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.

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.”

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.

“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.”

“Data don’t lie,” he said. “All we need to do is measure them.”

California touts itself as a leader on the problem of plastic garbage, but recent developments suggest otherwise.

A new report issued by the state’s waste agency shows plastic yogurt containers, shampoo bottles and restaurant takeout trays are being recycled at rates only in the single digits.

Polypropylene, labeled as #5 on packaging, is used for yogurt containers, margarine tubs and microwavable trays. Only 2% of it is getting recycled. Colored shampoo and detergent bottles, made from polyethylene, or #1 plastic, are getting recycled at a rate of just 5%.

Other plastics, including ones promoted as highly recyclable, such as clear polyethylene bottles, which hold some medications, or hard water bottles, are being recycled at just 16%.

No plastic in the report exceeds a recycling rate of 23%, with the majority reported in just the single digits.

Adding to this disquieting assessment, CalRecycle also just pulled back regulations that were supposed to finalize a landmark single-use plastic law known as Senate Bill 54 — a law designed to make the majority of packaging waste in the state recyclable or compostable by working with the plastic and packaging industries.

The report and delay have sparked a wide variety of reactions by those who have closely watched the law as it was written and implemented.

The proposed regulations were regarded as friendly to industry. As a result, some are hopeful that CalRecycle’s decision to pull them back for tweaking means the agency will make the law stronger. Others say the two developments just show the state has never really been serious about plastic recycling.

“California’s SB 54 … will NEVER increase the recycling rates of these items … because cartons and plastic packaging are fundamentally not technically or economically recyclable,” said Jan Dell, the founder of Orange County-based Last Beach Cleanup, an anti-plastic organization.

Industry representatives are also expressing disappointment, saying the more delays and changes the state makes, the harder it is “for California businesses to comply with the law and implement the resulting changes,” said John Myers, a spokesman for the California Chamber of Commerce, which represents companies that will be affected.

Reports on abysmally low rates of recycling for milk cartons and polystyrene have been widely shared and known. But the newest numbers were still a grim confirmation that there are few options for dealing with these materials.

According to one state analysis, 2.9 million tons of single-use plastic and 171.4 billion single-use plastic components were sold, offered for sale or distributed in California in 2023.

Single-use plastics and plastic waste more broadly are considered a growing environmental and health problem. In recent decades, plastic waste has overwhelmed waterways and oceans, sickening marine life and threatening human health.

Last spring, the Newsom administration was accused of neutering the regulations that CalRecycle had initially proposed to implement the law. The changes excluded all packaging material related to produce, meat, dairy products, dog food, toothpaste, condoms, shampoo and cereal boxes, among other products. These are all products that might fall under the purview of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

It also opened the door to “alternative” recycling, such as chemical recycling, which environmentalists say is polluting, and was banned in the language of the law.

The waste agency then submitted those draft regulations to the Office of Administrative Law, whose lawyers and staff review proposed regulations to ensure they are “clear, necessary, legally valid, and available to the public” before finalizing them. They were set to release their determination on Friday; CalRecycle pulled the regulations back before the office issued its determination.

Neither the law office nor governor’s office responded to requests for comment.

Melanie Turner, CalRecycle’s spokeswoman, said the agency withdrew its proposed regulations “to make changes … to improve clarity and support successful implementation of the law,” and its revisions were focused on areas that dealt with “food and agricultural commodities.”

California State Sen. Ben Allen (D-Santa Monica), author of the original legislation, called the delay “entirely avoidable” in a statement, but said it would allow CalRecycle an “opportunity to ensure the regulations truly follow the law as it was signed.”

He urged the waste agency and Newsom’s administration not to “allow broad, sweeping exemptions that would undermine the program and increase costs for ratepayers.”

Critics of the watered-down regulations, such as Anja Brandon, the director of plastics policy for the Ocean Conservancy, said she wasn’t surprised by the withdrawal.

The proposed regulations “would have gone beyond CalRecycle’s authority by creating a sweeping categorical exclusion for food and agricultural packaging — effectively a loophole that would have allowed producers to continue putting vast amounts of plastic packaging into the marketplace, completely undermining SB 54’s goals and success,” she said in a text message.

Turner said CalRecycle will conduct a 15-day comment period — although when that begins has not yet been divulged.