Flying a flag upside down is a symbol of distress often invoked by protesters across the political spectrum. (Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash)

Now that 2025 is coming to a close—and good riddance, I say—it’s time to look back and reflect on the carnage.

One of the defining themes of the past 11 months, and certainly one most pertinent to the climate beat, was “attacks on science and expertise,” which seem likely to continue into 2026. The Bulletin was on this story early and often.

The Trump administration came out swinging as soon as the president took office in January, implementing a funding freeze that sent shockwaves through the scientific establishment. Climate scientist Adam Sobel issued a prescient warning in February that “the Trump administration could end a century of American scientific dominance.”

Within weeks, thousands of datasets were removed from federal websites. Many valuable resources, like the Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool, have disappeared from government websites, although volunteers have pooled their time, expertise, and resources to spin up unofficial versions.

Although the administration often likes to distinguish between “vital” weather research and the “globalist climate agenda,” meteorologist John Morales warned that cuts to the National Weather Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration would undermine weather forecasting and “could cause meteorologists to miss the next nightmare storm.” A trio of Cornell researchers concurred and made an economic appeal (if the importance of human life and well-being was not convincing enough on its own): “If saving money or improving efficiency is the goal of DOGE’s activities, then the economic case for protecting NOAA and NWS is clear: Their activities support fully one-third of US GDP, making these services essential to private sector success. In terms of return on investment, every US dollar spent on weather services yields $73 in documented returns.”

For the first time in 11 years, the 2025 Annual Threat Assessment, which was published in March, made no mention of climate change. As Peter Gleick wrote in his own assessment, the pervasive censorship or repression of climate information “will not reduce the actual risk that environmental problems pose for national security or the military—the physical reality of those threats will be unchanged. Instead, they will blind the country to environmental instability and real-world conflict risks that jeopardize our military and national security.”

This obstinate refusal to acknowledge the security threats posed by climate change continued with the National Security Strategy that came out in November, which mentioned climate change only to disavow it: “We reject the disastrous ‘climate change’ and ‘Net Zero’ ideologies that have so greatly harmed Europe, threaten the United States, and subsidize our adversaries.” As Bulletin president and CEO Alexandra Bell wrote in her analysis: “The lack of climate content simply reminds the rest of the world that it will be without the leadership or even half-hearted participation of the United States on this matter for some time, likely resulting in the loss of ecosystems, money, and human lives.”

Lest you think this recap revolves too closely around exclusively American problems, it’s worth remembering that climate change is a global challenge, and climate science a global endeavor. Threats to, for example, the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawai’i, which supplies the data that populates the Keeling Curve, would have global ramifications. As Eric Morgan and Ralph Keeling wrote in May, “If the current administration has its way, the climate change research community could soon be fully adrift, unable to know with sufficient accuracy how quickly carbon dioxide levels are rising.”

The damage wrought by the Trump administration will be felt for many years to come. Chad Small, a former Bulletin climate fellow and graduate student studying atmospheric sciences, detailed how funding cuts are ending the careers of young and aspiring scientists before they even begin. “My department at the University of Washington usually matriculates between eight and 12 students for each incoming PhD cohort,” he wrote. “The incoming cohort for this fall is four students.”

The Trump administration has also proposed ending more than 40 NASA missions, including at least 14 Earth science missions. This would severely limit scientists’ ability to monitor and study the planet and its processes—and kill any future attempts to track and enforce climate action for years, possibly decades.

The attacks on science continued through December, when White House budget director Russell Vought declared that “the National Science Foundation will be breaking up the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado.”

Benjamin Santer and David Thompson offered an astute summary of the situation, and a clarion call to action, last month: “In today’s United States of America, chaos and disinformation are the new normal, and attacks on science and democratic principles spew from the same ideological fount…

“It can be tempting to develop a narrative that what we’ve experienced since January 2025 is only a temporary aberration in the turbulent story of our democracy, no worse than prior political aberrations. That is dangerous. Our current political climate is just as unusual and concerning as the current state of our planetary climate. In both cases, we no longer need sophisticated signal identification methods to tell us what Hamlet knew—that ‘the time is out of joint.’ It’s up to all of us to set things right.”

But while I think attacks on science were the defining story of 2025—at least as far as climate goes—the Bulletin also rose above the fray to cover other fascinating environmental stories, and I’d like to leave you with these three—my personal favorites:

Clonycavan Man is a bog body on display at the National Museum of Archeology. According to radiocarbon dating, Clonycavan Man lived between 392 and 201 B.C. (Frances Mack)

Ticking time bogs: How to save a vast archive of human history—and a vital carbon sink

By Frances Mack

An oil well pump jack, one of hundreds operating in northeastern Utah on public lands overseen by the Bureau of Land Management. (Photo by Jonathan D. Mallory / BLM Utah)

The sagebrush rebel revival

By Dustin Mulvaney

Wildfires on Mount Parnitha, seen from Athens in 2021. (Photo by Anasmeister on Unsplash)

A perfect firestorm: The social, political, and climate forces that keep Athens burning

By Jessica McKenzie