CO2 output accelerates; will push global warming higher

The Global Carbon Project says the rate of increase of annual global carbon dioxide output has more than doubled
more than doubled since the start of the new millennium, from 1 percent pre-2000 to more than 2.5 percent per year.

Here’s why:

“There has been a change in the trend regarding fossil fuel intensity, which is basically the amount of carbon you need to burn for a given unit of wealth,” explained Corinne Le Quere, a Global Carbon Project member who holds posts at the University of East Anglia and the British Antarctic Survey.

“From about 1970 the intensity decreased — we became more efficient at using energy — but we've been getting slightly worse since the year 2000,” she told the BBC News website.

“The other trend is that as oil becomes more expensive, we're seeing a switch from oil burning to charcoal which is more polluting in terms of carbon.”

High-end temperature-change predictions by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predict as much as an 11-degree rise in average global temperatures by end of this century, at the high end of models.

Given the information above, it seems certain we will hit the high end.

And for people my age, or roughly so, who want to slough this off to the future — that increase will probably be 4 degrees by 2040, when you and I are quite likely to be alive and kicking.

This is NOT a problem to pass on to the future.