So.

My country is now an onrushing catastrophe.

One remarkable thing about the disaster unfolding around us is that it has something of a fractal character. Zoom in on a small part of it, and you find the themes of the whole: Endemic sexism and racism; mass media so institutionally rotten they whiff anything important; contempt for science, expertise and basic adulthood maturity… Systemic failures playing out on the grand scale, but also leaving their signatures in the little moment-to-moment moves. Little eddies amid the maelstrom.

A crisis on all scales demands responses at all scales. Here is one action to support, in the small-to-medium range: Don’t let science go down the memory hole!

The safety of US government climate data is at risk. Trump plans to have climate change deniers running every agency concerned with climate change. So, scientists are rushing to back up the many climate databases held by US government agencies before he takes office.

We hope he won’t be rash enough to delete these precious records. But: better safe than sorry!

The Azimuth Climate Data Backup Project is part of this effort. So far our volunteers have backed up nearly 1 terabyte of climate data from NASA and other agencies. We’ll do a lot more! We just need some funds to pay for storage space and a server until larger institutions take over this task.

The project has already met its first funding goal, but more can’t hurt, and it’s open for contributions until 31 January. With more cash on hand, they can “back up more data, create a better interface for getting it, and put more work into making sure it’s error-free and authenticated.”

Just a few weeks ago, we saw a state government try to cover up the science of climate change, and there’s no reason to think that our new federal government will do anything less.

After the 31st, to support helping at larger scales, there’s the American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood.