A Second Trump Presidency is an Opportunity for Climate Science to Reset

The election of Donald Trump for a second stint as US president has stimulated a great deal of reflection from those on the left side of the political aisle. A recurring theme has been that the policies and cultural issues emphasized by the left wing of the democratic party are unpopular with the average voter and thus are weighing down the Democratic Party as a whole. An increasingly embraced prescription has thus been to reject the overreach of the far left wing of the party.

In a parallel discussion, scientists and their institutions (universities, government research labs, professional societies, journals) are also reflecting on the election results, especially what they signal in terms of public trust in science and expertise. Along with declining trust in other societal institutions, trust in science has deteriorated, with about 1/4th of US adults and 1/3rd of self-identified Republicans now reporting that they have little or no confidence that scientists act in the best interest of the public. Most science is conducted within the university setting, and trust in universities has cratered among Republicans, with only 31% saying that universities have a positive impact on the nation, compared with 74% of Democrats.

A primary reason why Republicans distrust science is that they perceive that universities and institutional science are fused with the Democratic party. Surveys of party affiliation among academics more-or-less bear this out, as Democrat faculty outnumber Republicans by much more than 10 to 1 in most departments. Accordingly, there is a substantial concern, even emanating from within the academy, that the research output of universities is heavily skewed toward findings that support left-leaning worldviews. Along these lines, Harvard professor Roland Fryer recently expressed grave concerns that research that could be used to support right-leaning worldviews is likely to be considered too controversial for publication, saying, “Realistically, either journal editors are refusing to publish controversial results, or academics are too cowardly even to do the research.” Survey data indicates that 34 percent of professors feel pressured by peers to avoid “controversial research,” with 91 percent reporting being at least “somewhat likely” to self-censor in academic publications, meetings, presentations, or on social media.

It is in this context of declining public trust in academia and science, especially among Republicans, in which academics and researchers are reflecting on how best to conduct themselves during a second Trump presidency. There are a myriad of dynamics to consider, but lessons can certainly be taken from what transpired in the aftermath of the first Trump election in 2016, which has directly impacted the current levels of mistrust in universities and science.

President-elect Trump’s persona, characterized by bluster and a propensity to lie and “bullshit,” make him personally offensive to many of us who value curiosity, rationality, and careful methodical thinking. Thus, the natural impulse of most academic and scientific institutions has been to define themselves in opposition to Trump (and to conservative parties more generally). The result, however, has been that during the first Trump presidency, the line between political advocacy and academic science, which had already been blurry, became virtually invisible. Universities and groups of experts embraced the general tone of manichaeism, making no secret which side of the political aisle was to be seen as good and which bad. Prominent examples of this were the 2017 "The March for Science” and the world’s most prestigious scientific journal, Nature, officially endorsing Joe Biden for president in 2020 as well as Kamala Harris for President in 2024. A particularly salient example of political bias was the letter from health experts in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, which abruptly reversed previous messaging and endorsed an exception for social gatherings, so long as it was for the progressive cause of the moment.

It is clear to me that Trump does not embrace the core values of science, so I understand the scientific community's impulse to stand in opposition to him. We are already seeing this instinct take hold again, as the first reaction from Nature was an article headlined, “Scientists around the world expressed disappointment and alarm as Republican Donald Trump has secured a second term.”

However, if we, as a scientific community, want to regain public trust, we must follow a similar strategy to the recent self-reflection of sects of the Democratic party. That is, we should reject the urge to overreach. Many Democrats are now critiquing the extreme activist wing of the party for overreaching and alienating the general public on social issues. The scientific community can draw a parallel critique towards scientists that overstate scientific consensus and assert an all-encompassing authority on policy decisions.

The Overreaching Tendencies of Climate Science

“…the lessons that ought to have followed the [first Trump] election—lessons about the importance of understanding other Americans, the necessity of resisting tribalism, and the centrality of the free exchange of ideas to a democratic society—have not been learned. Instead, a new consensus has emerged in the press, but perhaps especially at this paper: that truth isn’t a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else.”

The above statement by Bari Weiss refers to the attitudes in elite left-of-center media, but it could just as easily have been said about attitudes in elite scientific and academic institutions. The idea that climate scientists engage in a special way of thinking and have superior knowledge of how global society should be arranged—what Mike Hulme identifies as gnosticism—is smug and condescending. Not coincidentally, it has fueled public resentment, as 61% of Republicans and 32% of Democrats now say research scientists feel superior to others. Not only has this superiority complex hurt science’s credibility, it is seriously flawed. This attitude has contributed to the scientization of the climate change problem, in which a complex, value-laden, and contentious political issue is misleadingly presented as purely scientific or technical. This dynamic fosters the depoliticization of the issue, as people mistakenly imagine that science is capable of acting as a supreme authority, capable of unequivocally dictating policies without the need for the discursive processes inherent to traditional political debates.

This scientization and depoliticization is clear in U.S. Climate Envoy John Kerry’s justification of the political positions of the Biden Administration:

“Nothing that we are doing, nothing that President Biden has sought to do, has any political motivation or ideological rationale. It’s entirely a reaction to science, to the mathematics and physics that explain what is happening [to the climate],”

Kerry is not a scientist, but this sentiment was also ascendant at the highest levels of leadership within scientific institutions during the first Trump presidency. For example, editor-in-chief of Science, Holden Thorpe, more-or-less, affirmed Kerry’s stance on science and politics when defending Nature’s decision to officially endorse Joe Biden in the 2020 election. Thorpe stated, without political endorsements from scientific institutions, people would have “the permission to say things like ‘climate change may be real, but I don't think we should have government regulation to deal with it,’ which is unacceptable.” (my emphasis).

Similarly, the editor-in-chief of Nature, which regularly publishes articles that go quite far in their support of particular policies, stated unequivocally that “When it comes to science, Nature does not have a preferred narrative.” This all aligns with the notion that science can not only inform but dictate policy and was exemplified by official condemnations of Trump’s first exit from the UN Paris Agreement from the highest levels of scientific authority, such as from the American Association of the Advancement of Science. But is it legitimate to state that exiting the Paris Agreement is actually anti-scientific?

What Can Science Say on the Climate Change Problem?

In this context, it is relevant to review what claims can truly be considered “anti-scientific” in climate policy debates. Under the strictest definitions, the scientific method involves making observations, forming hypotheses about the underlying causes of those observations, and then meticulously designing experiments to test the validity of the hypotheses. The strongest hypotheses, and those that get conferred the status of being more-or-less true, are those that have withstood all attempts to falsify them to date. Unfortunately, the types of questions where it is feasible to design neat tests of clear hypotheses are rather narrow and tend to be limited to fundamental aspects of physics, chemistry, and biology. Outside of these areas, published scientific studies often resemble detective-like inductive inference, assembling the most parsimonious story from the available evidence.

Claims in climate policy are on a spectrum from being quite amenable to the scientific method to being almost completely outside its realm. One way to help delineate different parts of the spectrum is to decompose the predominant narrative on the climate problem into four parts:

1. Climate change is happening,
2. Contemporary climate change is caused almost entirely by humans,
3. The negative impacts of climate change are larger than the positive impacts
4. The positive impacts of reducing emissions rapidly enough to adhere to the Paris Agreement temperature limits are larger than the negative impacts.

Although climate science is heavily constrained by the impossibility of using copies of Earth to test any hypotheses about the causes and consequences of global climate change, statements 1 and 2 are essentially narrow enough to be addressed by components of the scientific method. We can test, for example, that gases like carbon dioxide absorb and reemit radiation at wavelengths that cause them to have a greenhouse effect. We can observe the increase in the greenhouse effect directly using satellites and surface instruments, and we can document the enhanced greenhouse effect’s predicted consequences on temperatures through independent observations and instrumental networks. Finally, we have physics-based mathematical models that allow us to conduct simulated hypothesis tests of what the world would look like with and without increased greenhouse gas concentrations. The oft-quoted “97% to 99% scientific consensus on global warming” applies to statements 1 and 2. Thus, when Trump has done things like call the entire concept of climate change a hoax, this can legitimately be called out as science denial.

Beyond statements 1 and 2, however, things become more fuzzy. Statement 3—on the net negative impacts of climate change—veers from a descriptive claim of reality to a normative claim of desirability, invoking values outside of the traditional realm of science. Most would agree that the first-order negative impacts from carbon emissions (e.g., increases in extreme heat, sea level rise, increases in floods and droughts in some regions, enhanced fire weather conditions, and possibly stronger, though less frequent hurricanes) outweigh the first-order positive impacts (from, for example, reduced deaths from cold spells, carbon dioxide fertilization of plants, or the expansion of habitable climates and agricultural zones in higher latitudes). However, what is more relevant to discussions of policy like the Paris Agreement (Statement 4) is the net effect of industrialization via fossil fuels.

Consider that historical warming of ~1.4°C since the Industrial Revolution has coincided with almost all climate-sensitive aspects of global human society trending in positive directions in recent decades, as technology and economic development have outpaced negative climate impacts. Consider also that despite these positive trends globally, tremendous inequality persists today, with 3 billion people still in extreme energy poverty, and the observed average mortality from floods, droughts, and storms 15 times higher for low-energy use countries than for high-energy use countries. Even in high-energy use countries like the U.S., many families at the lower end of the income distribution are forced to endure harmful indoor temperatures or even sacrifice medicine or food in order to pay for energy costs.

Thus, any policy, like those in the Paris Agreement, that set hard limits on emissions restricts energy options, creating strong potential to raise costs and harm human resilience to climate change as well as quality of life overall.

When we take this more holistic view of the problem and acknowledge the messy trade-offs involved, we see that this is a political controversy with technical underpinnings that can't actually be resolved by technical means, because the ultimate target decision (not to mention many of the technical aspects themselves) is subject to different framings and interpretations based on value-based political and ethical positions. The issue involves technological, economic, ethical, philosophical, and moral questions far outside neat scientific hypothesis testing. Therefore, science is not and cannot be a substitute for traditional democratic argumentation and deliberation.

Thus, it will not be strictly “anti-science,” when the Trump administration withdraws from the Paris Agreement for a second time, or when it implements policies more friendly to domestic fossil fuel production.

Delineate Between Scientific Claims and Political Preferences.

As mentioned above, researchers and academics skew overwhelmingly towards the left side of the political aisle, another example of the diploma divide in American politics. For those on the left, this is often interpreted rather self-servingly that “reality has a well-known liberal bias.” expounded on at book length in Chris Mooney’s The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science—and Reality. But if dogma vs. reason were the best way to describe the two factions in American politics, it wouldn't be the left that tends to oppose mainstream scientific views on issues such as GMOs, nuclear power, alternative medicine, blank-slate accounts of human nature, or biological sex.

A better explanation of the political alignments in U.S. politics is that people tend to embrace conclusions—scientific or otherwise—that support themes, ideologies, and narratives that are preexisting components of their worldview. To that end, the left/right divide in the U.S. seems to cut along themes quite similar to how left and right were initially defined during the French Revolution; people differ in how they perceive the desirability and validity of social hierarchies. It just so happens that mainstream climate policy, represented most prominently by the Paris Agreement, aligns very well with several aspects of the more egalitarian preferences and the globalism preferred by the left, and it is in conflict with the social hierarchical preferences and nationalism preferred by the right. This is why populist/nationalist leaders who are more articulate than Trump, like Argentina’s Javier Milei, oppose UN plans, not on technical grounds but on claims that the plans are “super-national socialist government program that aims to solve the problems of modernity with solutions that undermine the sovereignty of nation-states and violate the right to life and property of individuals.”

There are various hypotheses as to why scientists and academics hold left-leaning views, but I am skeptical of the self-serving notion that more credentialed people hold these views because the views are somehow fundamentally more true. While it may be the case that most academic scientists engage in research that entails quantitative rigor constrained by empirical data on narrow research questions, scientists often conflate this day-job activity with the notion that their political worldview is also arrived at through pure empiricism and rationality. On the contrary, I would argue that scientists arrive at their political opinions in mostly the same way everybody else does: through a combination of their natural temperament, the culture they are embedded in, personal experience, and the resulting incomplete and oversimplified models of the world. More self-reflection on this reality by prominent scientists should act as a counterweight against the desire to present themselves as neutral or purely scientific while subtly promoting a specific political agenda (what Roger Pielke Jr. has labeled Stealth Issue Advocacy).

Regain Public Trust by Rejecting Overreach.

“Entangling the sciences in political disputes in which differing views of nature, society, and government are implicated has not resolved or narrowed those disputes, but has cast doubt upon the trustworthiness and reliability of the sciences and experts who presume to advise on these matters.”

-Steve Rayner and Daniel Sarewitz

The public understands correctly that many political questions are moral/ethical, involve tradeoffs, and are very difficult to answer with strict scientific hypothesis testing. In other words, the public knows that science cannot fully determine whether to lock down for a prolonged period of time during a pandemic, because science cannot calculate the optimal tradeoff between, for example, the livelihoods of small business owners and broader public health risks. Similarly, science cannot determine the optimal rate of decarbonization of the global economy, because that would involve definitively weighing all the costs and benefits of fossil fuel use that involve technological, economic, ethical, philosophical, and moral questions far outside of anything that can be answered with the scientific method.

When the scientific community overreaches by presenting their policy preferences as scientifically mandated, they confirm public suspicions, especially on the right, that a technocratic elite is attempting to dictate societal choices without proper democratic deliberation. Specifically, defining scientific institutions as opposing a popular political movement, like that behind Trump, does not convince the public that the popular political movement is wrong, but rather, it convinces the public that establishment science is fused with one side of the political aisle, and thus does not deserve trust.

As citizens, scientists have just as much right as anybody to try to persuade fellow humans to adopt their political views, but they shouldn't do so under the guise that their political preferences are derived from some bedrock truth. In the context of scientific claims on climate change, Bill Maher recently articulated that “I really hate it when people try to manipulate me, try to move me in a certain direction; just tell me the truth.” Scientific institutions should take this idea to heart if they want to regain credibility, and there are encouraging signs that they are in fact doing this.

Thus, the proper response to this election and the distrust of scientific institutions is not to double down on the idea that science is an authority that opposes Trump and the worldviews of the right. Instead, institutional science should respond differently this time. It should be much more humble about the limits of inquiry amenable to the scientific method and be honest that they don't dictate the correctness of various policies. That is the only way that trust in science was ever justified in the first place, and it is the only way to operate in the world during a second Trump presidency and beyond.