Today I find myself a bit nervous as I am going on my very first date with a special hashtag I hope to get to know more about. Going into it, I realize that I do not know much at all about my hashtag, which makes it all the more interesting to be introduced to it. It seems as though it is a rather new trending topic that was conceived upon the election of President Trump who officially took the oath office this year, 2017. While Mr. Trump identifies with the republican party, there are concerns from the opposing factions that Mr. President will not only just ignore all data surrounding climate change and other party beliefs but also outwardly dismiss their relevance. For this case, I’m thoroughly into discovering the lost environmental data. Upon his entry into the White House, Mr. Trump had deleted any relevant data covering the topic of climate change from the home site, thus students at Penn have created a ‘refuge’ to give such lost data and other stray information a home during this sensitive time. I want to research this hashtag because I am well versed in the terminology and data points relating to environmental sciences. I became strongly interested in this matter when I was in high school and was able to take coursework in which in me instilled awareness and appreciation for this contemporary issue. When I entered college, I immediately majored in Environmental Science and Economics. I thought bridging the gap between capitalistic measures and sustainable resources would be the key to a cleaner planet.
As I peruse through the data in which I have collected, I expected to see a lot of users throwing out random environmental data that would ultimately, with the use of the data refuge hashtag, lend itself to a main source of facts that activists and supporters could browse to feel as if their ideals were still being disseminated. However, I realized that data refuge is not simply lost federal climate and environmental data which is the information I received through a quick bit of research, however, it is the refuge for all lost data that pertains to popular contemporary topics that are felt to be under the risk of lost amid the depths of the internet. I first realized the amount of retweets for one particular tweet: “RT @EnviroDGI: At #datarescuenyc, we are hard at work harvesting data. #datarefuge https://t.co/QT5Kmu87Zd”. It seems as though there was an event taking place to centralize data refuge and establish itself as a functional group of individuals who are fighting to protect government data. The first tweet I saw explains it all to me: “Volunteers archive government data, worry Trump administration could cut access https://t.co/h6OHFejz5t via @WSJ #datarefuge #usofscience”. This truly feelings like a battle of science and religion which is another I have studied in depth in college. Why there needs to be a gap is beyond me. I think we discern God in the wrong manner and any radical belief will be obstructive towards the progression of our society. The fear is that Trump is anti-science, and the battle to protect this data is a valuable one– I see 578 tweets in the last week.
It’s important to consider the fear people have about climate change being overlooked under the new administration. The presence of scientific evidence that humans are harming the climate seems unimportant to the new administration, and I think it’s important that people are taking it into their own hands to remind people of facts and so much research that has been done.
It is very inserting just how dismissive he is about climate change and global warming. There is an incredible amount of science backing it. I don’t understand how he is able to dismiss it. Im also curious to see the direction in which environmental issues go, especially with the freeze recently put on the EPA.