Friday, December 14, 2007

Carbon sink slowdown contributing to rapid growth in atmospheric CO2

As the White House and its oil-addicted friends block attempts by the rest of the world to introduce targets for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, recent research that shows things are even worse than we thought.

A study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), published October 25, 2007, finds that there's been a recent swift increase in atmospheric CO2, that was unexpected.

This science goes beyond the recent IPCC report.

The increase, they say, is due to faster economic growth, coupled with a halt in carbon intensity reductions, plus the failure of natural sinks to continue to remove a proportion of emissions from the air.

The efficiency of natural sinks to remove emissions from human activities has been declining for 50 years, as they become saturated or forests are removed.

This is scary.

Read the research.

No comments: