The EPA is going to turn off it's data service, this is a huge ****ing deal

[Phokus]

https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/678cg7/donald_trump_to_completely_turn_off_epas_data/

The service stores data including detailed toxic chemical information, which allows citizens to look up whether there has been a dangerous spill in their area over the last 30 years.

Bill Maher was right, the GOP isn't about conservativism anymore, it's about being a dick.

As someone else mentioned in this thread, air pollution kills 200k people every year:

http://news.mit.edu/2013/study-air-pollution-causes-200000-early-deaths-each-year-in-the-us-0829

Also, another note: "Terrorism kills about 33 US citizens a year. Bees kill 55 a year."

Trump is basically a caricature of every Republican on steroids. I don't think even Bush would have done something like this.

 

[Jaskalas]

When you think of Trump's tax cuts, and military spending...
This is the sort of minuscule cost but high value item sacrificed at the altar of high fantasy.

 

[vi edit]

Hitler burned books. This administration is burying data. Same thing for a modern era.

 

[local]

The cost required to keep a database running can't be that much. This makes no sense other than being able to say they cut something. And it seems like it would be more expensive to not have a database like this because now to get the information would require more than a simple search.

 

[IronWing]

This data is only used by troublemakers who want to stir up trouble.

 

[vi edit]

This has nothing to do with costs and is entirely about suppressing data and access to it. The "cost saving" is just a gold spray tan on a stinking turd of an idea.

 

[K1052]

This administration is about corporate profits above, literally, all else. It's been sold to the blue collar folks as things that will create jobs but the reality is that fatter corporate profits will disproportionately accrue to the wealthy who own huge amount of stock either directly or thru investments with funds. This is effectively transferring costs (degraded envrionment) to the poor/middle class for the rich.

Trump voters think they got a populist that cares about little old them. LOL.

 

[Jaskalas]

Trump voters think they got a populist that cares about little old them. LOL.

Ouch.

 

[crashtech]

This is what they used to call throwing the baby out with the bath water. Certain parts of the data no doubt could be interpreted as having a tinge of political motivation, but making it all go away is just unbelievable. Hopefully the information will still be available to those intrepid enough to file requests through FOIA.

 

[Genx87]

If only they could turn off the NSA computers.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

I wonder if someone is indexing all the data before the shut off

 

[sandorski]

Trump Admin portrait

2017

 

[trenchfoot]

Tip of the Corporate owned iceberg. And to think that the very wealthy have 3 1/2 more years to ransack the treasury (we, the people) just like the Bush/Cheney Corp. did for eight whole years.

But that's not what's important to many of Trump's supporters. Oh no, no, no.... It's all about building a wall to keep out the brownies. It's forever believing in all of those damn lies and reneged promises that Trump preached to them in sermon after sermon after sermon from the campaign pulpit. It's all about ignoring/approving of Trump's despicable personality, his push from Day 1 to surround himself with Goldman Sachs profiteers and far right reactionaries that want nothing better than to disassemble the inner workings of those gov't agencies that oversee and enforce the laws and policies that protect the people from being exploited by the very folks Trump put in charge of said agencies.

It's about keeping the hordes of alleged terrorist Muslim off our shores, out of our cities, out of our neighborhoods, out of our dark alleys and out of our closets and out from under our beds. It's about keeping traditions (attitudes) and practices that were outlawed after the Civil War. It's about defying the Constitution and the Bill of Rights in order to forcefully inject religious beliefs into the laws of the land.

And right at this very moment it's about totally ignoring Trump's Russian Connection, ignoring his favorable comments about Putin, ignoring his desire to help the Russians drill for oil, ignoring his penchant for admiring dictators of the world, ignoring his refusal to release his tax returns, ignoring his efforts to cover up under the veil of secrecy his and his fellow billionaire's concerted efforts to reap (ransack and plunder) the nation's coffers and resources.

For Trump's supporters, Ignorance is Bliss. I mean, what else can they do in order to "Keep on Believing"?

 

[MomentsofSanity]

Trump Admin portrait

2017

Needs more feces flinging.

 

[glenn1]

When you think of Trump's tax cuts, and military spending...
This is the sort of minuscule cost but high value item sacrificed at the altar of high fantasy.

Depending on the amount of usage it got this is perhaps a good move. It makes little sense to provision and run an on-demand datamart like this when the same information can probably be produced without a front end service like this. Honestly most of the "general public" doesn't really have the skills to take full advantage of this service and would be better off simply submitting a request for a data analyst at EPA to fulfill.

