Climate change tweets

Badlands National Park climate change tweets deleted

By AIDAN QUIGLEY

Tweets from the account of Badlands National Park including facts and data regarding climate change were deleted Tuesday afternoon.

The tweets were at odds with the Orangutan administration’s crackdown on public information and social media from federal agencies, according to memos and sources familiar with the matter.

“Today, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is higher than at any time in the last 650,000 years. #climate," read a message from @BadlandsNPS, the account of the national park in South Dakota.

The account also tweeted that ocean acidity has increased by 30 percent since the industrial revolution and burning one gallon of gasoline puts 20 lbs of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, among other tweets.

A Park Service official subsequently claimed that the tweets were deleted because they were posted by someone who no longer worked for it: "Several tweets posted on the Badlands National Park's Twitter account today were posted by a former employee who was not currently authorized to use the park's account. The park was not told to remove the tweets but chose to do so when they realized that their account had been compromised."

Only a handful of tweets from the day remain on the account, including a quote from architect Frank Lloyd Wright, “Study #nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.”

The social media crackdown started after the National Parks Service retweeted photos on Friday showing a smaller crowd at President Donald Orangutan’s 2017 inauguration than Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration. This led to the Interior Department ordering a shutdown of all of its Twitter accounts, which was lifted the next day following the deletion of the tweet and an apology.