The Valley News has a Q&A with a Dartmouth math professor who has joined the push to download and preserve data related to climate science, fearing that the current administration will delete it. The college is providing server space, as is UNH and many other schools.
The piece is a little over-enthusiastic for my taste (“Rockmore is a soft-spoken, laid-back professor of both mathematics and computer science. A renaissance faculty member … in his mid-50s, and has a penchant for sneakers, jeans and golden retrievers.”) but gives a god sense of why many scientists are fired up over this issue.
We condemn the Islamic State in Syria for destroying ancient cultural heritage sites and yet we are doing the same thing with our scientific heritage. How insane is that?
We started with about 8 terabytes but clearly needed more. Fortunately, the college came up with money to purchase an additional 36 terabytes. The server is in the math department.
You can read it here.
Alternative title: “Easily-alarmed Publicity-seeking Geeks Imagine Threats Where None Exist.”
Seriously, if the data is still around to be mirrored two months into the Trump Administration, this has to be the slowest-moving insidious government conspiracy ever.