The plan to make climate science harder to erase

Federal websites that once explained climate science in plain language have been disappearing. The Trump administration shut down Climate.gov, a NOAA site that translated climate research into free, easy-to-understand resources for teachers, community leaders, and homeowners. The government also stopped publishing the National Climate Assessment, a report on climate warnings released every four years, and the EPA removed more than 80 webpages on the causes and effects of climate change, including language that had linked warming to human activity.

Former government scientists and outside groups are trying to fill the gap. Rebecca Lindsey, who ran Climate.gov for years, helped launch a nongovernmental replacement called Climate.us, which has already drawn 800,000 page views since its late-June launch. A separate project tracking the cost of billion-dollar weather disasters, once run by NOAA, has moved to the nonprofit Climate Central. Scientific groups like the American Geophysical Union are also working to keep climate research going outside official government channels.

None of this changes rebate programs or upgrade incentives directly, but it does affect where reliable, plain-language climate information will come from going forward. If you've used government sites to understand local climate risks or extreme-weather trends, it's worth knowing some of that information has moved to new addresses like Climate.us, and that these independent efforts are still finding their footing, with fewer staff and less funding than the federal programs they replaced.