In a move the National Park Service maintains is only temporary and necessary to make information available to those with disabilities, nearly 100 documents pertaining to climate change in the National Park System have been removed from websites around the system.
The 92 documents were related to the Park Service's Climate Friendly Parks Program and outlined action plans to be implemented to help the parks react to climate change. Among the documents removed were action plans for Glacier National Park, which scientists fear will lose all of its glaciers by 2030, if not sooner; Joshua Tree National Park, where rising temperatures could cause the park to lose all its namesake trees; and Everglades National Park, which is at risk from sea level rise.
The missing documents were reported last week by staff at the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative, a nonprofit organization that tracks federal websites "to trace how data, information, and their presentation change."
In addition to the missing documents, a link from the Park Service's Climate Friendly Parks Program to a page where "National Park Service staff can learn more about how to become a CFP Member and begin the process today on the My Green Parks website" was deactivated.
Previously, EDGI tracked how the Environmental Protection Agency has removed climate change information from some pages of its vast website.
Regarding the missing Park Service documents, EDGI staff also discovered that wording on a Park Service webpage that explained how parks could become involved with the Climate Friendly Parks program was slightly changed:
(1.1b) Changed introduction paragraph in “CFP Member Parks” section from: “The CFP Program features more than 120 member parks from every region across the Service. To read more about what these parks are doing to respond to climate change and move park operations in a more sustainable direction, select the member park below.”
To: “The CFP Program features more than 120 member parks from every region across the National Park Service. Many Climate Action Plans have been developed; a list [sic] parks with available documents is below. If you would like to be emailed a copy of any listed park's action plan, please contact the NPS Sustainable Operations Branch: e-mail us.”
The EDGI concluded that while the documents were removed sometime between June 17, 2017, and December 20, 2017, "many of the removals definitively occured in early December 2017."
At the Motherboard website, staff asked the National Park Service about the missing documents and was told:
Under Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the National Park Service, like all federal agencies, has a January 18, 2018, deadline to make electronic information and technology accessible to people with disabilities. As part of that process we are updating PDF documents on NPS.gov that are not yet accessible to all, including climate action plans for nearly 100 parks that were listed on a nps.gov webpage. Those non-compliant PDF documents are temporarily unavailable for download while we work to make them compliant with the revised accessibility standards. In the meantime the PDF documents will be provided by email upon request.
Former National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis in 2012 outlined how the agency would strive to reduce its carbon footprint to reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with climate change.
"One of the commitments we made is to 'Go Green' and reduce our greenhouse gas emissions," Mr. Jarvis wrote in explaining the Green Parks Plan. "This Green Parks Plan outlines how we are going to live up to that commitment, reduce our impact on the environment, mitigate the effects of climate change, and integrate sustainable practices into every aspect of our operations. The Green Parks Plan articulates an overarching vision that will make everything we do more sustainable, from reducing energy and water consumption, to limiting the waste that we generate, to changing what we buy, to altering how we manage facilities."
Under President Trump the administration has been moving away from addressing climate change impacts. In his recent National Security Strategity the president removed mention of climate change as a global threat.
"The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive," President Trump tweeted in early November.
Comments
In a world in which incredible amounts of information flash past us at dizzying speeds -- some accurate and some completely false -- it's more important than ever that we all take time to fact check virtually anything we read.
Here are just two examples from the last couple of days, fact checked by Snopes:
https://www.snopes.com/scientists-caught-tampering-raw-data-exaggerate-s...
https://www.snopes.com/2017/12/15/trump-administration-bans-cdc-official...
It's inconvenient as all get out, but given the flagrant dishonesty of so many people in today's world, it's more important than ever.
Hmm, hate to be cynical of the fact checkers but SNOPES? Its all political all the time nowadays. Im betting on the guy without style points, offensive and real.
Try Googling a simple question: How accurate is Snopes, and see what you find. As with almost everything today, the reviews are somewhat mixed, but by far the majority rate Snopes as accurate and unbiased. It's important, too, to check the reputations of organizations that try to fact check the fact checkers. Without allowing your own personal biases to influence how you read the results.
All 95 documents have been captured and preserved at: http://npshistory.com/natural_resources.htm#climate-change
Earlier this year NOAA recomputed the entire Climate Division, adding more observations early in the 20th century that had been digitized in the last decade or so. They also changed the spatial interpolation routines used to get areal averages and "adjusted" the station data to remove known biases or jumps from the reasons listed above.
https://climatecenter.fsu.edu/does-noaa-adjust-historical-climate-data
One of many articles from credible sources regarding the "adjustment" "interpolation" and out right manufacturing of numbers.
I have worked in the Climate Friendly Parks program for the past 15 years. We're a small, voluntary program, but with access to good expertise, we have been able to provide parks with great information for becoming leaner, cleaner, and greener. Like all federal agencies in any administration we are required to comply with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (see the year? 1973!). In order to comply, each individual document must be manually edited so that a computerized reader can read it accurately. We have not had the time or money to do that quickly. In order to comply, we removed the non-compliant documents with a note on the website explaining why, and that people who wanted the docs could get them upon request. Today alone I sent documents to 3 requesters. If these docs had been removed by our administration, there would not be a list of parks to request documents at all! PLEASE DON'T TRY TO MAKE A STORY WHERE ONE DOES NOT EXIST. All you have accomplished is to draw unwanted attention to a small program in the NPS, and that may indeed cause our program to be 'removed'. Thanks a lot.