Miranda Green of Atmos on disappearing climate data, how it's impacting journalists & their ability to tell important stories, and what we can do about it

In Episode 338, Kestrel welcomes Miranda Green, an investigative journalist focused on politics and climate change, to the show. As the author of Atmos Magazine’s weekly newsletter, The Understory, Miranda takes a weekly look behind the climate headlines to question how decisions are made, why they matter, and what they reveal about this moment.

“I think data to me is, they’re facts. It's hard facts. It's looking at points that have been, you know, they're determined by scientists. They've been measured. They are proven points that then, I can use as building blocks to tell my story.” -Miranda

THEME — DATA & FASHION: METHODS & ACCESS

This week, we’re taking a bit of a pulled back lens, exploring data amidst the current volatile political landscape, with a focus on climate data. Also, to note, this episode was recorded in December of 2025 – as things are changing so rapidly in these times, I want to clarify that detail.

We are in this period of so-called misinformation and an era in which DATA MANIPULATION, as this week’s guest articulates, is very real. But it’s not only the way the data is being adjusted to fit the user’s agenda - there’s also the reality that scientifically-backed data is disappearing. 

The article that led me to this week’s guest is called – “Big Gov Wants To Take Away Your Climate Data” (link below) and in it, she talks about how she always anticipated when the EPA would release its annual tally of corporate polluters and the fines they would have to pay when the pollution was too high. BUT, under Trump, these corporations are no longer required to report their emissions. And that means we don’t know what the baseline is for these big polluters, moving forward – we no longer have the comparison data. This is just one blip in the labyrinth of climate and emissions data that this administration is finding ways to bury or delete.

For this week’s guest, an investigative journalist, the erasure of climate and emissions data by the Trump administration is making it harder to do her job, and to write stories about what’s truly going on. 

On the show, we regularly talk a lot about the desire to understand where we’re at when it comes to data in the fashion space, in order to determine the best way to move forward. With fashion being one of the most underregulated industries, having a complicated history with so-called data, and with big fashion players being some of the most notorious polluters out there, this reality of disappearing data is highly concerning.

But people are fighting back – scientists and advocacy groups are finding ways to monitor the situation and challenge the Administration’s actions. And this week’s guest has ideas as well of how we can all get more engaged in ways to resist the continued erasure of significant climate data. 

• “Big Gov Wants To Take Away Your Climate Data”, article by Miranda on Atmos

• “I think out of sight out of mind is essentially what we are seeing happen right now and it does make it hard to determine what the truth is because what it ends up becoming is essentially, as you just described, is a marketing battle.” -Miranda (23:11)

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