“Due to the lapse in federal government funding, NASA is not updating this website”

According to Encyclopedia Britannica, science can be defined as “any system of knowledge that is concerned with the physical world and its phenomena and that entails unbiased observations and systematic experimentation. In general, a science involves a pursuit of knowledge covering general truths or the operations of fundamental laws”. Although we are often told that science can be revised and that current theories can be improved or even refuted, science lays the basic foundations for human progress. In principle, there is no such thing as good science or bad science; it all depends on how this knowledge is used or appropriated by someone, or by some.

I have been teaching at Esade for 35 years. I have always tried to ensure that there is some—or a lot—of science, and therefore knowledge, in my classes. Turning to the right sources of information is essential for that, and there must be tens of thousands of teachers doing the same as I do. A few weeks ago, I must admit I was alarmed when I saw that one of my mandatory reference websites, NASA’s site (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), displayed the following message very prominently: “Due to the lapse in federal government funding, NASA is not updating this web page.” A few weeks later, I confirmed that it referred to the temporary shutdown of the US administration as a result of the political polarization they are experiencing, and which, unfortunately, we are also experiencing in half the world. Although it seems to have been resolved, NASA has announced significant federal budget cuts to its research programs for the coming years, which would also affect its educational programs.

The rates of increase of greenhouse gases have tripled since measurements began

The page in question collects data from another US government agency, NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), and makes it available to the public and to the scientific community free of charge, based on the conviction that its wide dissemination will lead to greater understanding and new scientific knowledge. The page shows us—in less than 15 seconds if you know how to use it—a series of monthly average data on the concentration of greenhouse gases at its reference station, Mauna Loa (Hawaii, US). The series begins in March 1958 at 315.71 ppm (parts per million, which refers to the number of molecules of these gases per one million molecules of the components of the atmosphere) and ends today, in October 2025, at 428.16 ppm. Thanks to this series, I can see that since I was born in October 1957, the increase in these gases has been 115 ppm. For almost a million years, the Earth had barely exceeded 300 ppm, whereas during my brief stay on the planet I have contributed, together with the rest of humanity, to increasing that figure by more than one third.

This is not the worst part, because the rates of increase in these gases have tripled since the series began, and an acceleration in the average annual growth rate is evident. We have gone from an increase of 0.8 ppm per year in the early 1960s to 2.7 ppm per year between 2020 and 2025—the highest increase since measurements began. It should be recalled that the objective of the Paris Agreement under the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) is not to exceed 450 ppm. If we do nothing to prevent it, the current growth rate implies that we would add the same 115 ppm accumulated over my lifetime in just 25 years, leading to a concentration of these gases of around 550 ppm. Just thinking about it is terrifying.

Denying the evidence

Climate change science is not very complex: the more greenhouse gas there is in the atmosphere, the hotter the planet becomes. Burning fossil fuels means increasing these gases in the atmosphere and, therefore, heating it up. A few years ago, in these Do Better platform essays, I referred to an older edition of The New York Times in which Nathaniel Rich wrote Losing Earth: The Decade We Could Have Stopped Climate Change, an investigation documenting that climate change science has been clear since the 1970s and how political and corporate obstructionism made it impossible to start finding solutions at that time. This is not very different from what we see today. It is clear that we are not moving forward in finding solutions at the same speed at which we are beginning to see the consequences of not doing so.

We must fight against the framing of science as manipulated and not credible

Although science is clear, the solutions to this reality are indeed open to debate. Many advocate reducing or eliminating human-related emissions of these gases into the atmosphere as soon as possible, which would inevitably entail changing business models and more than one equation in today’s geopolitics. For others, the solution would be to invest in adaptation, while waiting to be able, in a few decades, to make the transition to other energy sources that may not yet have been developed. There is a third group that believes none of this concerns them and argues that they cannot afford a change that, of course, they do not see as necessary. The current climate change conference, COP 30, shows a drift towards these latter two positions, which is very dangerous.

Despite everything, the good thing about a climate conference like the one held in Belém (Brazil) is that it was originally created precisely to debate all these options and find solutions together. Perhaps we should reform these conferences in some way, but never abandon them. What is truly frustrating is that some people give up on that debate from the outset and play down the problem—especially when they are the most powerful ones—and that, behind that stance, there is an attempt to fuel the idea that science is manipulated and therefore not credible at all.

When knowing more does not mean acting more

We are living—and I hope this is not just the beginning of something worse—in a paradoxical time. Precisely when science is clearest, we are taking steps backwards on solutions to mitigate the climate crisis, which is a reminiscent of the political and corporate obstructionism of 40 years ago. Also, we must view the climate crisis within a broader context, because in reality we are going through a moment of unprecedented environmental crisis, both in terms of conservation and pollution of the planet we all live on.

For 18 years now, we have been running a course on climate change policies at the CEMS Master in International Management at Esade. A course that is taught in parallel with eleven other European business schools within the Global Alliance in Management Education (CEMS). In January, the London School of Economics will join the group, and I will have the honor of helping them. Before starting, 62 students will read this essay, and I will introduce them to the NASA and NOAA websites. From there, and with an understanding of the underlying science, we will try to comment and debate on the necessary solutions. Later, two hundred students and twenty professors will meet in May in St. Gallen (Switzerland) to replicate next year’s climate conference (COP 31) in Antalya (Turkey) and, with a positive mindset, we will look for solutions for the future—for their future.

Science has equipped itself with a series of control measures to ensure that the knowledge it generates is real and credible. The role of science is to help us understand our reality, to find the reasons and solutions to the problems we face as a society. The ones we now face are too complex and important to ignore; contributing to disseminating the knowledge on which the response should be based must be a priority for humanity. Thank you, NASA; thank you, NOAA, for making available to us for so long and free of charge the knowledge that should guide our decision-making in climate crisis policies.