NY Times - When the Trump administration said last week that it would stop requiring thousands of industrial facilities to report their planet-warming pollution, the move fit a growing pattern: If data points to a problem, stop collecting the data.
At the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, experts are no longer tracking the most expensive extreme weather events, those that cause at least $1 billion in damage.
At NASA, Trump officials want to decommission two powerful satellites that provide precise measurements of the greenhouse gases that are driving climate change.
And at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, layoffs have gutted a division that maintains statistics on car crashes, gun violence and homicides, among other things.
The consequences of these moves could be far-reaching, experts said, since the government cannot address a problem if it cannot quantify the issue in the first place.
“When we don’t measure things, it makes it much harder to claim that there is a problem and that the government has some kind of responsibility to help alleviate it,” said Sarah Pralle, an associate professor of political science at Syracuse University.
“Measuring itself is a political act with political consequences,” Dr. Pralle said. “And clearly the Trump administration does not want to do anything to alleviate a problem like climate change.”
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