Global Carbon Emissions Exceeded 10 Billion Tons In 2010 - up 49% Since 1990

[hatrack]

Total carbon emissions for the first time hit 10 billion tonnes (36.7 billion tonnes of CO2) in 2010, according to new analysis published by the Global Carbon Project (GCP) in Nature Climate Change. In the past two decades (since the reference year for the Kyoto Protocol: 1990), emissions have risen an astounding 49 percent. Released as officials from 190 countries meet in Durban, South Africa for the 17th UN Summit on Climate Change to discuss the future of international efforts on climate change, the study is just the latest to argue a growing urgency for slashing emissions in the face of rising extreme weather incidents and vanishing polar sea ice, among other impacts.

"Global CO2 emissions since 2000 are tracking the high end of the projections used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which far exceed two degrees warming by 2100," explained co-author Corinne Le Quéré, the director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and professor at the University of East Anglia, in a press release. "Yet governments have pledged to keep warming below two degrees to avoid the most dangerous aspects of climate change such as widespread water stress and sea level rise, and increases in extreme climatic events. Taking action to reverse current trends is urgent."

Unlike a recent report form the U.S. Department of Energy, which just looked at fossil fuels, the new analysis includes carbon emitted from burning fossil fuels as well as cement production, deforestation, and other land use. Following a temporary dip in global carbon emissions due to the financial crisis, emissions last year rose 5.9 percent from 2009 levels. From 2000 to 2010, emissions rose on average 3.1 percent annually, tripling the average rate of emissions growth in the 1990s.

"Many saw the global financial crisis as an opportunity to move the global economy away from persistent and high emissions growth, but the return to emissions growth in 2010 suggests the opportunity was not exploited," said lead author Glen Peters with the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Norway.

EDIT

http://news.mongabay.com/2011/1204-hance_emissions_record.html

[NickB79]

1. Free market solutions for the win! nt

[hatrack]

2. Is there nothing human ingenuity can't handle?!?

:rofl:

[kristopher]

4. How do you arrive at that comment?

I'm not being snarky, I really can't fathom the meaning in relation to the problem and what has been attempted.

Would you mind sharing your reasoning?

[NickB79]

5. Well, what economic behaviors have gotten us into this mess in the first place? nt

[kristopher]

6. You wrote free market "solutions"...

What does that mean?

It would be very refreshing to have an actual, grounded discussion about real policies instead of hyperbole - would you like to try it?

[pscot]

3. We are so screwn!