror of all gov data so as to withstand leadership transitions and politically motivated deletions.

I'd say someone like the UN should coordinate this, but it would probably be better done by a Wikipedia style outfit.

Maybe on the block chain. Perhaps we need a DataCoin that fuels keeping this stuff alive.

I'm curious how much data we are talking about and how difficult it would be for us to automate backing it up so this sort of issue isn't as devastating.

Might also be a way for us to cite data in such a way that it automatically triggers archiving.

Ie. Using http://dataarchive.org/govagency.gov/data/numbers would automatically store the source info as well as last accessibilily information.

Ideas?

Replying to you to clarify the article since you are the top voted comment and I think it might lend itself to other people making conclusions they shouldn't without reading the article.

While I agree with you, I'm not sure that is the case here. The research is not deleted in this case, just literally the citations. Here it sounds more like:

Either

A. People editing citations in articles need to be less lazy and relocate missing sources

B. Research sites need to follow proper SEO best practice and use 301 redirects when they move files

RTFA - Data is actually being deleted, along with citations.

Right this seems like what is going on. Or at the least, things were publicly accessible and now are not so there is no way of knowing if these data sets are alive somewhere.

I did RTFA and this paragraph threw me off:

> All in all, emails about defunct links of sites that weren’t saved are annoying, but harmless. Finding archived materials to replace them add maybe 20 minutes of internet searches to my day – and a bit of anger at the state of the country.

The way I read that was that the articles still existed elsewhere. But reading the article again I can see they are referring to other people's citations of the things that are deleted.

Also, the title itself:

> I am an Arctic researcher. Donald Trump is deleting my citations

Citation is defined by the dictionary as:

> "a quotation from or reference to a book, paper, or author, especially in a scholarly work."

Not the source data.

So my apologies. I misread what the author was intending to say. But in defense if the author was intending to say that then the word citation in the title is used completely wrong. (or scientist have a different definition which I find odd)

Actually readying the article again. I am still not sure I was not right the first time. Deleting a citation is NOT deleting the source material. Deleting "cited material" is.

They don't actually make clear where the information has been deleted from. But to me it sounds alot like the big fuss at the inauguration when Obama's Whitehouse website was archived and replaced with Trump's.

The stated 'The US National Strategy for the Arctic' and 'Implementation Plan for the Strategy', both sound like Obama policy which would have subsequently have been archived.

Blaming Trump for this is facile at best.

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/01/20/politics/obama-white-house...

What is the functional difference between 'deleted' and 'archived but not available for anyone to view' or is there one?

The entire Obama Whitehouse site is still available for viewing at https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/

The Obama administration sites were moved to the National Archives and Trump started over with new sites. That's exactly the same thing that happened when Bush II and Clinton left office (Clinton was the first to have a web site, so we don't have any precedent before that). Nothing has been "deleted".

Oddly, no one seemed to screech when Obama "deleted" all the material from the Bush II administration. Why not?

What you name "stated" was only "on January 21th."

The article then continues: "Since January, the surge has transformed into a slow, incessant march of deleting datasets, webpages and policies about the Arctic." So it's not just the text of the policies. You make it appear as only policies are mentioned.

Big bonfire of burning books: done

What's the next thing in the manual?

Round up the writers and dissidents

If anyone has not yet read The Gulag Archipelago, please brace yourself mentally and do so. A very realistic look at how these things happened at a certain point in recent history.

Exactly what was deleted? On what website? I can't tell from the article.

so... they're not her citations in the sense of "things that I have written" but instead, changed or modified websites that now have dead links, with no pointers to the data.

I had the same problem this morning in looking for some old Mac software...

Thank you for being one of the only people to bring up the point of the article. It means the actual citations not the work being cited.

However, as the article points out, it is possible (perhaps even easy) to hunt down updated links to the research. Instead they were deleted.

If that was done to a Wikipedia article the article would be flagged and either the text deleted or the link fixed. So in a sense Wikipedia has much higher standards.

If anything this is a fable of SEO. Why you should always make sure your legacy URLs provide proper 301 redirects.

"The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive."

I have no words.

Can the Trump supporters here explain why this is a good idea? I'm genuinely curious.

Biting the bait: having voted for someone doesn't mean you agree with everything he promises and then with everything he does after he's been elected.

I can play devil's advocate.

The data is falsified and needs to be removed.

Falsified according to who? The many well known and respected researchers the Trump Administration has consulted?

Oh ideologues who want to score political points? Got it.

Right, so now the conversation has moved away from the deletion of data.

Politickz iz amazing rite?! :)

To which one could say that's not how science works. You don't sweep bad science under the rug, you publish the research to the contrary.

From a scientific perspective it is the wrong approach.

From a social perspective, It's like burning books you don't agree with.

Neither works for more than a short time.

The neocon (or alt-right, or whatever) attitude is that the planet is too massive and powerful for us to affect it. They believe that climate researchers and scientists have an agenda to push their liberal viewpoint about the world on people and control businesses that would otherwise prosper. The so-called "data" is - in the best case scenario - simply opinion, or - in the worst case scenario - faked. They believe that if you get rid of the "data", you can stop the liberals with their bullshit agenda.

And now one of their zealots is whispering in the ear of the President.

Meanwhile the US Military is taking discussing climate change as a threat to their mission: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/military-leaders-...

I guess Conservatives are for lower national security though... Given that is how they historically consolidate their power.

>The neocon (or alt-right, or whatever) attitude is that the planet is too massive and powerful for us to affect it

Not exactly, that's the idea that's been pushed on the people who don't think for themselves, and so those people believe it, just like they believe other fake news.

The "leaders" that actually pushed the idea know that global warming is happening, and that humans are (at least a part of) the cause; they just don't care, profits are more important.

>The neocon (or alt-right, or whatever)

Very different things

I'm wondering what was removed and from where?

The article is not clear.

So is he sitting there pressing the delete key himself?

Don't be a defender, you're making it worse.

Nah

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