Welcome back to Climatific, a free, weekly read on climate science emailed right to your inbox. We’re breaking it down so it makes sense- not for scientists or researchers, but for everyday people trying to understand the planet we live on, what’s happening to it, and why it matters.

The impacts of AI and data centers on energy demand and the environment were a strong headliner in 2025. Surely, you had conversations around the dinner table about it this holiday season. Or maybe you talked about how we haven’t gotten much snow this season. Share Climatific with those you

We may be biased, but choosing to educate yourself about climate science is a very wise new year’s resolution. Unprecedented energy demands, nuclear energy data centers, and extreme weather trends are only going to become more amily and friends up for success in 2026, too, by sharing Climatific with one easy button:

By ‘good,’ we mean the common good. A shared passion for protecting the environment. It’s really not much deeper than that.

By ‘old,’ we mean about four decades ago.

Maybe not that long… although it feels like it, most days.

It is critical to recognize that climate obstruction did not always exist in the United States (US), nor was environmental protectionism politicized (Egan and Mullin, 2023). Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson’s scientific advisory committee warned of the heat-trapping impacts of carbon dioxide emissions in 1965, to which Republican President Richard Nixon responded with the creation of the National Environmental Policy Act in 1970, along with a multitude of additional environmental regulations that dubbed the 1970s “the environmental decade” (“‘The President and the Planet: Richard Nixon and the Environment’ An Outdoor Exhibition,” 2021; Worland, 2017). Unanimous concern among scientists, politicians, and citizens earned climate change a frontpage feature in the New York Times in 1981; and climate action was the topic of conversation in the US Senate seven years later, supported by both sides of the aisle (Worland, 2017). Republican President George H. W. Bush advocated for climate action throughout his candidacy and, as President, instituted the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change that inspired international collaboration on climate action (Worland, 2017). Throughout this time period—the early 1970s to the mid-1990s—support for environmental protection among selfidentified Democrats and Republicans differed by only approximately ten percentage points (Figure 1) (Dunlap et al., 2001). 4 At the same time, the fossil fuel industry devised public campaigns to sow doubt about climate science and cut funding for research programs addressing climate change (Worland, 2017). Bipartisan support for climate action began to collapse in the early 2000s as climate obstruction infiltrated the public through marketing and the media. By the time of the 2008 presidential election, an increasing number of Republicans believed that the media was exaggerating the seriousness of climate change (Dunlap, 2008). President George W. Bush rejected the Kyoto Protocol but introduced more stringent fuel-efmore stringent fuel-efficiency standards and a standard for carbon dioxide emissions reduction toward the end of his presidency (Worland, 2017). Climate obstruction skyrocketed in the 2010s when the momentum for climate policy— driven by a scientific consensus on climate change, public support for climate legislation, and Democratic control of the House, Senate, and White House—appeared to rebound at an all-time Figure 1. Support for increased environmental protection among American public as a function of time, redrawn from Dunlap et al. (2001) 5 high (Faragasso, 2021). This momentum was short-lived because the Democrats lost seats in the 2010 midterms, which was a far more lethal threat to climate action than in years past due to the newly politicized nature of climate change. Consequently, the Obama presidency saw environmental regulations passed only by federal agencies (Worland, 2017). The partisanship divide over climate change was demonstrated once more in 2011 when presidential candidate Mitt Romney publicly supported the notion that climate change is anthropogenic, which his conservative critics equivocated to “political suicide” (Fisher et al., 2013, p. 71). The trajectory of climate action in the US has since been further derailed as a result of the Trump Administration and successful climate obstruction. However, the US has recently observed the implementation of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the CHIPS and Science Act, all of which aim to reduce anthropogenic emissions (Burgess et al., 2024). This is an impressive feat given the simultaneous successes of climate obstruction, which has deepened the partisan divide for climate change such that, in 2022, 78 percent of Democrats believed that climate change is a “major threat to the country” compared to just 23 percent of Republicans (Tyson et al., 2023). Recalling that this same divide totaled only approximately ten percentage points just thirty years ago reveals the alarming impacts of climate obstruction on the politicization of and consequent inaction on climate change.

Ah, yes. The best for last! 2025 saw lots of pretty ugly records. We’ll limit our review to four to save your sanity:

Next week, we’re diving into polarization. Not the Antarctic kind of polar, but the political kind. After all, some of the most influential environmental legislation has been passed by Republican presidents, and we need to bring that energy into 2026!

We’re not as divided as we think.

Have a specific topic on climate science you want to learn about?

You're not a climate denier, but you're not the Lorax, either. You recycle when you can, and you're at least mildly concerned when you see news headlines about extreme weather events that you don't remember happening even a few decades ago. You want to learn more about the climate, but not enough to want to spend large chunks of time reading and sifting through news posts and research articles.

Does this describe you? If so, welcome aboard.

Climatific strips the politics from climate change to provide brief weekly lessons on what the Earth’s climate is, how it works, and why it matters. It saves you time, energy, and resources by sending a TL;DR (Too Long; Didn’t Read) on climate science right to your inbox on Tuesday mornings.

Climatific calls on climate science, not the news, to help you better navigate the conversations around you.

No buzzwords, just science.

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