The Hottest Year Ever

Its hot in Atlanta. 90º Fahrenheit is about 32º Celsius and the humidity is almost 50%. 2016 is not, however, the hottest summer on record here in Georgia but according to NASA it will be the hottest on the planet since we have been keeping records.

The combination of ongoing global warming and El Niño will produce the warmest year since 1880 when we started keeping modern records according to the Space Agency’s mid year report. In addition to  higher temperatures, Arctic sea ice has been at an all time low for five of the first six months of 2016 and Nasa’s projections are grim.

They expect the El Niño effect to wear off by 2017 but believe we will still be about 1ºC higher than pre-industrial levels or half of the 2ºC target agreed upon in Paris last December.

Progress since Paris?

Since the historic signing of the agreement to limit climate change in Paris last December, 22 of the 197 parties to the agreement have ratified it and since the largest nations have not yet done so, these countries add up to only 1% of global emissions.

In the run up to the conference, each country prepared an analysis of its greenhouse gas emissions and laid out a plan to reduce them. These plans were called Intended Nationally Determined Contributions or INDCs and have three key issues associated with them. One is that each country was free to set whatever targets it felt made sense. A second is that there is no mechanism in place to punish countries which do not meet those targets and the third issue is that collectively they are, at present, insufficient, to reach the 2ºC goal.

As parties ratify the agreement the word “Intended” is dropped and the Nationally Determined Contributions or NDCs are considered to be the country’s commitment to the process of avoiding catastrophic climate change. The NDCs for the first 22 countries can be found here. The agreement states that the agreement will come into force 30 days after 55 countries ratify it so there is still some work to be done.

U.S. Elections and Paris

The position of the Obama administration is that since the targets are voluntary and there is no coercive mechanism to force countries to comply with their own targets, the Paris agreement is not a treaty and therefore does not require ratification by the U.S. Senate. The President’s lawyers believe he can simply sign what is called an Executive Agreement.

Some people, such as former U.S. Senator, Jim DeMint, believe that the agreement does require ratification and thus must be approved by the United States Senate. As discussed back in December, there is no chance of getting the two thirds majority needed in the current senate which has a Republican majority. 34 Senators face re-election in November and most analysts believe that it is likely that the Democrats will win control of the Senate by a narrow margin. Even if that were to happen, however, Republicans will still control at least 45 seats and formal ratification of the Paris accords in the Senate would be impossible.

President Obama has stated that he will sign the Executive Agreement before he leaves office whoever wins the next election. While Ms. Clinton supports the Paris Accords her opponent, Donald Trump calls climate change a hoax!