Surge in Carbon Levels Raises Fear of Runaway Warming

Every day the news about climate change seems to get more and more depressing and worrying. Take today’s news.

According to a report in The Guardian, carbon dioxide is accumulating in the atmosphere much faster than scientists expected, raising fears that we may have less time to tackle climate change than previously thought.
New figures reveal that concentrations of CO2 rose at record levels during 2006 – the fourth year in the last five to show a sharp increase. Experts are puzzled because the spike, which follows decades of more modest annual rises, does not appear to match the pattern of steady increases in human emissions.
At its most far reaching, the finding could indicate that global temperatures are making forests, soils and oceans less able to absorb carbon dioxide – a shift that would make it harder to tackle global warming. Such a shift would worsen even the most recent gloomy predictions that we have little over a decade to tackle rising emissions to avoid the worst effects of climate change.
Peter Cox, a climate change expert at Exeter University, said: ” The concern is that climate change itself will affect the ability of the land to absorb our emissions. It means our emissions would have a progressively bigger impact on climate change because more of them will remain in the air. It accelerates the rate of change, so we get it sooner and we get it harder.”
Have a happy weekend!