As if the current economic crisis wasn't bad enough, it has now been discovered that carbon dioxide emissions are no longer declining, but rising. Some researchers even called the new emissions numbers "scary," jumping 3% over the span of a year.
The good news, if you can call it that, is that the U.S. is no longer number one in carbon dioxide output, being passed by China in 2006. The information was collected from data from the oil giant BP PLC. The data showed the China's emissions increased by 7.5% over the course of a year while the U.S.'s emissions increased by close to 2%.
The article also says that the developing countries were not included in the 1997 Kyoto treaty and therefore were not asked to reduce their greenhouse gases. China and India were among these countries, which was ironic because these countries now produce 53% of carbon dioxide pollution and are numbers one and four, respectively, polluters.
Near the end of the article, the author notes that there were five countries who lowered their emissions during this time period: Denmark, Germany, France, Australia and the United Kingdom. Although the article was about the increase in emissions, the article wanted to be fair by acknowledging that some countries were still decreasing their emissions.
This article featured a lot of statistics and figures. The end of the article produces a scenario that temperatures will increase between 4 and 11 degrees Farenheit by 2100, and is followed by a quote from client scientist Stephen Schneider.
"You'd have to be luckier than hell for it just to be bad, as opposed to catastropic."
This quote makes the reader wonder if they are supposed to be scared by this fact, or if it is supposed to motivate them to get things changed. Either way, I hope it works!
This story can be found at :
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/globalwarming/2008-09-26-carbon-emissions_N.htm
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2 comments:
After reading this article I can safely say that I am confused and a little worried. After looking at the article I can see what you mean about there being a lot of facts;I honestly felt bombarded. There were parts where it was just fact after fact and I didn't know how to interpret them all that well.
The last quote definately left me slightly worried and quite confused. The whole change in temperature seems like a small fact of life, things are just going to get a little warmer, but after doing some reasearch for that speech story we had to do I realized how something like a slight temperature change over the course of years can effect so much around us, regarding plants and lifestyle changes that must be made by nature itself.
You're right, the ending left me confuddled, what I didn't appreciate was that they didn't tell me how to help fix the problem.
When I found this article I knew it was one that I wanted to cover, because it went against everything that we thought we were doing.
With all of the pro-recycling and "go green" that's been promoted over the past year or two, I really thought that our country-and most of the world for that matter-were doing better and that CO2 emissions were going down. Imagine my surprise when I found this article (in many papers) that said it was actually increasing.
All these experts were saying in the article how alarming and "scary" this situation is, but nobody gave any suggestions at what else could be tried to lower our emissions. I mean, obviously what we came up with isn't working, since the rate has gone up, so we could use a little guidance from the experts.
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