That being said shutting down a public facing internet tool is one thing; if this move winds up meaning that people won't be able to access the data at all that's different.

 

[Atreus21]

The source link from the reddit page, here...

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-s...gency-government-administration-a7698736.html

...is very vague.

The Environmental Protection Agency's Open Data Web service – which stores information on climate change, life cycle assessment, health impact analysis and environmental justice – is to have its funding removed and will no longer be in operation, according to people working on the plan. A pop-up on the site appears to confirm the shutdown, with anyone visiting the Open Data page told that the site will not be operational from Friday.

Since this story was first published, that message has been updated to read: "The data on this Web site will continue to be available on April 28, 2017". The EPA also tweeted to say that the website wasn't going anywhere and that it is "open, working and not going anywhere", though it seemed to be experiencing occasional outages.

So, "people working on the plan" contradict the EPA itself, which said the site's not going anywhere. Also, what site specifically is being referred to?

 

[Murloc]

Honestly most of the "general public" doesn't really have the skills to take full advantage of this service and would be better off simply submitting a request for a data analyst at EPA to fulfill.

that costs more money though.

 

[Atreus21]

OP, you should verify these things before you post them.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevl...the-future-of-open-science-data/#1ee69e1618b5

The first thing that struck me about the Medium post was that while opening with the line “we were notified that funding is not available to continue operation” if you scrolled further down the page, after the screenshot of a dataset on the page, the actual quote from the EPA was provided: “we need to be ready to turn-off the EPA Open Data web service by noon on April 28, 2017 — the last day of the current continuing resolution. If Congress does not pass a budget, we will be facing a government shutdown and won’t be able to give technical direction to continue any work.”

The two key phrases there are “last day of the current continuing resolution” and “government shutdown” – in short, if you know your US Government bureaucracy, you know this is not a notification that funding is being withdrawn from an open data website, but rather the standard bureaucratic legalese notification that the Government sends certain contractors and project personnel that their work must halt during a government shutdown.

Indeed, three and a half years ago under the Obama administration, the same thing happened, with large numbers of federal websites turning the virtual lights out and shutting down all of their web sites. The USDA, for example, replaced its website with a simple message about the shutdown and for the duration of the shutdown all of its vast research, datasets and other web-delivered information were removed in their entirety.

 

[glenn1]

that costs more money though.

And a public facing internet site that provides full datamart services is free somehow? Why should taxpayers fund the electricity and processing cycles to run SQL queries for academia when they're perfectly capable of doing (and paying for) that work themselves? Giving you access to the data doesn't mean I need a website that provides you free ETL services or visualizations of the data.

 

[dank69]

This is awesome news and EXACTLY what America deserves.

 

[vi edit]

And a public facing internet site that provides full datamart services is free somehow? Why should taxpayers fund the electricity and processing cycles to run SQL queries for academia when they're perfectly capable of doing (and paying for) that work themselves? Giving you access to the data doesn't mean I need a website that provides you free ETL services or visualizations of the data.

I don't know. Maybe it's more efficient if a single registry was available for these institutions to attach to instead of having a dozen or more disparate ones that are also running off of state/federal dollars creating a layer of redundancy.

 

[sandorski]

And a public facing internet site that provides full datamart services is free somehow? Why should taxpayers fund the electricity and processing cycles to run SQL queries for academia when they're perfectly capable of doing (and paying for) that work themselves? Giving you access to the data doesn't mean I need a website that provides you free ETL services or visualizations of the data.

Taxpayers Own that Data.

 

[glenn1]

Taxpayers Own that Data.

There are two separate issues here: access to the data, and tools and analysis of that data. Allowing the public access to government data isn't the same thing as provisioning a datamart so a grad student at CalTech can do a multi terabyte join operation that takes all night and use government servers and electricity for the job rather than the university's.

 

[Fardringle]

OP, you should verify these things before you post them.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevl...the-future-of-open-science-data/#1ee69e1618b5

Stop trying to be logical. It interferes with the speculation and ranting...

 

[crashtech]

This is awesome news and EXACTLY what America deserves.

Thanks for revealing the depth of your care and concern!

From the above linked article which debunks the hysterical claim that the EPA's data is going away forever:

...in the end the EPA’s open data website is safe and sound for now (though the viral spread of its imminent demise through parts of the scientific community just goes to show how easily "fake news" can spread even among scientists), but perhaps the confusion around it over the past 24 hours might help bring greater attention to the future of how we host the scientific community’s open data moving forward.

This entire thread is par for the course here, sadly.