Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Arctic Scientist Victoria Herrmann is complaining Donald Trump’s website reengineering has removed links to work she cited. My question – why didn’t she make her own copies?
I am an Arctic researcher. Donald Trump is deleting my citations
Victoria Herrmann
These politically motivated data deletions come at a time when the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the global average
As an Arctic researcher, I’m used to gaps in data. Just over 1% of US Arctic waters have been surveyed to modern standards. In truth, some of the maps we use today haven’t been updated since the second world war. Navigating uncharted waters can prove difficult, but it comes with the territory of working in such a remote part of the world.
Over the past two months though, I’ve been navigating a different type of uncharted territory: the deleting of what little data we have by the Trump administration.
At first, the distress flare of lost data came as a surge of defunct links on 21 January. The US National Strategy for the Arctic, the Implementation Plan for the Strategy, and the report on our progress all gone within a matter of minutes. As I watched more and more links turned red, I frantically combed the internet for archived versions of our country’s most important polar policies.
I had no idea then that this disappearing act had just begun.
…
These back-to-back data deletions come at a time when the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the global average. Just this week, it was reported that the Arctic’s winter sea ice dropped to its lowest level in recorded history. The impacts of a warming, ice-free Arctic are already clear: a decline in habitat for polar bears and other Arctic animals; increases in coastal erosion that force Alaskans to abandon their homes; and the opening up of shipping routes with unpredictable conditions and hazardous icebergs.
In a remote region where data is already scarce, we need publicly available government guidance and records now more than ever before. It is hard enough for modern Arctic researchers to perform experiments and collect data to fill the gaps left by historic scientific expeditions. While working in one of the most physically demanding environments on the planet, we don’t have time to fill new data gaps created by political malice.
So please, President Trump, stop deleting my citations.
In my opinion this pathetic complaint is an attempt to deflect blame for Victoria’s own carelessness.
Poor data archiving by climate scientists is an ongoing scandal.
If a citation is an essential supporting document for her work, Victoria should have made her own copy of that citation.
There is no excuse these days for not having your own copy of important data. Modern data storage is cheap. A flash drive which can fit on your keychain, which holds two terabytes of data, can be purchased for less than a hundred dollars.
A single terabyte is an enormous amount of data. A terabyte is enough data storage to hold 200 separate electronic copies of the the entire electronic version of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (2013).
A two terabyte flash drive could probably hold every paper Victoria has ever written, along with the entire tree of referenced citations, everything the referenced citations cited, and all the supporting data – and still have plenty of free space for the family photo album.
The US government does not have an obligation to permanently host copies of people’s work. If citations have been permanently lost, the slipshod archiving habits of climate scientists are to blame, not the housecleaning activities of US government agencies.
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Really, Ms. Hermann.
Your piece in the Guardian is the least effective propaganda I’ve seen, recently.
Only the least capable people might be influenced by your attempt.
Why bother?
correction, post immediately prior:
should read; Ms. Herrmann.
Those on the Left could benefit from intensive computer education. They fall for phishing schemes, fail to back up needed information, have notoriously simple passwords (probably the same one for all accounts) and host servers in their basements and other such areas. They set up a network and fail to maintain it, then complain when a smart 5th grader lands in their computer and copies sensitive data. They are disasters with computers.
Typical activist bureaucrat.who was masquerading as a public servant.
Her useless busy work she calls “the country’s most important polar policies” is a self serving panic to justify her own worth. She produced reams of useless planner speak policies that she wants some kind of credit for .
Now all is lost. Here useless junk and her career.
Her work would have provided no more use than it would have back here.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/03/16/you-ask-i-provide-november-2nd-1922-arctic-ocean-getting-warm-seals-vanish-and-icebergs-melt/
Google Scholar has only one paper attributed to Victoria Herrmann. It’s a two-page policy paper that is as useless as Dr. Lew paper entitled “Rethinking Urban Mobility”.
If there was no such thing as CAGW, it would necessary for V. H. To invent it.
More on Herrmann.
http://www.thearcticinstitute.org/experts/victoria-herrmann/
I bet Victoria has not produced anything that will ever be used to better any aspect of anyone’s life.
But she has been well traveled. Lucky gal.
You want to know Victoria?
Look at the useless junk she wrote.
https://seagrant.uaf.edu/events/2016/climate-migration/docs/Program-2016-Symposium-on-Climate-Displacement-Migration-Relocation.pdf
Victoria Herrmann is a Gates Scholar at Cambridge University’s Scott Polar Research Institute
and the Managing Director of The Arctic Institute, where her work focuses on climate change,
adaptation, and human development in the circumpolar north. Throughout 2016, she has acted as
the Principle Investigator for America’s Eroding Edges, a National Geographic funded research
project on climate change adaption and culture in U.S. communities. Victoria was previously a
Fulbright Awardee to Canada and a Junior Fellow at the Carngie Endowment for International
Peace’s Energy and Climate Program.
