website.net.nz

We know we’re doing it, we know it’s giong to hurt, we know we have to stop but we just keep on going. We’re fossil fuel junkies.

From the Wall Street Journal :

The rate of carbon-dioxide emissions from global industry has accelerated in recent years, outstripping even the highest earlier projections, a new study has found.

Carbon-dioxide emissions are believed to be a major factor behind a significant warming of the planet since the Industrial Revolution. The latest research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that such emissions are growing fastest in China, India and other developing countries that are burning large amounts of coal and other fossil fuels to feed rapid economic growth.

“From 2000 to 2004, the annual rate of growth of carbon-dioxide emissions on a global scale was three times the annual rate seen in the 1990s,” said Christopher Field, an author of the study and an ecologist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, based in Stanford, California. The growth rate increased to 3.1% per year in the early 2000s from 1.1% per year in the previous decade.

The paper, prepared by a group of international climate scientists, states that from 2000 to 2004, about 7.9 billion tons of carbon dioxide were emitted by industry world-wide. By comparison, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had projected, under its most extreme scenario, that total emissions over that period would range from 7.2 billion tons to 7.7 billion tons. (Both sets of figures exclude the 1.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide that are annually released into the air as a result of deforestation.)

The latest research, which incorporates more recent observations, could provide ammunition for policy makers calling for a cap on emissions in the U.S. and those who want countries such China and India to burn less fossil fuel — and to burn fuel more efficiently. Projections indicate that by 2025 China will account for 14.2% of world energy consumption, up from 9.8% in 2001, according to data compiled by the U.S. government.

Developing economies accounted for 41% of global carbon-dioxide emissions but 73% of the growth in such emissions in 2004, according to the National Academy of Sciences paper. Developed nations have contributed about 77% of the cumulative emissions of carbon dioxide since the start of the Industrial Revolution in the mid-18th century.

The study also points to a possible reversal in the long-term trend of increasing energy efficiency. Between 1980 and 2000, there was a steady reduction world-wide in the amount of energy required to obtain a certain amount of gross domestic product. There was a similar reduction in the amount of emissions that occurred when a certain amount of energy was used. But in recent years, those improvements appear to have stalled.

“Since 2000, the stalling is clearest in China, but we’re also not seeing much improvement in Europe or Japan,” said Dr. Field. He added that in China and India the higher level of emissions was mainly driven by the push to increase per capita GDP and only modestly because of population growth.

By GAUTAM NAIK **May 21, 2007