Trump Is Attacking Climate Science. Scientists Are Fighting Back.
It’s easy, looking at the past year, to see the damage the administration has done. But researchers are also stepping up, trying to fill the gaps.
For over 75 years, the United States has been a global leader in climate change research. In the 1950s, scientists at the University of California showed that carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere were increasing and established the first long-term CO2 monitoring system, while Norman Phillips at the Institute for Advanced Studies developed the first computer model of the global climate. The U.S. soon launched three of the world’s top climate modeling centers: the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in 1955 (based in Princeton since 1968); the National Science Foundation’s Boulder-based National Center for Atmospheric Research in 1960; and NASA’s New York City–based Goddard Institute for Space Studies in 1961. By 1965, it was clear—in the words of President Johnson’s Science Advisory Committee—that humankind was “unwittingly conducting a vast geophysical experiment” with potentially “deleterious” consequences. In 1990, Congress established the U.S. Global Change Research Program to better understand these changes and figure out how to protect human, economic, and planetary health.
As climate change has grown from a distant threat to a present danger, federal support for global change research also grew: from about $1 billion in 1990 to $2.6 billion per year in the 2010s, peaking at $4.3 billion in 2023. Over the decades, NASA and NOAA have produced crucial records of changes in atmosphere, sea level, greenhouse gas emissions, and more. Among many other benefits, U.S. investments in climate research have helped cities design flood protection, farmers make cropping decisions, and communities prepare for hurricanes.
Then came the second Trump administration…
Read the full opinion piece by Robert Kopp on New Republic, March 1, 2026