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Paris Climate Change Agreement Enters Into Force (theguardian.com)

The Paris agreement on climate change enters into force on Friday, marking the first time that governments have agreed legally binding limits to global temperature rises. From a report on The Guardian: The passage of the accord -- the fruit of more than two decades of often tortuous international negotiations on combating climate change -- was hailed by nations and observers around the world. Under the agreement, all governments that have ratified the accord, which includes the US, China, India and the EU, now carry an obligation to hold global warming to no more than 2C above pre-industrial levels. That is what scientists regard as the limit of safety, beyond which climate change is likely to become catastrophic and irreversible. Countries have put forward commitments on curbing carbon emissions under the agreement, but a report on Thursday found those pledges would see temperature rises significantly overshoot the threshold, with 3C of warming. Environmental groups urged governments to do more.

6 of 137 comments (clear)

  1. Paris Climate Change Agreement Enters Into Force by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    This article is incorrect, if I recall correctly, the U.S. Senate needs to approve all treaties before they take effect in the United States.

  2. The problem with this agreement by fred6666 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Is that there is no hard target. What happens if a country emits twice as much CO2 as they pledged? Nothing.
    Therefore it is worse than Kyoto, even if the US didn't ratify it.

  3. Re:Paris Climate Change Agreement Enters Into Forc by fred6666 · · Score: 1, Informative

    It doesn't matter. The other countries couldn't care less on the internal mechanism for entry into force within the USA. What matters to the rest of the world is that the US ratified it. Now go ahead and sue your president for ratifying the agreement if he wasn't allowed to by your senate. The US is still a part of the agreement.

  4. Laws by sls1j · · Score: 4, Informative

    The world is about to discover that man made laws cannot override nature.

  5. No legal force = no ratification needed by sjbe · · Score: 3, Informative

    The Executive Agreement is an end-run around the Constitutional requirement for Senate approval for treaties. It's a violation of the Constitution that a compliant Supreme Court agreed to.

    How do you figure? Executive agreements do not legally bind the US to anything. Basically they are figuratively handshake deals with no consequences for reneging. As long as nothing in the agreement requires an act of Congress or is legally binding to the country the president is under no obligation to consult Congress about the agreement. If Congress has an issue with the agreement they are able to pass legislation forbidding the president from performing to meet the agreement.

  6. Re: Climate Change Agreement Enters Into Force-NOT by HornWumpus · · Score: 3, Informative

    All the models include a CO2/Water vapor positive feedback coefficient.

    By adjusting that single number you can get the model to tell you anything you want it to tell you.

    CO2 is a minor greenhouse gas (in terms of what's in the atmosphere) Water vapor is by far the largest greenhouse gas. If the increase in temperature caused by CO2 results in a large increase in atmospheric water vapor CO2 induced global warming will be bad, if the increase in temperature caused by CO2 result is a large increase in cloud cover (lowering the earth's albedo) global warming is a non-issue.

    Climate 'scientists' early in this process, having more enthusiasm than knowledge, selected a very high feedback coefficient. The first exhale would have led to runaway global warming and earth being venus. They defended it until the laughter got them to reconsider. We are now supposed to take their words for the newer model versions.

    --
    John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'