Culture on the Move: Toward an Inclusive Framework for Cultural Considerations in Climate Related
Migration, Displacement, and Relocation Policies
Victoria Herrmann
Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK, and Arctic Institute, Washington, DC, USA, vsh212@gmail.com
As entire populations lose their lands in the United States, US Territories, and abroad from a changing
climate, what becomes of their historic and sacred sites? When not just individuals but communities are
displaced, how can their cultures be conserved and their traditional knowledge retained? And, equally important,
how can cultural heritage be used to facilitate the emplacement of these communities to new sites?
Such questions are vital to developing policies that address the needs of communities facing climate-related
displacement. Yet, cultural considerations have been largely neglected in framework discussions on climate
relocation to date.
The proposed paper offers an approach to better integrate cultural heritage into the policy dialogue
for climate related migration, both internally and internationally. First, the paper identifies best practices of
cultural heritage being used in climate displacement and relocation efforts. It does so by synthesizing the work
of the Pocantico Working Group on Climate Migration and Cultural Heritage, an international network of
cultural leaders, practitioners, and scholars.
Then, the paper presents how the best practices drawn from these existing efforts can be used as
lessons in how to effectively incorporate cultural considerations into policy and legal options for addressing
internal migration, cross-border displacement, and relocation in the context of climate change. Specifically,
the lessons highlight (1) how to include preservation where possible and/or document and memorialize the
tangible heritage left behind by displaced communities; (2) how to conserve the intangible heritage, traditional
knowledge, and movable heritage of displaced persons and communities; and (3) how to facilitate the role of
cultural heritage as a tool for resiliency, integration, and social cohesion in new sites.
Cultural heritage is not only a local history to be conserved for dislocated persons through its substantial
consideration in climate policy frameworks. It is also a tool that can aid in the development of strong
communities once relocated—communities capable of successfully scoping with future climate stressors.
“As entire populations lose their lands in the United States, US Territories, and abroad from a changing
climate As if…WTF? Thanks for sharing her mental condition.
Truly amazing if this data is so important to her, she should have backed it up…Incompotent to say the least…
We have been regaled with stories of paranoid Obama interns furiously backing up data lest the evil Darth Trump delete it. Was the the only one who did not get that memo?
One story I read said that it is standard when a new president takes office the outgoing president’s stuff gets archived. I think it said the Obama people even imported most, or all, of the stuff they thought was important to a website associated with Obama. That’s where she should look.
Perhaps innovations like this are useful after all
http://nerdapproved.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/dog-ate-my-homework.JPG
Could she be miffed because she was going to use these “references” in her Ph.D. thesis?
Not necessarily. Where I live, the most variable weather happens in winter and spring (by the calendar). When it is most variable is, itself, highly variable. The variability drops off as spring transitions to summer (late May into June). It is least variable in summer (July, August, September) and early autumn (October), becoming more variable as winter approaches (November, December). That’s why we have two tornado seasons here. The first (spring) one peaks in March or April, The second one (autumn) peaks in November or December.
Southeastern USA
I’ve already mentioned that here, on any given day of any month, a tornado is possible. Whether we get one or not depends on that day’s conditions.
The Arctic: Territory of Dialogue
Currently the fourth Arctic international forum is taking place in Arkhangelsk, Russia.
Russian president Vladimir Putin made (7 min) long speech, other speaker was President of Iceland Gudni Johannesson.
Among other meters mentioned Putin said following:
“The Arctic is also a place where international law is pre-eminent. The maritime boundaries and ownership of underwater minerals, oil and gas will be determined by international law. The Arctic coastal countries have jointly declared that they will follow the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. The maritime delimitation agreement between Norway and Russia in 2010 set an encouraging example that everybody should follow.”
If you like to hear Putin speech (with English translator’s voice) or read more follow this link
http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/54149
(be aware of the bear.)
Phd student doesn’t know the difference between data, citations to peer reviewed literature and hyperlinks to government propaganda web-pages.
Hmmm . . .
Typical climate scientist doctoral candidate I suppose.
The Trump hating snowflake Victoria Herrmann is waving her hands and identifying herself and her NGO activist organization for defunding.
It’s Another Great Day For America!
I like your take on it, J Mac. 🙂
Looks like the incoming admin threw her baby out with the bath water.
Gee, I thought we all know about backups and don’t send the ONLY copy of something. And did she even LOOK on her hard drive? Does she know what a hard drive is? Did Windows 10 eat it? Yeah, yeah, I know – I’m one to talk. I backed up three months’ worth of wildflower images on ONLY one backup drive and it crashed. But that stuff is still on my hard drive, so I’ll take my antique computer down to the tech geeks and have them recover it and wait while they scold me. I’m going to go pout.
Life is hard when you’re an idiot, isn’t it?