Carbon dioxide emissions rise to 2.4 million pounds per second
Cars, trucks and other traffic clog the A100 ring road at rush hour February 21, 2007 in Berlin, Germany. / Getty Images
WASHINGTON The amount of heat-trapping pollution the world spewed rose again last year by 3 percent. So scientists say it's now unlikely that global warming can be limited to a couple of degrees, which is an international goal.
The overwhelming majority of the increase was from China, the world's biggest carbon dioxide polluter. Of the planet's top 10 polluters, the United States and Germany were the only countries that reduced their carbon dioxide emissions.
Last year, all the world's nations combined pumped nearly 38.2 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the air from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil, according to new international calculations on global emissions published Sunday in the journal Nature Climate Change. That's about a billion tons more than the previous year.
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The total amounts to more than 2.4 million pounds of carbon dioxide released into the air every second.
Because emissions of the key greenhouse gas have been rising steadily and most carbon stays in the air for a century, it is not just unlikely but "rather optimistic" to think that the world can limit future temperature increases to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), said the study's lead author, Glen Peters at the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo, Norway.
Three years ago, nearly 200 nations set the 2-degree C temperature goal in a nonbinding agreement. Negotiators now at a conference under way in Doha, Qatar, are trying to find ways to reach that target.
The only way, Peters said, is to start reducing world emissions now and "throw everything we have at the problem."
Andrew Weaver, a climate scientist at the University of Victoria in Canada who was not part of the study, said: "We are losing control of our ability to get a handle on the global warming problem."
In 1997, most of the world agreed to an international treaty, known as the Kyoto Protocol, that required developed countries such as the United States to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by about 5 percent when compared with the baseline year of 1990. But countries that are still developing, including China and India, were not limited by how much carbon dioxide they expelled. The United States never ratified the treaty.
The latest pollution numbers, calculated by the Global Carbon Project, a joint venture of the Energy Department and the Norwegian Research Council, show that worldwide carbon dioxide levels are 54 percent higher than the 1990 baseline.
The 2011 figures for the biggest polluters:
1. China, up 10 percent to 10 billion tons.
2. United States, down 2 percent to 5.9 billion tons
3. India, up 7 percent to 2.5 billion tons.
4. Russia, up 3 percent to 1.8 billion tons.
5. Japan, up 0.4 percent to 1.3 billion tons.
6. Germany, down 4 percent to 0.8 billion tons.
7. Iran, up 2 percent to 0.7 billion tons.
8. South Korea, up 4 percent to 0.6 billion tons.
9. Canada, up 2 percent to 0.6 billion tons.
10. South Africa, up 2 percent to 0.6 billion tons.
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Second, if Warmists want everyone to believe there is a crisis they need to act like there's a crisis, and start living the "carbon" neutral lifestyle.
Third, there has been no warming for 16 years. The seas aren't rising any more than within the historical norms. For the second straight year the world temperature has gone done. Europe and Asia are seeing cool temps and now an early winter.
Get over yourselves or practice what you preach.
Where are you getting your information???? Please post source.
If, as the story states, pollution amounted to 38.2 billion tons last year, then the amount placed into the air each second amounts to 1,211 lbs per second not 2.4 millions tons.
IF WE DON'T DEAL WITH IT THEN THE ENTIRE HUMAN RACE IS EXTINCT IN 10 GENERATIONS.
The earth will eventually recover and return to it's natural state, we just won't be around to enjoy it.
DEBATE THAT.
__________
Retired Award Winning NASA Atmospheric Scientist Dr. William W. Vaughan, recipient of the NASA Exceptional Service Medal, a former Division Chief of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and author of more than 100 refereed journal articles, monographs, and papers, also now points to natural causes of recent climate changes. "The cause of these global changes is fundamentally due to the Sun and its effect on the Earth as it moves about in its orbit. Not from man-made activities," Vaughan told the minority staff on the Environment and Public Works Committee on February 6, 2009
UN IPCC Scientist Dr. Steven M. Japar, a PhD atmospheric chemist who was part of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Second (1995) and Third (2001) Assessment Reports, and has authored 83 peer-reviewed publications and in the areas of climate change, atmospheric chemistry, air pollutions and vehicle emissions, challenged the IPCC's climate claims.
"Temperature measurements show that the [climate model-predicted mid-troposphere] hot zone is non-existent. This is more than sufficient to invalidate global climate models and projections made with them!" Japar told the minority staff on the Environment and Public Works Committee on January 7, 2009.
"I am appalled at the state of discord in the field of climate science...There is no observational evidence that the addition of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions have caused any temperature perturbations in the atmosphere." - Award-winning atmospheric scientist Dr. George T. Wolff, former member of the EPA's Science Advisory Board, served on a committee of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and authored more than 90 peer-reviewed studies.
Myth: Over the past few hundred years, the sun's activity, including the number of sunspots, has increased, causing the world to get warmer.
Science: In the last 35 years of global warming, the sun has shown a slight cooling trend, while the climate has been heating up, scientists say. In the past century, solar activity can explain some of the increase in global temperatures, but a relatively small amount. (Solar activity refers to the activity of the sun's magnetic field and includes magnetic field-powered sunspots and solar flares.)
A study published in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics in December 2011 revealed that even during a prolonged lull in the sun's activity, Earth still continued to warm. The study researchers found that the Earth absorbed 0.58 watts of excess energy per square meter than escaped back into space during the study period from 2005 to 2010, a time when solar activity was low"
Check the EPA site and it doesn't blame the sun. Where did you get your information??? What publication????
But remember as the unemployment lines increase and tax hikes come out of the wood work , Pres Obama said taxes on the middle class would not go up.
Hard to pay taxes when you have no job .