Trump’s ‘climate’ purge deleted a new extreme weather risk tool. We recreated it | The Guardian has recreated a searchable climate future risk tool developed by Fema but then deleted

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1. Some of the concerning details:

   >“We changed the name of it, removed mentions of emissions scenarios, tried to not get it any attention,” said a source familiar with the Fema project, who asked not to be named. “But it was taken down because there is now a fear of anything climate-related. There is such a culture of fear and uncertainty in Fema, people are worried about getting fired or defunded.”
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   >The Guardian is now helping resurrect and display the short-lived tool, which was keenly awaited within Fema as the first free, localized resource showing how much climate change impacts will cost American communities.
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   >Drawing data from across federal government agencies, the index has county-by-county information on projected annual losses this century from threats including extreme heat, coastal flooding , wildfires, hurricanes and drought, all of which are worsened by human-caused global heating. Each county was also given an overall risk rating, which ranked how vulnerable its particular population is to climate shocks.
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   >Such information is crucial for planning by local governments, insurers, utilities and others that look to Fema to help contend with a growing list of disasters now rending American communities, according to Victoria Salinas, who was deputy administrator of resilience at Fema during Joe Biden’s administration.

   It’s good that a tool like this was archived and then recreated outside the government, but this also brings to mind all the tools and data that have not been preserved this way, and also all the data that might not be collected going forwards. This is going to be a long-term challenge for communities across the country and likely around the world.

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