Global Warming Pollution Increases 3 Percent

Seth Borenstein of the Associated Press reports on recent, "scary" new figures on the world output of carbon dioxide - the main cause of global warming.

• Carbon dioxide output jumped 3% from 2006 - 2007, exceeding the most dire predictions and models of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
• The trends suggest we are on track for the highest predicted rises in temperature and sea level.
• The pollution leader was China, followed by the United States.
• Emissions in the US rose nearly 2 percent in 2007 after declining in the previous year.
• Gregg Marland, a senior staff scientist at the US Department of Energy: "If we're going to do something (about reducing emissions), it's got to be different than what we're doing"
• Corinne Le Quere, professor of environmental sciences at the University of East Anglia and the British Antarctic Survey: "It's scary."

Global Warming Pollution Increases 3 Percent
By Seth Borenstein
The Associated Press
9/25/2008

The world pumped up its pollution of the chief man-made global warming gas last year, setting a course that could push beyond leading scientists' projected worst-case scenario, international researchers said Thursday.
The new numbers, called "scary" by some, were a surprise because scientists thought an economic downturn would slow energy use. Instead, carbon dioxide output jumped 3 percent from 2006 to 2007.

That's an amount that exceeds the most dire outlook for emissions from burning coal and oil and related activities as projected by a Nobel Prize-winning group of international scientists in 2007.

Meanwhile, forests and oceans, which suck up carbon dioxide, are doing so at lower rates than in the 20th century, scientists said. If those trends continue, it puts the world on track for the highest predicted rises in temperature and sea level.

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