Our planet's oceans are in trouble as they soak up the increasing amounts of carbon in the atmosphere making seawater more acidic. The Arctic is in trouble where winters have effectively been shortened by about four weeks in recent years. Now the news comes that we humans have increased our emissions of Greenhouse Gasses a stunning 5.9% last year.
Carbon Emissions Show Biggest Jump Ever Recorded
By JUSTIN GILLIS
Published: December 4, 2011
Global emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil-fuel burning jumped by the largest amount on record last year, upending the notion that the brief decline during the recession might persist through the recovery.
Emissions rose 5.9 percent in 2010, according to an analysis released Sunday by the Global Carbon Project, an international collaboration of scientists tracking the numbers. Scientists with the group said the increase, a half-billion extra tons of carbon pumped into the air, was almost certainly the largest absolute jump in any year since the Industrial Revolution, and the largest percentage increase since 2003.
This is proof that we're speeding down the path toward the worst case scenarios numerous scientists have warned us against.
“Each year that emissions go up, there’s another year of negotiations, another year of indecision,” said Glen P. Peters, a researcher at the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo and a leader of the group that produced the new analysis. “There’s no evidence that this trajectory we’ve been following the last 10 years is going to change.”
At the Durban Climate Conference an estimated 6,000 demonstrators protested the lack of action by developed countries to address climate change.