The Earth keeps getting hotter, and Americans’ trust in science is on a down trend
As global authorities confirm 2025 The world’s third hottest year on recordA new poll shows that Americans are sharply divided on the role of science in the United States.
A report released Thursday by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center found that a majority of Americans want the United States to lead the world in science, but Republicans and Democrats disagree on whether that is the case.
According to the poll, nearly two-thirds of Democrats, or 65 percent, fear the United States is losing ground to other countries when it comes to scientific achievement; This represents an increase of 28 points since 2023. Republicans moved in the opposite direction; Far fewer say the U.S. is losing ground than in the past (32%, a 12-point drop over the same time period).
The divide reflects “other partisan differences in attitudes around science that we have been tracking for years,” according to the Pew report. “Specifically, partisan differences in trust in scientists and the value of science to society are much wider than they were before the COVID-19 pandemic. Republicans are less trusting of scientists and less likely to say science has a mostly positive impact on society, while Democrats’ views are largely unchanged.”
The report notes that the Trump administration is reshaping federal science policy, including eliminating research grants, reducing the science and health workforce, and shifting priorities. away from climate change research. Last month, the administration disbanded the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, one of the world’s leading climate and weather research institutions.
According to an October survey of 5,111 U.S. adults, 90 percent of Democrats said they had some trust in scientists, while only 65 percent of Republicans said the same. At this point, the trust gap between both parties has been broadly similar in every poll since 2021.
Experts said the findings were not particularly surprising.
“This is part of a larger trend toward the politicization of science,” said Zeke Hausfather, a research scientist at Berkeley Earth, touching on issues such as vaccines and climate change. Concerns about “being left behind” may be justified, he said, because “while the United States has become more committed to being a ‘petrostate’ (exporting oil and gas), other parts of the world, particularly China, have doubled their exports of clean energy technologies such as wind, solar and batteries.”
The report comes as the world continues to head in the wrong direction when it comes to global warming.
On Wednesday, eight international groups released data confirming that 2025 is Earth’s third warmest year on record; this year is almost on par with 2023 and just behind 2024. hottest year on record. The groups include the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA, the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, the Japan Meteorological Agency and China’s Ministry of Science and Technology.
According to Copernicus, the last 11 years have been the 11 hottest years on record.
Last year’s global average temperature was about 2.65 degrees above pre-industrial levels, the baseline against which global warming is measured. This means it falls well short of the 2.7 degree limit (1.5 degrees Celsius) set under the 2015 Paris climate agreement, an internationally recognized tipping point for the worst impacts of climate change.
“The news is not encouraging and the urgency of climate action has never been more important,” Mauro Facchini, head of Earth observation at the European Commission’s Directorate General for Defense Industry and Space, told reporters this week.
Still Trump Withdrew the USA from the Paris Agreement On his first day back in office, it was a move he also made during the first term of his presidency. Earlier this month, Trump also withdrew the US from membership 66 other international organizations and agreementsIncluding the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, from which the Paris agreement originates.
The world is now on track to breach the Paris Agreement’s long-term global warming limit before the end of the decade — several years earlier than previously predicted, according to Hausfather, who also helped build Berkeley Earth. global temperature report It was published this week. He said 2026 will likely fall “somewhere between the second and fourth warmest years” on record.
“The new data is the latest definitive evidence that our climate is in crisis,” said Carlos Martinez, senior climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists. But “the Trump administration not only refuses to confront the reality of climate change as we live, it actively lies about science and undermines our nation’s federal scientific resources.”
Last year wasn’t just hot globally. The contiguous United States had the fourth warmest year on record in its 131-year record, according to NOAA’s assessment. Utah and Nevada recorded their warmest years, 4.3 degrees and 3.7 degrees above 20th-century averages, respectively. California is experiencing its fourth warmest year on record.
NOAA previously tracked weather and climate disasters where damages exceeded $1 billion, but the Trump administration shut down that database last year. Management is also He fired hundreds of scientists Working to prepare the Congressionally mandated National Climate Assessment; and took down the website It contained previous reviews.
Officials from multiple international groups this week stressed that global cooperation is important as global warming worsens the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events such as heat waves, wildfires and floods.
“Collaborative and scientifically rigorous global data collection is more important than ever because we need to ensure Earth information is reliable, accessible and actionable for everyone,” said Celeste Saulo, secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization.
“Data and observations are vital to our efforts to combat climate change and air quality challenges, and these challenges know no borders,” said Florian Pappenberger, director general of the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. However, he noted that NOAA administrator Neil Jacobs had committed not to delete any data, and that this was “a nice thing”.
“Data doesn’t lie,” he said. “All we have to do is measure them.”
