Washington, D.C. — Instead of slowing, worldwide carbon dioxide levels have taken a sudden and alarming jump since the year 2000, an international team of scientists reported Monday.
CO2 emissions from fossil fuels - mostly coal, oil and gas - are increasing at three times the rate experienced in the 1990s, they said.
The rapid acceleration could make the battle against global warming even more difficult than it already appears.
Instead of rising by 1.1 percent a year, as in the previous decade, emissions grew by an average of 3.1 percent a year from 2000 to 2004, the latest year for which global figures are available, the scientists reported in this week's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"In many parts of the world, we are going backward," said Chris Field, director of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology in Stanford, Calif., a co-author of the report. "The trends relating energy to economy growth are definitely headed in the wrong direction."
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