A new study indicates atmospheric CO2 is increasing swiftly [ark] “due to faster economic growth coupled with a halt in carbon intensity reductions [search], in addition to natural sinks [search] removing a smaller proportion of emissions from the air.” This is very important and confirms the trend that climate change is happening in an abrupt [search] and potentially runaway [seach] manner.

It has become abundantly clear that pledges to cut emission by x% in 2050 are pretty meaningless, and that the emphasis must be upon substantial essentially immediate emission cuts even as work for the long term goal. We at Ecological Internet would like to see an on average 20% goal for national greenhouse gas emission cuts by 2015. The focus should be upon energy conservation, efficiency and heavily subsidizing the ramping up of renewable energy systems known to work.

The findings published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the US found that “fifty years ago, for every tonne of CO2 emitted, 600kg were removed by natural sinks. In 2006 only 550kg were removed per tonne and that amount is falling. In addition to the growth of global population and wealth, we now know that significant contributions to the growth of atmospheric CO2 arise from the slow down of natural sinks and the halt to improvements in carbon intensity.”