Interesting times for communicating science and climate change – two new terms (to me) – Guerrilla archiving and Ctrl-Alt-Delete policies. I wonder where he got the idea of gagging environmental agencies from? How this will work in practice remains to be seen because as usual there is inconsistency, see the piece on NOAA not being gagged. Simon Jenkins points out that there is nothing new in this and in the US it is likely that speed of leaking truth ie what happened to the Trident missile test, will catch up with the lies. And alienating traditional media will prompt more leaks and effective journalism.

Guerrilla archiving   US environmental agencies and a range of people have been busy saving on-line data and material and creating alternative websites to house this information. It’s called Guerrilla archiving. Click here to read more.

Control – Alt – Delete policies  

Resist this: The Trump Administration’s Control+Alt+Delete Strategy on Climate Change

ERIKA SPANGER-SIEGFRIED, SENIOR ANALYST, CLIMATE & ENERGY PROGRAM | JANUARY 26, 2017,

The first days of the Trump Administration have caught many of us by surprise with the volume of contestable statements, controversial orders, and provocative media appearances. Amidst this, the administration’s attacks on science are now fully underway. At least, though, we’re clearer now what their climate change strategy is going to be, and can more effectively organize to fight it.

http://blog.ucsusa.org/rachel-cleetus/you-cant-delete-climate-change

As usual there are different views The Trump administration won’t censor climate scientists or delete temperature data, nominee for Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross said during his confirmation hearing on 18 January 2017.

If confirmed, Ross will oversee the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which has caused concern among environmentalists over whether Trump and Ross might censor scientists or delete government data about global warming. In response, NOAA scientists reportedly tried create back-ups of NOAA temperature data to prevent deletion.

Democratic Florida Sen. Bill Nelson asked Ross during the hearing if he would change existing policies to prevent NOAA scientists from sharing their opinions about global warming with the press or public, or suppress federal data about global warming.

Post-truth politics will be debunked by online facts – Simon Jenkins – Guardian

The new American president, Donald Trump, celebrated his first day in office with a barefaced lie. He said that his inauguration crowd was bigger than Barack Obama’s. As lies go it was no big deal, but it was still a lie. Within minutes, camera technology and social media had reduced Trump’s boast to ruins. His supporters briefly resorted to “alternative facts”, but rarely can a president’s opening statement to the world have been so instantly proved false.

Two days later the British prime minister, Theresa May, came within an inch of a more serious lie, about the failure of a nuclear missile test and whether she knew of it. May refused four times on television to admit that last June’s missile test was a fiasco and that she knew anything about it. Within hours a frenzy of electronic communication extorted a confession from Downing Street that May had indeed known but not wanted to say. When her defence secretary, Michael Fallon,

Simon Jenkins https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/26/post-truth-politics-online-facts-donald-trump-lies