Increase in carbon emissions accelerating

The increase in carbon emissions has accelerated since 2000 according to the Global Carbon Project. This from the BBC:

The Global Carbon Project says that emissions were rising by less than 1% annually up to the year 2000, but are now rising at 2.5% per year.

It says the acceleration comes mainly from rise in charcoal consumption and a lack of new energy efficiency gains.

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The Global Carbon Project draws its data from a wide range of sources, including measurements of carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and studies on fossil fuel use. From that data, researchers have extracted two trends which they believe explain the sharp upturn found around the year 2000.

"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."

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But, said Corinne Le Quere, the latest data showed this approach would not be enough to curb emissions in the future.

"Improvements that have been made in the last 30 years appear to be stalling," she said. "We are going to need a real decrease in emissions."