On Tuesday, Ohio Governor John Kasich launched his bid for the White House. On the Republican side, that makes him number 16, and most of those candidates have either denied the existence of global warming altogether or thrown up their hands and said there’s nothing we can do about it.
Kasich, for his part, has at least acknowledged the problem, but he’ll only be president after hell freezes over, and unless that place follows its own rules of meteorology, it’s only getting hotter there, too.
According to data released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Monday, June was a pretty sweltering month, and could be indicative of the year at large.
"The June globally-averaged land surface temperature was 2.27°F (1.26°C) above the 20th century average," NOAA said. "This was the highest for June in the 1880-2015 record, surpassing the previous record set in 2012 by 0.11°F (0.06°c)."
Both NASA and the Japan Meteorological Agency came up with similar figures when they released their reports last week.
While this past June may have been the hottest in the last 135 years, it’s not even the first month in 2015 to top its own record.
"June 2015 also marks the fourth month this year that has broken its monthly temperature record, along with February, March, and May. The other months of 2015 were not far behind: January was second warmest for its respective month and April was third warmest," the report reads.
2014 was the previous record-breaking year, and when combing the first six months of this year with the final six months of last year, July 2014-June 2015 is the hottest 12-month period on record.
"This extra bump in temperature, when combined with the long-term warming of the planet due to human-caused emissions of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide, makes it likely that 2015 will be Earth’s second consecutive warmest year on record," meteorologist Dr. Jeff Masters wrote for the blog, Wunderground, on Monday.
Those high temperatures have already caused some unsettling global effects. Last month, scientists linked decades of rising temperature over the Black Sea to the unprecedented rainfall that occurred over Krymsk, Russia in 2012. With 6.7 inches of rain falling on the town in a single day, flash floods led to the deaths of over 170 people.
At times like this, with the world on the brink, you may be asking yourself: What does Republican candidate Donald Trump think of global warming?
"It’s Friday. How many bald eagles did wind turbines kill today? They are an environmental & aesthetic disaster," he tweeted in 2012.
God help us all.
