National park deletes tweets about climate science

A national park Twitter account has deleted tweets it sent early Tuesday about climate science.

A National Park Service official said the since-deleted posts came from “a former employee who was not currently authorized to use the park’s account.”

The official added that “the park was not told to remove the tweets but chose to do so when they realized that their account had been compromised.”

Badlands National Park caught attention on social media Tuesday afternoon with a series of tweets focusing on the climate.

“Today, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is higher than at any time in the last 650,000 years. #climate,” the park tweeted.

“Flipside of the atmosphere; ocean acidity has increased 30% since the Industrial  Revolution. ‘Ocean Acidification” #climate #carboncycle’”

All the @BadlandsNPS climate tweets have been taken down, so here’s a screenshot #factsmatter #sciencematters pic.twitter.com/qUuWzUMfC0

— Anna Nowogrodzki (@AnnaNowo) January 24, 2017

{mosads}The park added a fourth tweet later in the day. All of the messages — basic scientific facts and not noteworthy on their own — received thousands of retweets from other users before being deleted.

The tweets came — and were deleted — amid a Trump administration crackdown on social media activities from several key agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). 

The Interior Department itself drew fire from Trump officials on his first day in office, when the agency was banned from tweeting after retweeting messages about the size of Trump’s inauguration ceremony crowd. 

On Tuesday, Trump’s team banned the EPA from sending social media updates or talking to reporters, The Associated Press reported.

That followed news of a Department of Agriculture gag order on the distribution of scientific research and communications with the press.

Updated: 9:05 p.m.