CLIMATE CHANGING FASTER

Pace of global warming speeds up
Randolph E. Schmid, February 15, 2009 (AP via Cape Cod Times)

"Despite widespread concern over global warming, humans are adding carbon to the atmosphere even faster than in the 1990s, researchers warned…Carbon emissions have been growing at 3.5 percent per year since 2000, up sharply from the 0.9 percent per year in the 1990s, Christopher Field of the Carnegie Institution for Science told the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

"Past projections for declines in the emissions of greenhouse gases were too optimistic, he added. No part of the world had a decline in emissions from 2000 to 2008."

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"Anny Cazenave of France's National Center for Space Studies told the meeting that improved satellite measurements show that sea levels are rising faster than had been expected…Rising oceans can pose a threat to low level areas such as South Florida, New York and other coastal areas as the ocean warms and expands and as water is added from melting ice sheets…[T]he fastest rising areas at about 1 centimeter — 0.39 inch — per year in parts of the North Atlantic, western Pacific and the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica…

"…[E]fforts to curb carbon emissions through the use of biofuels may even backfire…Demand for biologically based fuels has led to the growing of more corn in the United States, but that means fields were switched from soybeans to corn, explained Michael Coe of the Woods Hole Research Center…[O]ther countries, such as Brazil, increased their soy crops to make up for the deficit…Brazil created more soy fields by destroying tropical forests…Instead [of absorbing CO2] the forests were burned, releasing the gasses into the air…[swamping] any declines recorded by the United States… if crops like sugar and oil palm are planted after tropical forests are burned, the extra carbon released may be balanced by lower emissions from biofuel in 40 to 120 years, but for crops such as corn and cassava it can take hundreds of years to break equal…"