Speaking in Code: How Government Scientists Hide Their Climate Data to Keep It Alive

Federal researchers at the USDA’s National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research in Peoria, Illinois, have dubbed a certain term “the forbidden C-word.” Though the impact is similar, it’s not because it’s vulgar; it can destroy grants, end careers, and halt years-long research initiatives. Climate is the word.
Ethan Roberts, a physical science technician and union president at the Peoria facility who has worked in federal research for almost ten years, recounts the moment the change became official. A memo from USDA’s Agricultural Research Service upper management went viral last year. It directed employees to cease submitting contracts and agreements that contained any of the more than 100 recently prohibited terms. Approximately one-third of them had a direct connection to climate research: “global warming,” “carbon sequestration,” “climate science,” “GHG emissions,” and “climate resilience.” The list was neither brief nor nuanced. The memo that imposed the vocabulary ban made it obvious that researchers would have to come up with new terms if they wanted their work to survive the current administration.

Roberts and his associates quickly deduced the practical implications of that. “Climate change” became “elevated temperatures.” Research on carbon turned into research on “soil health.” Research on the increasing intensity of weather events evolved into research on “extreme weather”—a term that seems to pass political scrutiny while functionally describing the same thing. The science remained unchanged. The surrounding words did.

Scientists Speaking in Code: Key Facts & Reference

The extent of this linguistic shift is demonstrated by a Grist analysis of National Science Foundation grant data. “Climate change” was mentioned in the abstracts or titles of 889 NSF grants in 2023. That figure dropped to 148 last year, a 77% decrease. The decline is a result of two factors acting at the same time: researchers actively removing the phrase from their proposals to prevent rejection, and NSF under the Trump administration approving fewer grants related to climate change. The same data demonstrates the rise of “extreme weather” as a substitute term in grant language, which runs inversely to the decline of “climate change.” The study is still ongoing. The fingerprints have been cleaned.

Trent Ford, a research scientist at the Illinois State Water Survey in Urbana-Champaign and the state climatologist for Illinois, has personally dealt with this. He now refers to “weather extremes” and “weather variability” in grant applications. “It’s sort of a weird thing, because on principle, if we’re studying climate change, to not name climate change feels dirty,” he said, describing the experience with an honest discomfort that is worth sitting with. However, he compromised for reasons that are not conducive to idealism. The approval of a grant could mean the difference between a graduate student’s employment and termination. The decision that keeps the lab operating is made by you.

Ford had a grant proposal that demonstrated the speed at which things changed. His group applied for an NSF grant in late 2024 to investigate the potential impact of climate change on Midwestern agriculture. The proposal contained language that had been common practice and frequently mandated under the previous administration regarding the engagement of a diverse group of farmers. The political environment had completely changed by the time it was reviewed by an NSF program manager. Ford claimed that the same language had turned into “a death sentence on it.” The science appealed to the NSF. They requested that the team replace the language about diversity with a pledge to communicate with “all American farmers.” The change was made by Ford’s team. In April of last year, the grant was approved.

All of this can be interpreted in various ways. According to the more charitable interpretation, researchers are just doing what they have always done, which is to modify the way their proposals are framed to align with the priorities of a funder. What is funded is shaped by each administration. Grant applications have always been written by scientists with consideration for what the funders genuinely want to hear. During Trump’s first term, Austin Becker, a professor at the University of Rhode Island who studies how ports and maritime infrastructure adapt to flooding and storm risk, substituted “coastal resilience” for “climate” and hasn’t really gone back. It’s the same work. The packaging was altered.

The more difficult interpretation—and the one that is most difficult to completely reject—is that the science itself eventually suffers when entire scientific vocabulary categories are eliminated from the language of publicly funded research. Roberts pointed out that USDA climate projects that have managed to avoid cancellation thus far are in funding purgatory, awaiting a decision that could depend on a single prohibited phrase making it through a reviewer’s examination. In order to appease the Biden administration, a hydroponics program that grew plants without soil and had no significant climate component was discontinued, according to another anonymous USDA researcher. The program was labeled as climate research. “Anything, any project, that had ‘CC’ in front of it was eliminated,” the researcher stated. “Because ‘CC’ stands for climate change.”

Reading these accounts gives the impression that the scientific community is constantly performing a sort of linguistic triage, determining which words are survivable and which are not, rewriting sentences to preserve the research within them while removing any phrase that might cause a rejection. American University professor Dana Fisher has been searching for funding entirely outside of the federal system, including abroad. She was awarded a grant for climate-related research by the Norwegian Research Council during the George W. Bush administration. People she was interviewing in Congress at the time were confused when she brought it up. “I was like, ‘Well, that’s what happens when there’s a Republican administration,'” she recalled.

Speaking from Peoria, Roberts provided what may be the most accurate description of the circumstances: “Clever word usage, and controlling the scope of how the research is presented, allows for scientists to keep doing the work.” “There’s no one going around hunting these people down,” he continued, adding a line that stuck with him and landed differently than it might have a few years ago. At least not yet.”