Paul Darren Bieniasz, who immigrated to the U.S. to study biomedicine and is now a member of the National Academy of Sciences, writes in The Guardian about how Trump is destroying science in the U.S. The U.S. draws the best scientists from around the world because it has traditionally valued “unfettered scientific enquiry.” Despite that America houses the world’s top universities, the most Nobel Laureates in science and an incredible record of achievement (half the world’s medicines are invented in the U.S.), the Trump Administration is damaging our capacity to conduct science and our ability to attract talent. The repercussions will take awhile to manifest, as industry can still build and innovate on past discoveries, but their impact will be felt by future generations. Scientific inquiry from decades past is an important part of our lives today: “the survival of nearly all American children to adulthood is a fairly recent phenomenon that is largely attributable to fundamental scientific discoveries of the recent past.” The New York Times describes other major accomplishments of U.S. scientific research.

The Atlantic notes that Republicans are not just willing to eliminate scientific research that “challenges their political ideology,” but also to “replace it with shoddy studies designed to support their goals, under the guise of scientific legitimacy.” The Administration is “engaging in science theater,” by framing questions in a way that leads to preferred answers, pursuing studies “not from a place of genuine inquiry, but from prejudice.”

Inside Climate News describes how the proposed budget cuts at NOAA could damage the ARGO program, which deploys remote sensors that monitor the temperature of the ocean worldwide. U.S. funding fuels this effort, which provides one of the essential measurements of our changing climate and delivers vital data for calibrating models that project weather and future climatic conditions. Reuters reports that the Trump Administration has eliminated the Office of Climate in the State Department. The career employees in this office played a lead role in negotiating the Paris Accord, and in supporting other actions that help implement the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The Guardian describes the growing concern about the impact of the Trump Administration’s cuts to NOAA and FEMA on our ability to prepare for and respond to climate extremes. Emergency managers rely on NOAA data to issue warnings and evacuation orders, and to pre-position resources. Death tolls used to be higher when this high-quality data was unavailable. One expert states: “It’s beyond crazy that we are eliminating the funding for these agencies, particularly at this moment where hazards are increasing because of climate change.” While damage from Hurricane Helene was extensive, accurate forecasting prevented the death toll from mounting into the thousands.

Those impacted by disasters are another constituency beginning to organize against the Trump Administration. Inside Climate News notes that the 108 major disaster and emergency declarations in the U.S. last year impacted about 41% of the U.S. population. “As climate change turbocharges more frequent and destructive extreme weather events, a growing number of disaster survivors are organizing across the United States to call for climate action and advocate for proactive mitigation efforts.” The article features Extreme Weather Survivors, a growing non-profit group that focuses on mutual support, preparedness and story-telling to alert people about the impact of extreme weather in our new climate regime.

Perhaps to disempower this new constituency, the Trump Administration has decided that “Federal scientists will no longer update a list of weather disasters that cause billions of dollars in damage. The list had been growing dramatically in recent years, a sign of both extreme weather and increasing development across the country.” The Washington Post states that this is one of several scientific datasets that NOAA will stop updating or maintaining. Inside Climate News reports that NOAA has also announced they will not be updating the data sets that track the extent of Arctic and Antarctic ice, one of the most important and well-understood indicators of the warming polar regions. The clear objective of the Trump Administration is to eliminate the federal government’s ability to document the impacts of climate change. I cannot think of a more ignorant, shortsighted and reckless course. The Washington Post’s editorial board notes that the Administration’s decisions “reveal a basic disregard for the scientific programs and government infrastructure that have kept Americans safe for decades. The President almost seems to be daring Mother Nature to strike while the country’s defenses are down.”

Rolling Stone reports that Donald Trump is planning to try to convince people that climate change is good for humanity. This is a climate-denier talking point that really has faded from prominence, because it’s inane on its face. “It’s so outrageous that no one except [Trump] would try to do this,” says Edward Maibach, director of George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change Communication. “In America, anyone is free to call devastating storms, floods, droughts, air pollution, killer heatwaves, and a growing threat of mosquito- and tick-borne diseases a good thing. But saying it doesn’t make it true.”

Grist reports that farmers around the world are integrating solar power into their business models, particularly as water becomes scarce. This can include growing crops under or among solar panels, or actually fallowing land and installing solar. This practice has shown to be quite lucrative for some farmers in California’s Central Valley, where the average revenue generated has been estimated “to be $124,000 per hectare (about 2.5 acres) each year, 25 times the value of using the land to grow crops.” Standards recently adopted by California are likely to reduce the revenue available to agrisolar adopters.

The Guardian notes that, in eastern Australia, renewable energy produced 43% of the electricity used during the first quarter of 2025. This is up from 39% last year, as electricity generated from fossil fuels continued to decline. This shift has produced a 5.1% drop in greenhouse-gas emissions. Renewable-electricity generation increased 16% from rooftop solar panels, 18% from wind farms and 10% from large solar farms. Output to the grid from batteries almost doubled as more installations came online.

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