Climate change is surprising scientists with how fast it’s moving. Maybe our short-sighted politicians will figure out that pouring billions into an “emergency” bailout for financial institutions and rich folks wasn’t the best idea when so much will have to be sunk into developing new energy sources that don’t emit C02. The problem with fossil fuels is that they do emit C02, which is why drilling in ANWR and offshore is such a monumentally bad idea. Whatever fossil fuels are still buried should stay where they are. It’s like our politicians never look up into the sky and notice the sun. Maybe they need to get outside more often. From Grist:
[blockquote][i]Things Are Looking Upward
Last year’s world CO2 emissions exceeded most dire IPCC predictions
The world’s carbon dioxide emissions in 2007 exceeded even some of the direst predictions of climate scientists, growing 3 percent from 2006 according to an annual report from the Global Carbon Project. The climb in overall emissions last year was especially surprising given the economic downturn that was expected to help curb emissions. For the first time, developing nations took the lead in overall CO2 emissions, accounting for some 53 percent of the total, according to the report. China was also officially reconfirmed as the world’s largest CO2 polluter; it alone accounted for some 60 percent of the rise in worldwide emissions in 2007. The report also found that the world’s natural carbon sinks, such as oceans and forests that lock away carbon and keep it out of the atmosphere, have been absorbing some 3 percent less CO2 pollution since 2000 than they did in the first half of the 20th century. “We should be worried, really worried. This is happening in the context of trying to reduce emissions,” said Richard Moss of the World Wildlife Fund. “We’re already locked into more warming than we thought.”[/i][/blockquote]
And from the LA Times, more detail and fear from scientists:
[blockquote][i][b]Greenhouse gas emissions shock scientists[/b]
Carbon dioxide output is rising rather than falling, despite efforts to curb it. ‘It’s scary,’ one researcher says.
From Times Wire Services
September 26, 2008
WASHINGTON — The world pumped up emissions of the chief human-produced 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, which some scientists called “scary,” were a surprise because experts thought an economic downturn would slow energy use. Instead, carbon dioxide output rose 3% from 2006 to 2007.
That amount 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, scientists said. If those trends continue, the world will be on track for the highest predicted rises in temperature and sea level.
The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has warned that an increase of between 3.2 and 9.7 degrees Fahrenheit could trigger massive environmental changes, including melting of the Greenland ice sheet, the Himalayan-Tibetan glaciers and summer sea ice in the Arctic.
Corinne Le Quere, professor of environmental sciences at the University of East Anglia and the British Antarctic Survey, said the prediction that current emissions put the planet on track for a temperature rise of more than 11 degrees means the world could face a dangerous rise in sea level as well as other drastic changes.
Richard Moss, vice president and managing director for climate change at the World Wildlife Fund, said the new carbon figures and research showed that “we’re already locked into more warming than we thought.”
“We should be worried — really worried,” Moss told the Washington Post. “This is happening in the context of trying to reduce emissions.”
The new data also shows that forests and oceans, which naturally take up much of the carbon dioxide humans emit, are having less impact. These “natural sinks” have absorbed 54% of carbon dioxide emissions released since 2000, a drop of 3 percentage points compared with the period between 1959 and 2000.
The pollution leader was China, followed by the United States, which past data show is the leader in emissions per person in carbon dioxide output. And although several developed countries slightly reduced output in 2007, the U.S. churned out more.
Still, it was large increases from China, India and other developing countries that spurred the growth of carbon dioxide pollution to a record high of 9.34 billion tons of carbon. Figures released by science agencies in the U.S., Great Britain and Australia show that China’s added emissions accounted for more than half of the worldwide increase. China passed the U.S. as the No. 1 carbon dioxide polluter in 2006.
Emissions in the U.S. rose nearly 2% in 2007, after declining the previous year. The U.S. produced 1.75 billion tons of carbon.
“Things are happening very, very fast,” Le Quere told the Associated Press. “It’s scary.”[/i]
[/blockquote]
We could do something about this, but even more scary is how politicians have ignored this for years. It’s thinking that it will all go away if we ignore it that is so dangerous.
[link=http://www.latimes.com/news/science/environment/la-na-warming26-2008sep26,0,6690604.story]Read more here.[/link][/br]
[tags]climate change, new report, global warming, Global Carbon Project[/tags]
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