The Guardian: “Climate.gov, which supports public education on climate science, will soon no longer publish new content. A major US government website supporting public education on climate science looks likely to be shuttered after almost all of its staff were fired, the Guardian has learned. Climate.gov, the gateway website for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa)’s Climate Program Office, will imminently no longer publish new content, according to multiple former staff responsible for the site’s content whose contracts were recently terminated. “The entire content production staff at climate.gov (including me) were let go from our government contract on 31 May,” said a former government contractor who wished to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. “We were told that our positions within the contract were being eliminated.” Rebecca Lindsey, the website’s former program manager, who was fired in February as part of the government’s purge of probationary employees, described a months-long situation within Noaa where political appointees and career staff argued over the fate of the website. “I had gotten a stellar performance review, gotten a bonus, gotten a raise. I was performing very well. And then I was part of that group who got the form letter saying, ‘Your knowledge, skills, and abilities are no longer of use to Noaa’ – or something to that effect.” Lindsey said she had been worried that climate.gov might be a target of the new administration soon after the election, but when a large Noaa contract was up for renewal at the end of May, her former boss told her that a demand came “from above” to rewrite parts of the contract to remove the team’s funding. “It was a very deliberate, targeted attack,” said Lindsey. Lindsey said the content for climate.gov was created and maintained by a contracted staff of about 10, with additional contributions from Noaa scientists, and its editorial content was specifically designed to be politically neutral, and faithful to the current state of the sciences. All of those staff have now been dismissed, she said. “We operated exactly how you would want an independent, non-partisan communications group to operate,” said Lindsey, and noted that climate.gov is housed within the science division of Noaa, not its public affairs division. “It does seem to be part of this sort of slow and quiet way of trying to keep science agencies from providing information to the American public about climate.” Noaa has been contacted for comment. It is unclear whether the website will remain visible to the public.