2025 was a tough year for the climate agenda. President Trump returned to office in January and promptly rolled back many of his predecessor’s decarbonization policies. In July, Congress passed the One Beautiful Bill Act, which repealed key provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act. Permits for offshore wind and solar projects are stuck in limbo.
To gauge how year-to-year fluctuations in politics, policy, and the physical realities of climate change are affecting our experts’ predictions on climate change, we included a series of questions in our annual Insiders Survey designed to take their collective temperature on a few key questions:
- How much will global average temperatures have risen by 2100?
- In what year will global greenhouse gas emissions peak?
- In what decade will China’s greenhouse gas emissions peak?
- In what decade will the United States reach net zero?
We’re now on Year 2 of the survey. So have climate experts drastically changed their outlooks compared to last year?
On average, not much. But the extremes have gotten bigger — some told us they were feeling quite rosy, while others were even more deeply concerned.
Here’s what they told us:
The average answer stayed the same as last year: 2.8 degrees Celsius.
This year, however, the range got bigger. While last year every expert gave an answer between 2 and 3.5 degrees, this year’s high estimate was 5.5 degrees. Optimism also increased — at least for the climate investor this year who said 1.5 degrees.
An environmental researcher told us two main questions will determine how much temperatures actually rise: “Can we get our act together? And how sensitive is the climate to what we’re doing?”
An academic told us warming will be catastrophic if we continue on our current path. “But,” they said, “I think it’s never too late for us to become serious about addressing the climate crisis.”
Last year the average answer was 2039. This time, it’s 2044 — a significant increase. And once again, insiders diverged more than last year.
“It could be this year,” the environmental researcher told us. “The renewables rollout is exponentially growing. A lot of the stuff that China said that they would build is not being built, in terms of coal, etc.”
On the other extreme, two insiders think that global emissions may never peak.
“They will?” one replied when we asked them our question. “They won’t,” another told us. “They flatten out. They go down a little, then up a little. But they don’t peak, at least not before 2100.”
China — currently the world’s largest emitter — has seen its climate pollution plateau in the past few years. Our insiders have taken note.
Last year, 30% of insiders said China’s emissions would peak in the 2020s. This year, a slightly higher share of respondents agreed. Among researchers and reformers, a slight majority said the 2020s.
"I think they already have,” a climate investor told us.
Once again, the most common expert among respondents was that the United States will reach net zero in the 2060s. Yet as with the other questions, insiders’ views have drifted apart.
Last year, only one expert replied 2100 or later. This time, one in six experts said 2100 and beyond — or never.
“I just don’t see the politics aligning with that,” another academic told us. “Let’s say you would have to do substantial amounts of direct air capture, probably, at that point.”
Meanwhile, “God only knows!” one climate advocate told us.
The Heatmap Insiders Survey of 55 invited expert respondents was conducted by Heatmap News reporters during November and December 2025. Responses were collected via phone interviews. All participants were given the opportunity to record responses anonymously. Not all respondents answered all questions.
A Gulf coast pipeline boom.EIA
