2016 Marks the Warmest Year on Record

Just hours after President Trump took office last Friday, most traces of his predecessor’s political legacy had already been scraped off the official White House website. Searching for key words such as LBGTQ (short for lesbian, bisexual, gay, transgender, queer, whose rights Obama had strongly advocated for during his presidency) no longer returns any results, as does searching for “climate change” – a concept that Trump doesn’t believe in.

While Obama was convinced of the necessity of deploying clean energy and promoting electric mobility to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Trump’s plans for the energy sector include “eliminating harmful and unnecessary policies such as the Climate Action Plan” and “reviving America’s coal industry” with no mentions of renewable energy.

The below chart clearly illustrates that our climate is in fact changing. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, not only was 2016 the hottest year on record since 1880, but all 16 years of the 21st century rank among the 17 warmest of the past 137 years with 1998 being the only exception. The global average temperature across land and water surfaces in 2016 was 58.69°F (14.84°C), 1.69°F above the 20th century average of 57.0°F.