Re: SC30

http://www.enn.com/net.html?id=1735

2005 Another Record Year for Global Carbon Emissions

In 2005, carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels climbed to a record high of 7.9 billion tons, an increase of some 3 percent from the previous year. Annual global emissions have been increasing since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the late eighteenth century, when humans first began burning fossil fuels on a large scale to produce energy. Since the early 1900s, emissions have been rising at an increasingly rapid pace. Annual emissions have grown by a factor of fifteen since 1900, advancing nearly 3 percent a year over that time," says Joseph Florence of the Earth Policy Institute............

...........As global emissions of carbon increase, they raise the levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere. The average atmospheric concentration of CO2 reached 380 parts per million by volume in 2005, up 2.2 parts per million from 2004 levels and up 103 parts per million from pre-industrial times. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that the current atmospheric CO2 concentration has not been exceeded over the last 420,000 years and probably not during the past 20 million years.

There is a scientific consensus that the increasing concentration of CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has caused global temperatures to rise. Over the past 30 years, global temperatures increased by 0.6 degrees Celsius (1.08 degrees Fahrenheit). The IPCC projects that this warming trend will continue and that global temperatures will rise by 1.4 to 5.8 degrees Celsius by 2100.................

...........Since human activities are now responsible for unprecedented changes in the global climate system ( alterations in our atmosphere ), we each have the responsibility to work to decrease carbon emissions. The question is, will we act soon enough?....................