Eric Holthaus is a meteorologist who writes at Slate.com.

Rolling Stone calls him the “Rebel Nerd of Meteorology“:

Last fall, meteorologist Eric Holthaus was waiting for a plane in San Francisco when he made a life-changing decision. He’d just finished pitching Silicon Valley on an app that would bring quality forecasts to underdeveloped countries suffering from climate change-related storms. Investors were less than enthused. “These are the people controlling the world’s forward-thinking economy, and they don’t get we have to take drastic action on climate change,” he says. So Holthaus made a bold stance to forever reduce his own carbon emissions: The flight home to Wisconsin would be the last time he’d ever get on a plane.

Holthaus is so afraid of a Trump presidency, he’s seeking to preserve data against destruction, as he wrote in this WaPo Op-Ed on December 13, 2016, Why I’m trying to preserve federal climate data before Trump takes office:

The incoming administration is likely to be willfully hostile toward the scientific process, with far-reaching implications. One of the most tangible consequences of sharp cutbacks in federal funding for climate science is the potential loss of critical data — whether by neglect or malice — that underlie global efforts to understand our climate system. By all accounts, that’s exactly what Trump and his team want: Ignorance of how human actions are affecting our planet makes it easier to maintain the status quo…. As a scientist and a journalist focusing on climate (and the parent of two toddlers who will one day have to live in the world Trump seems eager to destroy), I can’t sit by and watch this happen. On Saturday, after news broke of Tillerson’s nomination, I began an effort to systematically catalogue and preserve as much of the federal government’s publicly available climate science data as possible in the next five weeks.

Scientists: Do you have a US .gov climate database that you don't want to see disappear? Add it here:https://t.co/IEN8OUc4Tr Please share — Eric Holthaus (@EricHolthaus) December 11, 2016

Holthaus had a meltdown on Twitter yesterday that is gaining a lot of attention, and thousands of retweets. The tweet also has turned into something of group therapy as others who share his despair respond with words of encouragement.

Apparently many people share his despair:

Read through the responses to the original tweet for much more reaction.



