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Greenhouse Gas Emissions Accelerated In Recent Years Despite Economic Recession, Says WMO

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The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) released a press statement today, in which they warn about the rise in atmospheric greenhouse gases during the last few years. Despite the economic crisis, which slowed down the industry a bit, the gas concentration rose in 2009, driving Earth towards a sure warming in the near future.

“The main long-lived greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide have reached their highest recorded levels since the beginning of the industrial age, and this despite the recent economic slowdown,” WMO Deputy Secretary-General Jeremiah Lengoasa told a briefing.

The organization also says that even if we stopped emissions completely it would take another 100 years to eliminate the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide, contributing 63.5 percent of total radiative forcing, has increased by 38 percent since 1750. The increased is due to the use of fossil fuels, deforestation and changes in land use.

A feedback loop effect is also in action right now, WMO researchers say. Because of the warming, polar glaciers melt and release methane, a gas more potent than carbon dioxide regarding its greenhouse effect, further contributing to the warming. Increased rainfall on wetlands (themselves caused by global warming) also release methane, feeding the process.

These natural emissions that rose sharply after a ten year period of no growth, will accelerate the global warming even further. There are researchers who say only natural gases could have caused the warming, but this one seems the most plausible variant – we drove and accelerated the whole process. Without us, humans, it may have triggered itself several thousands of years from now.

[via reuters]

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1 COMMENT

  1. Sequestering carbon takes place everyday in the form of growing plants. So you want to do your part? So buy wood products, and cotton, and so forth. That coffee table in the living room is sequestered carbon. We can remove tons and tons of carbon from the cycle…and we do every year. I live in a log home which represents tons of sequestered carbon. The carbon will be locked away for the most part for the life of the house. We could effectively remove carbon from the cycle in many areas, problem is we don’t. Played out coal mines should be stuffed full of bio matter and left to make more oil a million years from now. I’ve been thinking…winter is nearly here and fall has left us with all these leaves to rake, why doesn’t some one come up with a way to use that natural resource, normally we bag’em and they are sent to the land fill where they rot and give off CO2. I say use them as fuel or start sequestering them. The trees will pull CO2 from the air and make more leaves tons and tons of leaves, we dont need new technology to scrub CO2 from the air it already exists. We need a good inovation to process all the leaves. All we really need to do is slow the the decay so the CO2 isn’t released as fast as normal. So if you want to do your part plant a tree.

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