Global Warming Pollution Increases 3 Percent

WASHINGTON — 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.

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 while several developed countries slightly cut their CO2 output in 2007, the United States churned out more.

Still, it was large increases in 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 (8.47 billion metric tons). Figures released by science agencies in the United States, Great Britain and Australia show that China's added emissions accounted for more than half of the worldwide increase. China passed the United States as the No. 1 carbon dioxide polluter in 2006.

Emissions in the United States rose nearly 2 percent in 2007, after declining the previous year. The U.S. produced 1.75 billion tons of carbon (1.58 billion metric tons).

"Things are happening very, very fast," said Corinne Le Quere, professor of environmental sciences at the University of East Anglia and the British Antarctic Survey. "It's scary."

Gregg Marland, a senior staff scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, said he was surprised at the results because he thought world emissions would drop because of the economic downturn. That didn't happen.

"If we're going to do something (about reducing emissions), it's got to be different than what we're doing," he said.

The emissions are based on data from oil giant BP PLC, which show that China has become the major driver of world trends. China emitted 2 billion tons of carbon (1.8 billion metric tons) last year, up 7.5 percent from the previous year.

"We're shipping jobs offshore from the U.S., but we're also shipping carbon dioxide emissions with them," Marland said. "China is making fertilizer and cement and steel and all of those are heavy energy-intensive industries."

Developing countries not asked to reduce greenhouse gases by the 1997 Kyoto treaty _ and China and India are among them _ now account for 53 percent of carbon dioxide pollution. That group of nations surpassed industrialized ones in carbon dioxide emissions in 2005, a new analysis of older figures shows.

India is in position to beat Russia for the No. 3 carbon dioxide polluter behind the United States, Marland said. Indonesia levels are increasing rapidly.

Denmark's emissions dropped 8 percent. The United Kingdom and Germany reduced carbon dioxide pollution by 3 percent, while France and Australia cut it by 2 percent.

Nature can't keep up with the carbon dioxide from man, Le Quere said. She said from 1955 to 2000, the forests and oceans absorbed about 57 percent of the excess carbon dioxide, but now it's 54 percent.

What is "kind of scary" is that the worldwide emissions growth is beyond the highest growth in fossil fuel predicted just two years ago by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said Ben Santer, an atmospheric scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Lab.

Under the panel's scenario then, temperatures would increase by somewhere between 4 and 11 degrees Fahrenheit (2.4 to 6.3 degrees Celsius) by the year 2100.

If this trend continues for the century, "you'd have to be luckier than hell for it just to be bad, as opposed to catastrophic," said Stanford University climate scientist Stephen Schneider.

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On the Net:

http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/carbontrends/index_new.htm

Comments

[noneIn2008]

01:07 AM on 10/01/2008

CO2 was up, but the temperature was down, again? 6 years straight? It just does not add up.
It is intriguing to look at the decrease in sunspots and the decrease in temperature?
Maybe we should keep a more inquiring mind, looking at alternatives?

[Exusian]

09:33 AM on 10/02/2008

Being at the bottom of the sunspot cycle certainly is a factor, as is the La Nina side of the ENSO, but global mean temp has *not* been down for the past six years straight since 2005 was either the warmest year or second warmest year on record, depending if you use the GISStemp or HadCRUT2 datasets.
You can actually look this stuff, you know:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.lrg.gif
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.txt

But hey, never let facts get in the way of deliberate disinformation.

[miggsathon]

04:13 PM on 09/28/2008

There actually is a way to slash global warming pollution and energy costs simultaneously, thus upending this false dichotomy between cheap/dirty and expensive/clean. I'm associated with Recycled Energy Development, a company that does what's called energy recycling. Meaning, we turn manufacturers' waste heat into clean power. That's an efficiency-based, both/and solution. This either/or stuff is the bane of the national energy debate. In fact, studies for the EPA and DoE suggest it could cut greenhouse pollution by 20%. So why isn't more being done? Simple: utilities don't want it to. They like selling lots and lots of power, and massive efficiency improvements (forget the small time stuff about light bulbs) would create a serious dent in their bottom line. So the regulations give monopoly protections to these utilities and discourage energy recycling technologies like cogeneration and waste heat recovery. Shame, isn't it?

[Exusian]

01:10 PM on 09/26/2008

This is what an ice-free Arctic means:

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/exclusive-the-methane-time-bomb-938932.html

The Independent - The methane time bomb
Arctic scientists discover new global warming threat as melting permafrost releases millions of tons of a gas 20 times more damaging than carbon dioxide

[quote]Underground stores of methane are important because scientists believe their sudden release has in the past been responsible for rapid increases in global temperatures, dramatic changes to the climate, and even the mass extinction of species. [Look up Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, or PETM] Scientists aboard a research ship that has sailed the entire length of Russia's northern coast have discovered intense concentrations of methane – sometimes at up to 100 times background levels – over several areas covering thousands of square miles of the Siberian continental shelf.

In the past few days, the researchers have seen areas of sea foaming with gas bubbling up through "methane chimneys" rising from the sea floor. They believe that the sub-sea layer of permafrost, which has acted like a "lid" to prevent the gas from escaping, has melted away to allow methane to rise from underground deposits formed before the last ice age. ...[/quote]

This is one of the oft-mentioned tipping points. One of the biggest ones, in fact.

If the methane clathrates go, then the deniers/delayers will be right: there will be nothing we can do to stop global warming.

[GoVeg]

01:52 AM on 09/28/2008

Exusion, you're totally correct about the methane gas from the ocean-bed and perma-frost. Check out this video for further detail.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldOG8IJX6Ew

[realpolitic]

12:05 PM on 09/29/2008

I wonder if such concentrations of methane in areas above the ocean and the permafrost make it extremely dangerous to light a match or make the air very flammable?

[alvdh1]

10:57 AM on 09/26/2008

Contact you U.S. Representitive and demand the cancellation of Peabody Energy's new 1,600 Megawatt Coal Fired Power Plant in Kentucky. This palnt could be completely eleiminated through energy effiiciency and conservation. For the same amount of money to build power plant, the utility could replace every rate payers lights with LED lights and completely eliminate all of the greenhouse gas emissions and mercury pollution from this plant.

[KillTheMessenger]

04:04 PM on 09/26/2008

But, but, but ... there is no money in conservation. Don't you understand? WE NEED TO POLLUTE for the sake of the nation! It's the right thing to do! It's the patriotic thing to do! It's the capitalist thing to do!