Rate Of CO2 Increase Rises In 2008 - Annual Average Hits 384.9 ppm - Reuters

[hatrack]

LONDON (Reuters) - Increases in the amount of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide in the atmosphere accelerated last year, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) told Reuters on Wednesday. The new data may dampen hopes that a slowdown in industrial output and carbon emissions, which started at the end of last year, will temporarily deflect climate change.

Some analysts had hoped that recession would give the world breathing space to reverse its impact on the climate. The new NOAA data showed that levels of carbon dioxide accelerated slightly last year. "For us to see (the impact) in the atmosphere it would take a large drop in emissions, but it hasn't happened yet and that's very clear from this data," said Thomas Conway, a NOAA climate scientist who helped compile the figures. "If the change in emissions is only a few percent we're not going to see that in the atmosphere," Conway told Reuters, explaining that natural processes, whereby for example forests and oceans mop up carbon dioxide, masked small changes in manmade emissions in the short-term at least.

Recession means that developed nations' greenhouse gas emissions will fall by about 2 percent this year, some analysts estimate, although that effect could be much greater if the world slipped into a wider slump or depression. Emissions are expected to continue to rise in China, which analysts say is the world's biggest carbon emitter.

Levels of carbon dioxide last year reached a global average of 384.9 parts per million (ppm) in the atmosphere, up 2.2 ppm on 2007, compared with a previous annual increase of 1.8 ppm, the NOAA data showed.

EDIT

http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSTRE51O4FG20090225?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews

[pscot]

1. So for want of an actual plan

we are reduced to praying for a depression? This is not going to end well.

[tom_paine]

2. Sadly, the science and most particularly the math are reducing the uncertainty

that this is going to "end badly".

It's still possible, but the probability that it won't "end badly" is shrinking more towards infinitessimal every day.