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cheschire
> The whole thing relies on donations to keep it afloat, which is really what tax dollars are for.

Hmm. I don’t believe that’s accurate.

nickff
This may be a controversial view, but I don't think we should trust the actor in charge of regulating and limiting emissions with its own supervision. The Federal Government has a plethora of agencies which regulate pollution and energy usage; how can we trust either its legislative or executive branch to ensure that their creations are effective or efficient?

To that end, I hope the Trump administration's actions cause independent data collection and analysis by activists and independent scientists.

mempko
The point of a democracy is the people regulate it. It seems we are so far from a democracy and people feel so little agency, that we forget this.

Yes, this should be done by the government. Yes the people MUST make sure the government is doing what they want.

The problem with putting work like this in private hands is they are not as accountable to the people as a government SHOULD be.

whatever1
With the AI rush, it all makes sense why suddenly all Silicon Valley became pro Trump and anti climate overnight.
xnx
They may have, unfortunately, proved DOGE's point. The new climate.gov probably costs a fraction of the old one.
imoverclocked
I'm glad someone managed to save the data that we all payed for.

My question is, how will this site stay relevant? The collection/analysis/monitoring of the current situation is as important as historic data. Turning current data into historical data takes significant resources.

Self-Perfection
What if government websites were distributed & archived as a default, from the beginning? Think IPFS as a first target for publication, "normal web" only as a mirror.

Is it feasible?

Should we push for this default?

First obvious objection is that lots of government services need backend and dynamic content, but let's say this requirement only goes for static content.

Magicrafter13
Partisan politics aside, frankly, anything data the government publishes like this should be public domain by virtue of it being published by the government.

How can the government "for the people by the people" claim propriety/intellectual-property over anything?

aussieguy1234
A similar thing happened back in Australia years back.

We had the Climate Commission, which did alot of great work. It was a government department and fully funded by the government.

Then a conservative, climate denying government came to power and shut it down.

Literally within 48 hours, they obtained alternative funding from private sources, then rebirthed the organization as the independent Climate Council.

Many of the fired workers were re hired and the new organization does similar work to the previous one. It's still in operation today.

https://www.climatecouncil.org.au/