Simply hosting the website wasn't costing that much

That's easy to do. No one has expectations of this one.

As soon as a government website is down, it's an outrage.

I'm sure money could've been saved. But the cost of this site really isn't the hosting, it's the data being gatherd with all the research

Nope. The main cost of the old climate.gov was the salaries of the folks writing the articles and pulling together the resources. They were not getting paid exorbitantly and are quite interested in still getting paid. Source: I am one of those people.

That's the Republican M.O.

Strangle funding to a public service, complain that public service isn't performing, use the consequences of their own actions to justify eliminating the public service indefinitely.