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Hayley SmithStaff Writer
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A Pew Research poll reveals partisan division over U.S. scientific leadership, with Democrats far more concerned about losing ground than Republicans.
The report comes as officials confirm that 2025 was Earth’s third-hottest year on record, pushing it closer to breaching the Paris climate agreement’s 1.5-degree limit.
The Trump administration has withdrawn from the Paris agreement and and cut federal funding for science and climate programs.
As global officials confirm that 2025 was Earth’s third-hottest year on record, a new poll shows Americans are sharply divided over the role of science in the United States.
A report published Thursday by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center found that a majority of Americans want the U.S. to be a world leader in science, but Republicans and Democrats disagree on whether it is.
About two-thirds of Democrats, 65%, fear the U.S. is losing ground to other countries when it comes to scientific achievement — a 28-point increase since 2023, the poll found. Republicans have moved in the opposite direction, with far fewer saying the U.S. is losing ground than in the past, 32%, a 12-point decrease in that same time frame.
The divide mirrors “other partisan differences in attitudes around science we have been tracking for years,” the Pew report says. “In particular, partisan differences in trust in scientists and the value of science for society are far wider than they were before the COVID-19 pandemic. Republicans have become less confident in scientists and less likely to say science has had a mostly positive effect on society, while Democratic views are largely unchanged.”
The report notes that the Trump administration has reshaped federal science policy, including eliminating research grants, cutting science and health workforces, and shifting priorities away from climate change research. Last month, the administration dismantled one of the world’s leading climate and weather research institutions, the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.
Some 90% of Democrats say they have a least a fair amount of confidence in scientists, but only 65% of Republicans said the same, according to the poll, which surveyed 5,111 U.S. adults in October. The gap in confidence between both parties on this point has been broadly similar in every survey since 2021.
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Experts said the findings are not particularly surprising.
“It’s part of a larger trend toward the politicization of science,” said Zeke Hausfather, a research scientist at Berkeley Earth, citing issues such as vaccines and climate change. He said concerns about “falling behind” may be warranted as “the U.S. is very much doubling down on being a ‘petro state’ — exporting our oil and gas — whereas other parts of the world, particularly China, are doubling down on exporting clean energy technologies like wind, solar and batteries.”
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The report lands 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 was Earth’s third-hottest year on record — nearly tied with 2023 and just behind 2024, the warmest year on record. Among the groups are the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA, the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, the Japanese Meteorological Agency and the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology.
The past 11 years have been the 11 warmest on record, according to Copernicus.
Last year’s global average temperature was about 2.65 degrees above pre-industrial levels, the baseline against which global warming is measured. That means it was just shy of the 2.7 degree limit (1.5 degrees Celsius) established under the 2015 Paris climate agreement, an internationally recognized tipping point for the worst effects 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 Directorate General for Defence Industry and Space at the European Commission, told reporters this week.
Yet Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Paris agreement on his first day back in office, a move he also made during his first term as president. Earlier this month, Trump also withdrew the U.S. from 66 other international organizations and treaties, including the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, from which the Paris agreement stems.
The world is now on track to breach the Paris agreement’s limit for long-term global warming before the end of the decade — several years earlier than previously predicted, according to Hausfather, who also helped produce Berkeley Earth’s global temperature report released this week. He said it is likely that 2026 will fall “somewhere between the second and fourth warmest” years on record.
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“The new data is the latest unequivocal evidence that our climate is in crisis,” said Carlos Martinez, a senior climate scientists with the Union of Concerned Scientists. But “the Trump administration is not simply refusing to face the reality of climate change we are experiencing, it is actively lying about science and undermining our nation’s federal scientific resources.”
Last year wasn’t only warm globally. The contiguous U.S. experienced the fourth warmest year in its 131-year record, according to NOAA’s assessment. Utah and Nevada recorded their warmest years on record at 4.3 degrees and 3.7 degrees above their 20th-century averages, respectively. California tied for its fourth-warmest year on record.
NOAA previously tracked weather and climate disasters where damages exceed $1 billion, but the Trump administration shut down that database last year. The administration also fired hundreds of scientists working to prepare the congressionally mandated National Climate Assessment and removed the website that housed previous assessments.
Officials with multiple international groups this week stressed that global cooperation is key as warmer global temperatures worsen 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 before because we need to ensure that Earth information is authoritative, accessible and actionable for all,” said Celeste Saulo, secretary general of the World Meteorological Organization.
“Data and observations are essential to our efforts to confront climate change and air quality challenges, and these challenges don’t know borders,” said Florian Pappenberger, director general of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. However, he noted that NOAA administrator Neil Jacobs has committed to not deleting any data, “which is a welcome thing.”
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“Data don’t lie,” he said. “All we need to do is measure them.”
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