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For the last 15 years, science teacher Jeff Grant has used information on climate change from the federal website Climate.gov to create lesson plans, prepare students for Advanced Placement tests, and educate fellow teachers.
Now, Grant says, he is “grabbing what [he] can” from the site run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Program Office, amid concerns that the Trump administration is mothballing it as part of a broader effort to undermine climate science and education.
“It’s just one more thing stifling science education,” said Grant, who teaches at Downers Grove North High School in the Chicago suburbs.
Since early May, all 10 editorial contributors to Climate.gov have lost their jobs, and the organization that produces its education resources will soon run out of money. On June 24, the site’s homepage was redirected to NOAA.gov, a change NOAA said was made to comply with an earlier executive order on “restoring gold standard science.” Those steps follow many others the president has made to dismantle federal efforts to fight climate change, which his administration refers to as the “new green scam.”
Former employees of climate.gov and other educators say they fear that the site, which will no longer produce new content, could be transformed into a platform for disinformation.
“It will make it harder for teachers to do a good job in educating their students about climate change,” said Glenn Branch, deputy director of the nonprofit National Center for Science Education. “Previously, they could rely on the federal government to provide free, up-to-date, accurate resources on climate change that were aimed at helping educators in particular, and they won’t be able to do so if some of these more dire predictions come to pass.”
Such concerns have some foundation. For example, Covid.gov, which during the Biden administration offered health information and access to COVID-19 tests, has been revamped to promote the controversial theory that the coronavirus was created in a lab. The administration has also moved aggressively to delete from government sites other terms that are currently out of favor, such as references to transgender people that were once on the National Park Service website of the Stonewall National Memorial, which honors a major milestone in the fight for LGBTQ+ rights.
Kim Doster, director of NOAA’s Office of Communications, declined to answer specific questions but shared a version of the statement posted on the NOAA website when Climate.gov was transferred. “In compliance with Executive Order 14303, Restoring Gold Standard Science, NOAA is relocating all research products from Climate.gov to NOAA.gov in an effort to centralize and consolidate resources,” it says.
Overhaul targets federal science agencies
Climate.gov, founded in 2010 to support earth science instruction in schools, had become a go-to site for educators and the general public for news and information about temperature, sea level rise, and other indicators of global warming.
For many educators, it has served a particularly key role. Because its resources are free, they are vital in schools that lack resources and funding, teachers and experts say.
Rebecca Lindsey, until recently Climate.gov’s lead editor and writer, was one of several hundred NOAA probationary employees fired in February, then rehired and put on administrative leave, before being terminated again in March. The rest of the content production team — which included a meteorologist, a graphic artist, and data visualizers — lost their jobs in mid-May. Only the site’s two web developers still have their jobs.
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Lindsey said she worries that the government “intended to keep the site up and use it to spread climate misinformation, because they were keeping the web developers and getting rid of the content team.”
In addition, the Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network, the official content provider for the education section of the site, has not received the latest installment of its three-year grant and expects its funds to run out in August.
“We won’t have funding to provide updates, fix hyperlinks, and make sure that new resources are being added, or help teachers manage or address or use the resources,” said Anne Gold, CLEAN’s principal investigator. “It’s going to start deteriorating in quality.”
CLEAN, whose website is hosted by Carleton College, is now searching for other sources of money to continue its work, Gold said.
With the June 24 change redirecting visitors from Climate.gov to NOAA.gov/climate, the website for the first time falls under the purview of a political appointee: Doster. Its previous leader, David Herring, is a science writer and educator.
Melissa Lau, an AP environmental science teacher in Piedmont, Oklahoma, said the relocated site was “really difficult to navigate.”
As someone who lives in Tornado Alley, Lau said, she frequented CLEAN and NOAA sites to show her students localized, real-time data on storm seasons. She said she is concerned that teachers won’t have time to track down information that was shifted in the website’s move and, as a result, may opt not to teach climate change.
The executive order on “restoring gold standard science” that appears to have triggered the shift gives political appointees the authority to decide what science information needs to be modified to align with its tenets.
While the disclaimer posted to NOAA.gov seems to imply that Climate.gov did not meet this requirement, educators and researchers said that the site and its CLEAN education resources were the epitome of a gold standard.
“I want to stress that the reason why CLEAN is considered the gold standard is because we have such high standards for scientific accuracy, classroom readiness, and maintenance,” Gold said. “We all know that knowledge is power, and power gives hope. … [Losing funding] is going to be a huge loss to classrooms and to students and the next generation.”
Trump administration has cut funding for climate science
This is only the latest attack by the Trump administration on education around climate change. This month, the U.S. Global Change Research Program’s website, GlobalChange.gov, was shut down by the administration after the program was defunded in April. The website once hosted an extensive climate literacy guide, along with all five iterations of the National Climate Assessment — a congressionally required report that informed the public about the effects and risks of climate change, along with local, actionable responses.
The Department of Commerce, which oversees NOAA, has cut other federal funding for climate research, including at Princeton University, arguing that these climate grant awards promoted “exaggerated and implausible climate threats, contributing to a phenomenon known as ‘climate anxiety,’ which has increased significantly among America’s youth.”
Studies, though, suggest that if young people have a greater understanding of why weather is changing and how to take action, they are less likely to feel anxious.
“The more you know [about climate change], the more it’s not a scary monster in the closet,” said Lauren Madden, professor of elementary science education at the College of New Jersey. “It’s a thing you can react to.” She added, “We’re going to have more storms, we’re going to have more fires, we’re going to have more droughts. There are things we can do to help slow this. … I think that quells anxiety, that doesn’t spark it.”
Related: One state mandates teaching climate change in almost all subjects — even PE
And climate education has broad public support — about 3 in 4 registered voters say schools should teach children about global warming, according to a 2024 report from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. Similarly, 77% of Americans regard it as very or somewhat important for elementary and secondary school students to learn about climate change, according to a 2019 study. And all but five states have adopted science standards that incorporate at least some instruction on climate change.
Yet few teachers have received training on climate change. There is also not much professional development for climate educators, and textbooks tend to downplay the effects of climate change.
As a result, many science teachers rely on federal tools and embed them in their curriculum. They are worried that the information will no longer be relevant, or disappear entirely, according to Lori Henrickson, former climate integration specialist for Washington state’s education department. Henrickson, who lost her job this June as the result of state budget cuts, was in charge of integrating climate education across content areas in the state, from language arts to physical education.
The .gov top-level domain connotes credibility and accessibility, according to Branch: “It is also easier for teachers facing or fearing climate change denial backlash to cite a reliable, free source from the federal government.”
Educators seek out independent resources for climate lessons
With Climate.gov’s future uncertain, educators are looking to other resources, like university websites and tools from other countries.
“I’m sure there will continue to be tools, and there will be enough people who will be willing to pay to access them,” Madden said. But, she added, “they probably won’t be as comprehensive, and it won’t feel like it’s a democratic process. It’ll feel like: If you or your employer are willing to chip in for it, then you’ll have access.”
Madden, along with many other educators, frequently used the Environmental Protection Agency’s environmental justice toolkit, but the site was taken down earlier this year.
“I feel like with all the federal websites, I’m constantly checking to see what’s still up and what’s not,” Madden said.
Related: How Trump is disrupting efforts by schools and colleges to combat climate change
Bertha Vazquez, education director for the Center of Inquiry, an organization that works to preserve science and critical thinking, said she worried that the disappearance of climate information could leave U.S. students behind.
“The future of the American economy is not in oil, the future of the American economy is in solar and wind and geothermal. And if we’re going to keep up with the international economy, we need to go in that direction,” she said. But while the U.S. should be leading the way in scientific discovery, Vazquez said, such work will now be left to other countries.
Lau said she felt helpless and frustrated about Climate.gov’s shutdown and about the “attack on American science in general.”
“I don’t know what to do. I can contact my legislators, but my legislators from my state are not going to be really open to my concerns,” she said. “If students next year are asking me questions about [science research and funding], I have to tell them, ‘I do not know,’ and just have to leave it at that.”
This story about the government climate website was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger climate and education newsletter.
