The carbon report – we’re certainly not running out

by frog

Last Thursday, the Global Carbon Project released its annual report on the state of the carbon cycle, Carbon Budget 2007 [pdf]. And the news is that carbon dioxide emissions are up 3 percent for 2007

Dot Earth commented:

More than half of global emissions, which totalled more than 34 billion tons of CO2 in 2007, are now from developing countries, the report said. Their dominance reflects explosive growth in the burning of coal and manufacturing cement, another big source of the heat-trapping gas.

The project scientists also said that the absorptive power of oceans, forests, and other “sinks” for carbon dioxide, which typically suck in more than half of the gas emitted each year, has not kept pace with the rising emissions. In 2007, the report said, these sinks took in 54 percent of the emissions, but that is a drop of 3 percent from the long-term average rate from 1959 to 2000.

Climate Progress puts it graphically:

And climate scientist James Wang notes:

The rate of increase for emissions lies at the upper end of the range projected by the IPCC, suggesting that we’re headed towards the most disruptive scenarios they envision.

For those who want refreshing here’s what those disruptive scenarios could include:

Actually that was only 4 degrees warming.  The IPCC’s upper estimates actually goes past 5 degrees (civilisation collapses) and 6 degrees (mass extinctions) to 6.4 degrees